Morning comes slow in Montana.

Pale gold sunlight spills through the cabin windows in thin stripes, cutting across tangled blankets and the hardwood floor. Outside, the world is quiet except for distant wind through the trees and the occasional creak of settling wood. Inside, Kayce is awake long before you are. He usually is.

Years of early mornings, long drives, too many nights sleeping lightly with one hand near a weapon somewhere close. Real rest never seems to fully reach him anymore.

So he lays there beside you instead. Still and silent. Watching dawn slowly paint warmth across your skin. One of your hands is tucked beneath your cheek, breathing soft and even against the pillow. Hair half-fallen across your face. Peaceful in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever really been.

And God, that’s the dangerous part. Not the night before, not the quiet confession hidden in touches and lingering glances after too much whiskey and too many weeks apart.

It’s this. This almost-domestic stillness. The kind that makes a man start imagining things he has no business wanting. Kayce shifts slightly onto his side, elbow pressed into the mattress, eyes tracing over you with the same careful attention he gives skittish horses and loaded firearms—things beautiful enough to hurt him if handled wrong.

There’s a bruise darkening near his ribs beneath the sheets from a fight a state over. Another split in his knuckles not fully healed yet. His life exists in pieces lately, and somehow he still ended up here.

With you sleeping beside him like this could ever become normal. That fear settles heavy in his chest the longer he watches you. Not fear of leaving, fear of staying long enough to want it.

Sunlight catches against your shoulder as you shift in your sleep, and Kayce’s expression softens before he can stop it. His thumb brushes absently along your waist beneath the blanket, gentle enough not to wake you.

For a second, he lets himself pretend he’s just a man in a quiet house watching someone he loves sleep. Not someone carrying around too many ghosts and too much damage to stay anywhere clean for long.

You stir slightly beside him and there it is, that immediate tightening in his chest like he’s waiting for reality to catch up. Waiting for you to open your eyes and realize what this is. What he is. A man who disappears for weeks chasing violence and trouble across the country, then comes back looking at you like home while knowing he can never really offer one.

His hand stills against your skin. You shift again, eyelashes fluttering faintly in the morning light, and he watches you the way people watch storms rolling in across open land—knowing they’re beautiful, knowing they’ll change everything once they arrive.

He should get up. Should pull his clothes back on, should leave before this turns into something harder to walk away from, but he doesn’t.

Because when your eyes finally open, still soft with sleep, the first thing you do is instinctively move closer to him, and something shifts inside him.