"You're not fine.Your pulse is elevated, your jaw is tight, and you haven't made eye contact with me since you got out of the car."He steps closer.His free hand comes up and cups my jaw, tilting my face toward his."Talk to me."
"My father said if I testify, I'm not welcome home."
His eyes go dark.Not angry.Something deeper.The particular fury of a man who understands exactly what it costs to do the right thing and lose your family in the process.
"Then you're welcome here," he says.Simple.Certain.Final."This is your home as long as you want it."
He pulls me into his chest.Both arms around me.His chin rests on the top of my head.His heartbeat is steady against my ear, and his body is a wall between me and everything that hurts.
I press my face into his shirt and breathe.Pine and dog and the clean salt edge of a man who used to belong to the ocean.
Scout presses against our legs.Duke ambles over from his spot in the sun and leans against Stephen's calf.Even Koda, watching from behind the fence of his training run, lies down and settles.
The dogs know before the people do.They always do.
I love this man.Five days, and I love him.Clara was right.These mountain men don't do slow burns.
I tighten my arms around his waist and hold on.
"Dinner tonight?"I ask into his chest.
"Every night."His lips press against my hair."Every goddamn night, Lydia."
CHAPTERSEVEN
STEPHEN
Two weeks.
Fourteen days of Lydia in my cabin, in my bed, in my training field, in every corner of my life that used to be empty.Fourteen days of her voice in the mornings talking to dogs.Her toothbrush next to mine.Her field notebooks stacked on my kitchen counter beside my training logs.Scout sleeping at the foot of our bed like she was born there.
Our bed.When did I start calling it that.
Koda graduates his threshold mapping protocol on a Tuesday morning, and I stand in the training field and watch a dog who couldn't hold a calm sit two weeks ago execute a scent detection sequence with loose body language, genuine drive, and a tail wag that comes from somewhere deep and real.
Lydia stands beside me.Close enough that our shoulders touch.She doesn't say I told you so.She just watches Koda work with those amber eyes full of quiet pride, and when the dog finishes his last rep and trots over to sit at my heel, she looks at me and says, "That's engagement."
"That's engagement," I agree.
And it is.Not just the dog.Everything.Every protocol she's introduced, every modification she's made, every patient, persistent shift from pressure-based training to trust-based training has produced results I can measure in my notebook and feel in my gut.The dogs are better.Calmer.More reliable under stress because the stress response isn't their default setting anymore.
I'm better too.I sleep until five now instead of four.I eat three meals a day because Lydia puts food in front of me and watches me finish it with an expression that says she'll sit there until I do.I've stopped running drills past dark because she's in my cabin making dinner, and the pull of her is stronger than the pull of the work.
I'm in love with her.
The realization doesn't arrive like a thunderbolt.It arrives like sunrise.Slow.Inevitable.A brightening that started the moment she got out of that Subaru and hasn't stopped, and now I'm standing in full daylight blinking at the obvious.
I'm in love with Lydia Brooke, and she's leaving in seven days.
Her three-week consultation ends next Wednesday.She has a deposition to prepare for.A family to testify against.A life in Vermont that she hasn't talked about dismantling.And I have sixty acres of mountain and a head full of ghosts and no right to ask a woman like her to build something permanent on a foundation this cracked.
My phone rings at noon.Not a number I recognize.
"Stephen Nelson?"
"Speaking."
"This is Agent Daniels, Federal Bureau of Investigation.I'm the lead investigator on the Brooke breeding operation case.I understand Ms.Brooke is currently consulting with your K9 facility in Montana."
