Bonus Scene: An Alternate PoV Scene for Whispers and Wishes

Congratulations on hitting 500 reviews for Whispers and Wishes. It took me a minute to slide back into this moment in time for the characters. Can you believe that it’s been more than two years since this book came out? June of 2020 seems ages ago and at the same time, not. Still, as I sat down to figure out what bonus scene to pull from the pages, I had to revisit the story and see where we all were not only in their heads but also in terms of the overall tale. It left me a little nostalgic for these days, particularly with one of my favorite installments of their tale coming in the next book in the series. But I digress… As always this scene might contain spoilers if you haven’t read up through book 4 of the Untouchable series, but here we go!

 

Jake

“Shh, we’ve got you. You’re safe.” I sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing the hair back from her face as Coop hugged her from behind. The flicker of troubled emotion in her expression never failed to send a fresh surge of anger through my system. If only we were in one of those sci fi or fantasy movies we loved so much. I’d love to slide into her mind and just defeat the bad dreams for her.

But we weren’t.

“You got her?” I checked with Coop.

“Yeah.” He yawned. We woke him while we were getting ready to go. It had been more impulse than anything else, but the minute Archie brought up running, I was in. I needed to burn off some steam. The last week had left all of us more than a little restless. Frankie didn’t need our restlessness on top of her own issues.

So, running it was.

“I got her,” Coop continued. “Go do your sickeningly healthy thing.”

Whether he had her or not, she’d opened her eyes a couple of times and currently seemed to be staring at me. So I leaned my head to the side so I could meet her gaze. “Hey, Baby Girl. Go back to sleep. It’s still early.”

“Where are you going?” The barest hint of a pout decorated her words.

I sighed, more for effect than anything else. “Arch, Bubba, and I are going running.”

“Why?” The absolute disgust she filled that single word with made me laugh. Frankie had never been fond of “regular exercise.” She just liked to do things that were athletic.

“Because they’re getting lazy,” Archie answered. Dick. “And I haven’t gone running all week. Coop’s here, and we’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“With donuts,” Bubba tacked on.

She made a face and it took everything I had not to laugh at her. “Want to go?”

“No.” Zero hesitation or prevarication. Instead she just burrowed back against Coop. 

“Go back to sleep, Baby Girl.” I couldn’t contain all of my chuckle as I kissed her forehead. After, I made way for Archie and even Bubba to give her a kiss as well. Look at that, he was working his way back in, one step at a time.

It didn’t take long to feed the cats or give Coop shit for calling us pussy-whipped. I mean, we were and I was fucking proud of it, but he got to stay in bed with our girl so he could have a little more shut the fuck up.

Outside, Archie put in his bluetooth headphones and even Bubba did, but I skipped that. I didn’t want music. I wanted to just—run. The one thing about the guys, they didn’t spend a lot of time “warming” up. We just started out slow, then picked up speed.

Not even five minutes from the apartment and the wild tug to go back and check on her went taut. She was safe, I reminded myself. She was with Coop. We weren’t that far away. It took me picking up speed and reciting that to myself mentally a few times to keep from turning back.

More than once, I caught sight of Archie glancing back and so did Bubba. Yeah, I wasn’t the only one questioning our choices. But she needed time without all of us hovering and if I didn’t get at least some of this edge off—well there was a real chance I’d pick a fight with the guys and none of them deserved it.

Anger management annoyed the fuck out of me. But it had helped Bubba and me come to one conclusion, the last place our anger needed to be was around her. So, running it was. We hit the first mile in almost no time and headed for the second. By the time we hit the third, the inexorable pull to go back had slacked. It wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t ripping at my insides.

If anything, Bubba pushed to pass me and that drove me to go faster. Archie had zero trouble keeping up with us. It was easy to forget that he ran constantly. He got up earlier than most to run every day and we didn’t see him doing it, so we didn’t think about it.

I was more winded than normal and Bubba’s face was ruddy with sweat. You could definitely feel our lack of working out this week. But even as oxygen burned in my lungs and my muscles protested until they heated up, there was an edge of euphoria creeping in.

The runner’s high. We were there by mile five and we rode it all the way through the next forty minutes until we were cooling down on our way back. Slower than our usual pace, but fuck that felt good. Not that seeing the apartment didn’t add to that internal sense of glee.

More than ready to be back with her, I was up the steps and unlocking the back door before the others could get up there. Frankie and Coop were both in the kitchen, but more… Frankie was glowing and there was a real smile on her face.

The apartment also smelled like sex. Not overpowering and the stench of our own sweat would probably blot that out in no time. But I didn’t even care that it wasn’t me. In fact, I was fucking glad it was Coop. Not that I’d tell him that, but I was really fucking happy to see that smile on her face.

Beyond fucking happy. 

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