Page 66 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

Wyatt held his gaze another beat. “We’ll talk.”

Sarah cracked one eye open. “He’s not in trouble.”

Wyatt never looked away from Hudson. “Didn’t say he was.”

The nurse stepped in with excellent timing. “Let’s give her a little quiet. Immediate family can stay for a few minutes, but we need to keep stimulation low.”

Hudson was already backing toward the door. “I’ll step out.”

Sarah looked as if she might say something, but the nurse was already securing the blood pressure cuff around her arm. He let the door close behind him.

The hospital had the same dry heat everywhere, but the temperature dropped inside his body. He walked until he found a vending machine that charged too much for something nobody could honestly call coffee.

He fed the machine money and watched dark liquid spit into a paper cup. When he lifted it, the cup burned his fingers. He held it anyway, letting the heat bite into his skin until the sensation gave him something simple to track.

A few seconds later, footsteps stopped beside him.

Wyatt.

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Hudson stared into the paper cup as if it might become coffee if he looked at it long enough.

Beside him, the vending machine spluttered into silence. Wyatt sipped and bared his teeth. “Jesus.” He shook his head. “Coffee’s shit.”

Hudson lifted his own cup. “Can confirm.”

Somewhere down the hall, a nurse laughed, tired and human, but the sound went nowhere near either of them.

“The file. You backed it up?”

“Yes.” Hudson stared at the black liquid in his cup. “They would’ve known that. But there was a notebook. I think that’s what they wanted.”

Wyatt studied him for a long moment. “You have feelings for her?”

Hudson held the cup between both hands. The coffee had stopped burning. He wished it hadn’t. His thumb tightened until the paper cup buckled.

Wyatt huffed a quiet breath. “Fifteen years is a long time.”

“I was young and stupid.”

“Yeah.” Wyatt didn’t look away. “She stopped riding for weeks.”

Hudson didn’t move.

“Wouldn’t even come near the stables.”

That was the blade. Hudson stared at a hand hygiene poster without seeing a word of it.

He’d never let himself picture the aftermath. Wyatt knowing. Sophie wondering why her daughter had stopped riding. He’d always stopped the memory at the point where he drove away.

“We were kids.”

“You knew you were leaving,” Wyatt said. “She didn’t.”

Hudson could have defended himself. But nothing would change how he’d left her to deal with the aftermath alone.

Hudson took another sip and let it punish him on the way down.