Page 74 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

“Apparently you do not, since you also did not know how to dodge a bullet.”

I almost smiled. She did not.

She was restless. Moving around the room. Straightening things that did not need straightening. Checking the monitors that were only showing my heart rate, which was fine, and my blood pressure, which was fine, and finding nothing to fix but needing to fix something because that was what Chloe did when she was scared. She moved. She acted. She took care of things because taking care of things was the only way she knew how to process fear.

I caught her hand as she passed the bed for the fourth time. Pulled her toward me. She resisted for half a second and then her composure cracked and she sat on the edge of the bed and I wrapped my good arm around her and pulled her against my chest.

“Calm down,” I said. “I am okay.”

“I know you are okay.” Her voice broke. She pressed her face into my chest and the tears she had been holding back since she walked through the door finally fell. I felt them, hot and wet, soaking through the thin hospital gown. “I know you are. I just feel guilty. This happens to you because I came back. You got shot because of me. Your cabin is destroyed because of me. Everything Jonathan does, he does because I am here, and if I had never come back, if I had stayed away, you would be safe. You would be fine. You would be…”

“Alone,” I said. “I would be alone. In a cabin that was not a home. Working at a mill that was just a place to pass time. Going through the days like they did not matter because nothing in my life mattered enough to fight for.” I pressed my lips to the top of her head. “Is being beautiful a sin? Because you are a damn sinner, Chloe.”

She hiccupped. Pulled back. Stared at me with wet eyes and a wet face and an expression that was caught somewhere between a sob and disbelief.

“How can you joke like that?” she said. “You have a hole in your shoulder.”

“It is a small hole.”

“It is a bullet hole, Sawyer.”

“And I am still here. Sitting up. Talking. Making you angry, which means everything is working the way it should.”

She shook her head. Wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. But some of the tension in her shoulders had eased, and the panic that had been vibrating through her body since she walked in had softened into something that still hurt but was no longer spiraling.

“You are impossible,” she said.

“I have been told.”

“If you ever get shot again, I will shoot you myself.”

“Noted.”

She leaned her head against my chest. I held her. The hospital was quiet around us, the soft beep of monitors and the distant sound of nurses in the hallway the only interruption to the silence. My shoulder throbbed with a deep, steady ache that I would deal with later, when there was not a woman in my arms who needed me to be present more than I needed to be in pain.

“We will figure this out,” I said. “Jonathan is a problem. But he is a problem with a solution. The police are involved. Josh is involved. My crew saw everything. There are witnesses, Chloe. He sent men with guns to a place of business in broad daylight. That is not the move of a man in control. That is the move of a man getting desperate.”

“Desperate men are dangerous.”

“So am I.”

She was quiet for a long moment. Her hand rested over my heart, her fingers spread, feeling the beat of it beneath her palm. Steady. Strong. Still going.

“Promise me you will be more careful,” she said.

“I promise.”

“Promise me you will not die.”

“I am not going to die.”

“Sawyer.”

“I am not going to die, Chloe. I just got my family. I am not going anywhere.”

She tilted her face up and kissed me. Soft. Careful. Tasting like salt and fear and the kind of love that makes people stupid and brave in equal measure. I kissed her back with my good hand cradling her face and my heart beating against her palm and the absolute certainty that whatever came next, I would meet it standing up.

Emma and Dollie came back with ice cream. Emma climbed back onto the bed and shared her chocolate cone with me, holding it up to my mouth with careful concentration, and I ate hospital ice cream with my daughter while Chloe sat beside us and Dollie told jokes that were not funny but made everyone laugh anyway.