"You're absolutely right." He paused for a moment. "I'm sorry. I love you so much, and I thought I was protecting you, but I was just being a coward. I was scared of what it would do to you, scared of adding more weight to what you're already carrying. I’ve never been in love before, and while the feeling doesn’t scare me, doing or saying the wrong thing does. I’m constantly wondering if every action I take is going to be the one that makes you leave.”
Emery stood with her forehead pressed against the door, her hand flat against the wood. On the other side, she could hear Devon's ragged breathing. His confession was so utterly honest. So raw. Their romance hadn’t been conventional. They hadn’treally dated. They had sex a few times. A couple of good laughs when they’d run into each other. A bunch of fun, flirty texts.
But that wasn’t a relationship. It hadn’t grown into that until recently, and it scared her, too. It just happened too fast. And at a time when her world had been thrown into a meat grinder.
"I love you," he said again, softer. "And I swear, I will never keep anything from you again. No more secrets. No more protecting you from truths you have a right to know. Please let me in.”
His words settled over her like a blanket, warm and solid and real. No more secrets. No more half-truths. Just honesty, even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt. That was what she needed. What they both needed. And standing here, separated by wood and her own fear, suddenly felt like the biggest mistake she could make.
She unlocked the door, twisted the knob, and pulled open the door.
Devon stood in the hallway, his face wrecked—eyes red, jaw tight, hands shaking. He looked like he'd aged ten years in the past hour.
"Come in," she whispered.
He stepped inside, and she closed the door behind him. They stood facing each other in the dim light from the bedside lamp.
"Promise me," Emery said. "Promise me you'll never lie to me again. Not to protect me, not because you think you know what's best. I need to look in your eyes and hear you say it.”
"I promise." He reached for her hands, gripping them as if they were a lifeline. "No more secrets."
She searched his face, looking for any sign of deception, any hint that he was just telling her what she wanted to hear. But all she saw was love and regret and absolute sincerity.
"I'm terrified," she admitted. "If this is true—if I really am David's daughter?—"
He pulled her closer. "Whatever it means, whatever comes next, I’m right here. I’m standing with you.” He cupped her chin. "But right now, in this moment, I just need you to know that I love you. That I'm sorry. That I will spend every day earning back your trust if that's what it takes."
"I love you, too.” She wrapped her arms around his body, dropping her head to his chest. A million things raced through her mind. Questions about who’d been threatening. How and why Gabe could be involved, because that just didn’t make sense. Her father’s insurance fraud, and could they have it wrong, and the attempt on her life be related to that?
And the last thought that seemed to linger the longest, and made her feel like a crazy person, was what if she was David’s biological daughter, and she took her stake in the Callaway Wineries? What would that mean for her position at Stone Bridge Winery? And more importantly, how would it change her relationship with the man she’d just declared her undying love for?
Fifteen
The Stone Bridge Café smelled like fresh coffee and warm, freshly baked apple pastries with cinnamon and a hint of nutmeg. It was the kind of comforting normalcy that felt wildly out of place given the chaos of the past week. Devon sat in a corner booth, nursing his second cup of black coffee and watching the door as the sun struggled to lighten the dark morning sky.
Gabe arrived ten minutes late, looking like he'd been dragged through hell backward. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, his usually neat hair stuck up at odd angles, and his shirt was wrinkled like he'd slept in it.
"You look like I feel,” Devon said as Gabe slid into the booth across from him.
"Thanks. That's exactly what I wanted to hear at six in the morning after spending five hours at the police station and then another two trying to calm down my wife while she cried, yelled, and threatened to beat someone up, only she had no idea where to direct her anger. Most of it landed on the Callaways.” Gabe flagged down the server, ordered coffee, and didn't bother with food.
"That bad?"
"Worse." Gabe scrubbed his hands over his face. "Sandy grilled me for hours. I had Harlan there, thanks to your dad, and I was grateful because it got intense. Honestly, I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”
“Define intense.” Devon had watched Grant go through a few rounds with Sandy three months ago, and he understood that when Sandy flipped the cop switch, the badge was front and center. Grant said it was as if she was an entirely different person than the all-smiles, fun-loving chief who walked around the streets of Stone Bridge, waving at everyone in the community she was elected to protect, which just weirded Devon out.
"She started with basic questions. Things that felt normal in a situation like this, as crazy as that sounds. But her demeanor began to shift. She leaned across the table. Stared at me with a blank expression. It made me shiver.”
“I’ve seen that look before when Grant was going through it. Even Mason says it’s a little creepy, and he’s married to her.”
“The questions weren't hard—easy enough to answer, actually. But the way she asked them..." Gabe leaned back, draped his arm over the booth, and shifted his gaze around the cafe like he didn’t know where to turn. "She practically accused me of filing a false report about the guns being stolen."
Devon set his cup down. "What?"
"The guns were found. In a storage unit rented in my name." Gabe's laugh came out low, almost strangled sounding and more than a little caustic. "A storage unit I never rented, at a facility I've never been to. And inside that unit, Sandy says there's evidence that makes it look like I've been systematically stalking Emery. Targeting her.”
"That's insane. Why would you do that? You literally have no reason.”
