Page 68 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

“I intend to.”

We drove to the house on Cedar Road. It was small but solid, a well-kept bungalow with a covered porch and trees on three sides and a gravel drive that curved away from the main road. Josh had not exaggerated about the maintenance. The place was clean, furnished with the simple, sturdy furniture of people who had valued function over style, and the heater kicked on within minutes of us walking through the door.

Emma explored with the cautious curiosity of a child who had been moved too many times. She checked every room, opened every closet, looked under every bed. When she was satisfied that the house was safe, she set Sir Chomps-a-Lot on the bed in the smallest room and declared it hers.

I carried in the bags we kept packed in the truck. Chloe had started keeping go-bags after the hospital, a habit from her years with Jonathan that she had never been able to break, and the fact that she had them ready, that she lived her life with one foot always pointed toward the exit, made the fury in my chest burn hotter.

Dollie and Josh left. Josh gripped my shoulder at the door and said he would come by in the morning. Dollie hugged Chloe and whispered something that made Chloe nod and wipe her eyes and squeeze Dollie’s hands.

I locked the doors. Checked every window. Drew the curtains. Went through the house the way I had been trained to go through buildings in a place that no longer existed in my daily life but lived permanently in my muscles and my instincts.

Emma was in bed. Chloe had read her a story, a short one, and the little girl had fallen asleep clutching her dinosaur with the covers pulled up to her chin, and I stood in the doorway and watched her sleep and made a silent promise that I would keep with everything I had.

Chloe was in the kitchen. Sitting at the table with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea that she was not drinking. She was staring at the surface of the liquid like the answers to everything were floating somewhere in the steam.

I sat down across from her.

She did not look up. Her shoulders were tight. Drawn in. Smaller than they should have been, like she was trying to occupy less space, like she could make herself invisible if she just pulled in far enough. I recognized the posture. I had seen it in soldiers. In survivors. In people who had learned that being small meant being safe.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked up. Her eyes were dry but red-rimmed, the aftermath of tears she had cried while I was checking windows, tears she had hidden from Emma and from me because that was what she did. She carried things alone. She had been carrying things alone for seven years.

“He found us,” she whispered. “I thought we had more time. I thought maybe he had given up. But he found us and he was in our home and he touched Emma’s things and he…”

“Chloe.”

“What if we had been there? What if Emma had been in her room? What if…”

“Don’t.” I reached across the table and took her hands. Her fingers were cold. Trembling. I wrapped mine around them and held tight. “Don’t go to the what ifs. You were not there. Emma was not there. You were with me, at my parents’ house, and you were safe.”

“For how long?” Her voice cracked. “How long before he finds this place too? How long before he shows up at the school or the mill or the grocery store? He does not stop, Sawyer. That is what you do not understand. He does not stop. He has people. He has money. He has his father and the connections and the…”

“Chloe.” I said her name the way I said it when I needed her to hear me. Firm. Quiet. Leaving no room for the panic to keep climbing. “Look at me.”

She looked at me.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I will not let anything happen to you. Either of you. Not now. Not ever.”

“You cannot promise that.”

“I just did.”

“Sawyer, you do not know what he is capable of.”

“And he does not know what I am capable of.” I held her eyes. Let her see what was behind them. The full, unfiltered truth of what I was willing to do to protect my family. I had gone to war once. I had survived things that would break most men. And I would do all of it again, every single day, for the woman sitting across from me and the little girl sleeping in the other room. “I have handled worse than a man with money and a grudge. I have handled worse in worse places with worse odds. He is a bully, Chloe. And bullies fold when they meet someone who does not.”

She stared at me. Searching. Looking for the crack, the hesitation, the moment I would flinch. She did not find it.

A tear slid down her cheek. She did not wipe it away.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Okay?”

“Okay. I believe you.” She squeezed my hands. “I am still scared.”

“Good. Scared keeps you sharp. But you are not alone in it anymore. That is the difference.”