“What?” Nash wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.
“My real name is Amy Emma Roberts.” Her gaze was steady now, the familiar stubbornness he’d seen yesterday returning to her expression.
“Amy,” he repeated, testing the name. It suited her somehow—something softer and more innocent than the protective shell she’d built around herself. “Amy,” he said again, just because he could.
She smiled shyly, the expression transforming her face in a way that made his chest tighten. “Yes, but you still can’t use it, because technically I am still in witness protection.”
Nash nodded. “True.”
“It’s been so long since anyone called me by my real name,” she admitted. “Sometimes I have to remind myself who I actually am.”
“I can’t imagine,” Nash said, trying to understand what it would be like to lose not just your home and family, but your very identity. “Did you ever think about just … disappearing again? Starting fresh somewhere else?”
Her expression turned thoughtful. “After my mother died, I considered it. The Marshals Service offered to relocate me again—standard procedure after a significant life change that might compromise security.” She tucked her legs beneath her on the couch. “But I’d just started my master’s program, and I was tired of running. Tired of being afraid.”
“So you stayed.”
“I stayed. And then I found Porter Rockwell, and the gold, and eventually Bill …” She trailed off. “Maybe I should have left.”
“And then we wouldn’t have found each other again,” Nash pointed out softly.
Their eyes met and held.
In that moment, it felt like all the years between them—the disappearance, the questions, the separate lives they’d built—compressed and vanished. It was just them, just this connection that had somehow endured everything fate had thrown at it.
She let out a light laugh, breaking the spell. “This is crazy.”
“What are you talking about?” Nash asked, though he was pretty sure he knew.
“I guess all of these years, I thought—you know—that I must not remember things right. I must have just been a teenager, but there was something between us.”
So many feelings rushed through Nash. Relief that he wasn’t the only one who’d felt it, back then and now. Fear of what it might mean. Hope that maybe, just maybe, they’d been given a second chance.
“Never mind,” she said, looking embarrassed.
He took her hand, his thumb brushing across her knuckles. “I feel it too.”
Their eyes held for another intense moment, and Nash found himself leaning forward slightly before catching himself.
This wasn’t the time.
They were in danger, she was injured, and they had a mystery to solve. Moving too fast would only complicate an already complex situation.
“Do you remember that night we went stargazing?” he asked suddenly, surprising himself with the question. “After the debate tournament in Billings?”
A smile touched her lips. “The team bus broke down, and we all had to wait for the replacement. You convinced me to climb that hill behind the school.”
“You were worried we’d miss the bus,” he recalled, grinning.
“I was worried we’d get caught by Mrs. Henderson. She already thought we were distracted by each other.”
Nash laughed. “She wasn’t wrong.”
“No,” Sadie—Amy—agreed softly. “She wasn’t.”
Nash remembered that night with perfect clarity—the way she’d shivered in the cool Montana air, how he’d given her his jacket, how they’d lain side by side on the grass looking up at a sky spattered with stars. They hadn’t kissed, though he’d wanted to. Instead, they’d talked for hours about everything and nothing—their dreams, their fears, their families.
It was the night he’d realized he was falling in love with her.
