Page 129 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

His hands covered his face.

She’s breathing.

His next breath shuddered through him.

“For fuck’s sake, Sarah.” Ryder’s laugh was shaky as he wrapped warm blankets around her shoulders. “Do not ever do that again.”

Hudson’s legs were no longer taking orders. He crawled across the deck. “Sarah.” His voice was little more than a whisper.

Sarah turned her head. Her eyelids fluttered. It took her two tries to find him.

“Hudson.” His name emerged faintly beneath the mask. Tears welled in her eyes.

“Sarah.” He reached her, and her fingers gripped the front of his soaking shirt, twisting into the fabric with surprising determination. His arms shook as they closed around her. She leaned against him, burying her face against his shoulder. Ryder swore softly and wrapped another blanket around them both.

Hudson kissed the top of her head and held her.

He wasn’t ever letting go.

50

Two weeks later

Sarah opened the cupboard. Seven bags of coffee stared back at her.

Seven.

She stood barefoot on the kitchen tiles and counted them. Dark roast. Medium roast. A bag of whole beans he had no way of grinding because she didn’t own a grinder. Two bags of the cheaper stuff she actually drank shoved to the back like afterthoughts.

The man had a problem.

She reached for the cheap stuff, smiling, and filled the machine. While it brewed, she leaned against the counter.

The bruises were fading. Her ribs only complained when she twisted too fast. The cut across her palm from the wire had closed into a thin pink line that pulled when she made a fist. Two weeks of healing. Two weeks of Hudson somehow becoming part of the landscape of her house—cooking meals she hadn’t asked for, filling the fridge, making himself useful wherever he found something that needed doing.

The evidence of him was everywhere.

His boots by the door beside hers. One of his hoodies draped over the back of the kitchen chair—the one she’d been stealing to sleep in and pretending she hadn’t. Two mugs drying on the rack beside the sink. His toothbrush in her bathroom, his book lying face-down on the arm of the couch.

Tiny things. The small, ordinary debris of a life being shared.

Her phone buzzed on the counter.

Walter.

She opened the message.

A photograph filled the screen. Walter’s desk at the station, buried beneath a mountain of paperwork.

This is all yours when you get back. No rush.

Walter

She chuckled to herself and slipped the phone back onto the counter.

Her coffee had finished brewing. She added three sugars, took a sip, and looked out through the kitchen window.

Hudson and Wyatt were splitting firewood outside.