Chapter 83 Guardian Of The Heart

• Jeremy POV
• The quiet of my bedroom was a deceptive calm, a fragile veneer stretched thin over the chaos swirling in my mind. I lay on my bed, the mattress creaking faintly under my weight, my hands folded behind my head as I stared at the ceiling, its familiar cracks and shadows offering no answers. The dim glow of the bedside lamp cast a warm, amber light across the room, but it did little to ease the cold knot of longing that had settled in my chest.
• Rachel. Her name was a pulse, a rhythm that hadn’t stopped since that night in her kitchen, when I’d bared my soul, let the truth of my feelings spill out like blood from a wound. The memory of her eyes—wide, conflicted, yet holding a spark of something I couldn’t name—haunted me, replaying in an endless loop. I wanted to call her, to hear her voice, to know if she was okay after the storm Cody’s arrival had unleashed. But every time I reached for my phone, my hand froze, the weight of our almost-kiss, the line we’d nearly crossed, anchoring me in place.