Page 77 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

“I want you to have this,” she said.

I looked at it. Looked at her. “What is this?”

“A sign.” She unclasped it and reached around my neck and fastened it herself, her fingers gentle at the back of my neck. “A sign that wherever you are, wherever you go, you know that I will come whenever you need me.”

My throat closed. The tears I had been fighting all day pressed against my eyes and I blinked them back through sheer force of will.

“Dollie…”

“I know you, Chloe. I have known you since we were fourteen years old. I know what you look like when you are scared and I know what you look like when you are making a plan that is going to break my heart. Whatever is going on in that head of yours, whatever you are thinking about doing, I need you to remember that you are not alone. You do not have to carry this by yourself.”

I touched the pendant at my throat. Small. Warm from her hand. A weight that felt heavier than its size.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“Do not thank me. Just promise me you will not do anything stupid.”

I could not promise that. So I hugged her instead, and she hugged me back, and we stood on the porch in the cold until the tears stopped and I could breathe again.

That night I barely slept. I lay beside Sawyer listening to him breathe, his injured shoulder wrapped and elevated, his face relaxed in the way it only was when he was asleep, and I memorized the shape of him in the dark. The line of his jaw. The scar on his temple. The way his chest rose and fell with the steady rhythm of a man who did not fear sleep the way he used to.

Emma. Sleeping down the hall with Sir Chomps-a-Lot and a grandmother’s necklace she had gotten from Sawyer’s mother and the innocent, devastating trust of a child who believed her parents would keep her safe.

Tomorrow. The word sat in my chest like a stone.

Morning came.

I made breakfast. Fed Emma. Kissed Sawyer’s cheek while he sat at the table looking at me with those eyes that knew something was wrong but were waiting for me to say it. I did not say it. I could not say it. Because saying it would mean watching him try to stop me, and I knew with absolute certainty that if I told him what the man in the grocery store had said, Sawyer would put himself between Jonathan’s men and me and this time the bullet would not hit his shoulder. This time it would hit something that could not be stitched.

A knock on the door.

Sawyer tensed. I watched his good hand close into a fist, watched the soldier in him surface like a current beneath still water. I put my hand on his arm.

“I will get it,” I said.

I opened the door. Two men. Different from the ones at the sawmill. Clean-cut. Controlled. One of them held his hands visible at his sides, palms out, a gesture that was meant to look peaceful but was really a demonstration that he could reach whatever was under his jacket in less than a second.

“We are not here to hurt anyone,” the first one said. “We are here to get Chloe.”

Sawyer was already moving. I felt him behind me, his presence like a wall, and his good hand gripped the door frame with a force that turned his knuckles white.

“She is not going anywhere,” he said.

“It is okay,” I said. My voice was calm. Steady. The calmest I had felt in twenty-four hours because the decision had been made and the agony of deciding was over and what was left was the terrible, simple clarity of a mother choosing her children over herself. “It is okay, Sawyer.”

“Chloe, what the hell are you…”

“I am going with them.”

The silence that followed was the loudest thing I had ever heard. Sawyer’s face changed. The color drained out of it and then came back, dark and hot, and his eyes, those green eyes that I loved more than any other thing on this earth except the small girl standing behind him, went wide with a fury so pure it was almost beautiful.

“No,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

“It is the only way they leave you and Emma alone.”

“I said no.”

I turned to him. Put both hands on his face. Made him look at me. His jaw was clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping beneath his skin, and his breathing was harsh and fast and his whole body was vibrating with the effort of not grabbing me and locking the door and never letting me out of his sight again.