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He glanced at her when he said it with a sly grin on his face.
“I’ll make sure of it,” she said, clearly not giving a shit that he knew she wouldn’t be going anywhere tonight. Nowhere but snuggling next to me on this bed.
He set his hand on the doorknob. “Take care of him. Dude might act like he doesn’t feel any pain, but he bleeds red just like the rest of us.”
There was an undercurrent to his words, and there was no missing the fact that he wasn’t talking about the physical.
Then he dipped out and shut the door behind him.
Sighing, I looked back at Savannah who shifted on her feet next to my bed, anxiety running her through. I figured I should just lay it out. “I’ve never seen you look so nervous, Savannah Ward. I guess you can see now that you’re in over your head.”
A frown marred her brow. “What do you mean?”
“It means I’ve made some enemies.”
Surprise clashed with the confusion, and she chewed at her bottom lip. “You think someone is after you?”
“Yeah, honey, someone’s after me because I’ve been after them.”
Dread crept into her expression. “Who?”
“I told you that I was hunting Brianna’s killers. Everyone else might have written it off, but I’m not about to, and I’m pretty sure whoever these bastards are were trying to send a warning for me to call it off.”
I paused, fighting the lump in my throat. “In the back of my mind, I’ve always thought it was likely a retaliation of some sort. Someone coming back at me for putting somebody behind bars. We’ve cracked some vicious cells over the years…have taken down some bad guys that went high up. I’m not fool enough to think that didn’t go unnoticed.”
Alarm flashed across her face.
An incredulous laugh rolled up my throat, and I scrubbed a hand over my face to clear the disorder that blurred my eyes. My sight on this woman, unable to look away, terrified that I should. “It’s funny that I brought you here because I wanted to give you a safe place, and I think the only thing I might have done was drag you into my mess. I’m fucking sorry for that.”
“You think I might be in danger, being here?” Savannah’s voice was a whisper. But she didn’t back away. She came closer.
My shrug was full of regret. “I don’t know, Savannah, but I can’t stand the idea that someone was outside my house, and I can’t write it off as nothing when they’d been willing to do this.”
I tipped my head toward my side.
“I don’t know if I’ve brought trouble to my door. To you. To my kids.”
I choked the last, barely able to speak when I gave voice to my heart. My whole reason.
“But how can I turn my back when my gut promises that Brianna’s death wasn’t random? What kind of person would that make me, when I already missed the mark when it came to her? I can’t just let it go.”
Uncertainty had her chewing on the inside of her cheek, and she glanced away for a beat before she returned that striking gaze to me. “What if it was related to what happened at the motel?”
A frown dented between my eyes. “How so?”
She wavered, hesitated, then cleared her throat. “I don’t know. I’m probably just being paranoid.”
I stretched a hand toward her. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Savannah. When I said this was supposed to be your safe place, I meant it, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure that’s exactly what you are. Safe. Just like I’m going to do for my kids. Fuck, what if I—?”
The words clipped off because I couldn’t bear to say it.
Rage and horror slammed me at the thought of someone hurting them. Affliction beating through me at the idea that something bad could befall them because of the badge that I wore.
I couldn’t fail them again.
Savannah climbed onto the bed in the wake of the disorder that banged the walls of my room.
She straddled my waist.
Carefully.
Her touch so gentle as she took me by both sides of my face, tender as she forced me to look into the depths of those fathomless eyes.
I was pretty sure I fell right then.
Into the abyss that was this girl.
I was sure of it when she whispered harshly, “You are everything those kids need, Ezra Patterson. Don’t you dare lay here and think for a second that you’re a bad parent because believe me, I’ve seen them, I’ve known them, and you aren’t one of them. You are the kindest, most caring man I’ve ever met. And those kids? They adore you. They need you. They love you. But your love for them…?”
Her tongue stroked out to wet her bottom lip, and I could hear the drumbeat of her heart battering at her ribs. “That night that I spent here with all of you? I had never witnessed anything so beautiful. The devotion that’s here. The safety that rings within these walls. It both broke my heart seeing it and healed it at the same time because it’s the first time I’d seen anything like it firsthand.”
