Air is rarer than gold dust right now. I’m struggling to find enough to satisfy my lungs as Jared towers over me. He’s larger than life. He’s angrier than a storm. He has a savage beauty about him that makes being in his presence hard to bear.

Jared steps back to the chair and gathers up his jacket. I’m frozen to the spot as he returns, and with such a tenderness that sings to the most humane part of me, he drapes the coat over my shoulders, and my pain wants to howl his ...