She faltered but his gaze didn’t waver. He took her hands. ‘Of course you do,’ he said softly. ‘Can I drive you?’

‘I don’t-’

‘If you don’t want company, then I’ll wait here for you to come back,’ he said. ‘If you need to be alone, then I understand-of course I do. I’ll sit here and wait, and see if I can get rid of my own demons, and if you don’t come back by dawn, then I’ll come up to the ridge and demand the ghosts give you back. You belong in the real world, Tori. Tonight the real world will look out for you. I’ll look out for you.’

And she knew that he would. Trust? There was that word again, raising its ugly head, but the night was still and beautiful and Jake was watching her with a look that was nonjudgemental, nonpossessive or needy. It was simply…caring?

The sensation was insidious in its sweetness and there was no way in the wide world she could resist.

‘Then yes, please,’ she whispered, stupid or not. ‘I’d love it if you would come with me.

So they headed up to the ridge, with Jake driving and Rusty cradled on Tori’s knee. Only instead of glancing out the window all the time, as Rusty always did, the little dog kept glancing across at Jake.

As did Tori. She didn’t understand what she was feeling. She mistrusted the instinct that had her accepting his company, but for now Jake’s presence was warm and solid and real, and strangely it made what she wanted to do feel even more right.

They drove past Jake’s darkened farmhouse, the hub of so much activity over the past six months, and that felt strange. Then they turned into the drive of what once had been her home and that felt worse.

Even the night couldn’t disguise the destruction. Blackened fence posts, massive trees, felled and not yet cleared, a gaping void in the blackened bushland where the house had once been.

A chimney rising out of the ashes like a lone sentinel, a monument to what had happened.