Lucas’s jaw flexed. Ethan’s hands tightened around his mug. Elias’s gaze went flinty cold.
“I testified,” I went on. “I sat in a courtroom and told a jury how he’d been that night. I watched them take him away in handcuffs. I thought that was it.”
“It should’ve been,” Maude muttered.
“I changed my name,” I reminded them. “Moved. Made myself small. Careful. Predictable. I built a life that didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“And he still found you,” Elias said quietly.
“Yeah.” My throat burned. “Right here. In this house.”
I looked around the kitchen—the nicked countertops, the curtain Maude had hemmed herself, the doorway where Gideon liked to lean and watch us with that half-smile that meant he was home, even if he didn’t know it yet.
“I came down here because my grandmother died and left me this inn,” I said. “I thought it was a mistake at first. We hadn’t talked in years. But she made it very clear—lawyer-reading-a-will clear—that if I stayed a year and didn’t sell, it would be mine. No quitting.”
“Stubborn woman,” Maude said, with all the fondness in the world.
“Genetic,” Gideon murmured.
I nudged him with my elbow. “At first I hated it,” I admitted. “Everything was broken. The porch railing. The roof. I thought I’d have a panic attack every time the house creaked.”
“You hid it well,” Maude said.
“I didn’t want to seem ungrateful,” I said. “But then …” I glanced up at Gideon. “Then someone showed up and asked for a room and made fixing things look like something I might actually be able to learn.”
His hand tightened on my chair.
“I started to like it,” I said, the confession small and huge at the same time. “The plans. The projects. The idea that maybe this could be more than a year-long sentence. A place that was mine. A place I could make safe. And then last night, my father stood in the dining room and said my name like it belonged to him. And I thought,Okay. Of course. Of course, he ruins this, too.”
My voice cracked on the last word. I stared very hard at my plate.
“Hey.” Gideon’s fingers curled around the back of my neck, warm and firm, thumb stroking just behind my ear. “He didn’t ruin it.”
“He tried,” I said.
Ethan leaned in, forearms braced on the table. “Listen to me, Hazel,” he said, his voice gentle but iron-backed. “We are not going to let Sam Jarrow—or whoever sprung him—run you off your own land.”
“This is your place,” Lucas added. “Your happy little inn on the water.” His mouth tipped up. “You get that, right? That you’re allowed to have something good?”
I swallowed. “It doesn’t always feel like that’s how the math works.”
Elias spoke last, his tone clinical in a way that somehow made it more comforting. “From a purely tactical standpoint,”he said, “relocating you would give whoever is pulling Jarrow’s strings exactly what they want—proof that they can push you, move you on the board. Keeping you here, surrounded, defended, sends the opposite message.”
“What message?” I asked.
“That this house is a fortress now,” he said. “And you’re not to be touched.”
There was no heat in his voice, no bravado. Just absolute certainty.
Gideon dipped his head until his mouth brushed my temple. “They’re right,” he said. “You deserve this place. You deserve to be happy here.”
For a second, the thought of a future in this old, creaky house with these ridiculous, dangerous men dropping in and out of the kitchen like it was the most natural thing in the world felt almost possible.
Almost.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Then we keep it.”
Maude clapped once, decisive. “That’s settled. We’ll need more bacon.”
