JEREMIAH STOOD just outside the cabin, arms folded across his chest, cold seeping through his sleeves yet doing nothing to cool the heat that had been burning him alive since last night.
Distance.
He needed distance.
He had repeated that word like a prayer from the moment Lily slipped off his lap and whispered that they should stop. He knew she needed space, breathing room, stability. She’d been dragged through betrayal, humiliation, abandonment—all courtesy of Robert Hale, the man Jeremiah still wished he had beaten bloody the night he found Lily with her engagement ring ripped off and her heart broken.
And yet here she was, tangled in his orbit, delicate and fierce and confused, and here he was—losing control every time she breathed in his direction.
So this morning, he had done the
