"Ronan."
He looks at me for a long moment. Then, "I put my hand on his throat. Didn't hurt him. Just made sure he understood that his money doesn't work here. That you're protected. That if he comes back, I won't stop at talking."
My breath catches.
Not because I'm afraid of what he did. Because I'm not. Because some part of me that I don't fully recognize is glad, fiercely, dangerously glad, that Derek finally met someone he couldn't buy or intimidate or smooth-talk his way around.
"Harper." Ronan steps closer. Not touching me, but close enough that I can smell leather and night air and him. "I need you to understand something."
"What."
"I meant what I said to him." His voice is low. Certain. "If he comes near you again, I will hurt him. Badly. And I won't lose sleep over it."
I should be horrified. I should tell him that's not okay, that violence isn't the answer, that there are legal ways to handle this.
But I'm not horrified.
I'm standing on Patty's porch in the mountain dark with a man who just threatened my abusive ex-boyfriend on my behalf, and all I feel is safe.
Safer than I've felt in years.
"Okay," I say.
He blinks. "Okay?"
"Okay." I step closer. Put my hand on his chest, right over his heart, the way I did when everything was different and the same. "I'm not going to tell you that was wrong, Ronan. Because it wasn't. Derek doesn't respond to polite. He responds to power. And you just showed him he doesn't have any here."
His hand comes up and covers mine. Warm. Solid.
"He's going to leave," Ronan says. "Judge is watching the lodge. If Derek's still there in an hour, we escalate. But my read is he'll go. Men like him don't stay where they're not in control."
"And if he doesn't?"
Ronan's jaw tightens. "Then I'll make sure he wishes he had."
We stand there in the porch light and the dark, and I think about the man I left fourteen months ago, the one who made me feel like I was always one wrong word away from something breaking.
And I think about the man in front of me now, who handles everything with that controlled, deliberate certainty, who hasn't made me feel small or scared or less-than once since I met him.
"Thank you," I say quietly.
"You don't need to thank me."
"Yes, I do." I look up at him. "You didn't have to do this. This isn't your problem."
"Yeah, it is."
"Why?"
He looks at me for a long moment. His hand tightens slightly over mine.
"Because you're mine," he says.
Four words. Flat. Certain. Like a fact he's stating, not a claim he's making.
And the difference, the specific difference between Derek saying something like that and Ronan saying it now, is everything.
Derek said mine and meant property.
