Kingsley awoke before dawn, long before the faint glow of morning began to seep through the slatted cabin window. His eyes opened slowly, adjusting to the soft shadows of early light. For a moment, he simply lay there in stillness, the silence of the retreat settling around him like a second blanket. But it wasn’t sleepiness that held him in bed—it was something else.

Katherine.

She’d laid her head on his shoulder.

His fingers, still resting faintly over the spot on the sheet where ...