Her breath left her in a trembling rush. “I love you, too.”
Sirens screamed in the distance—loud, sharp, cutting through the night.
Dove jogged closer. “Ambulance is three minutes out. You both need to get checked out.”
Buddy didn’t let go of her.
Didn’t even try.
Fallon leaned her forehead into his shoulder, letting herself finally shake, finally breathe, finally feel everything at once—terror, grief, love, relief?—
Alive.
They were alive.
And EJ Vance would never again touch another girl.
Tears blurred the edges of everything—Buddy’s face, the trees, the distant blue wash of emergency lights. “Tessa,” Fallon whispered. “He told me he sold her. That it was supposed to be me, but because?—”
Buddy pressed a gentle finger to her lips. “Don’t do that to yourself.”
His fingers threaded through the stray stands of hair fanning her face, slow, grounding, tender in a way that made her breath hitch. “If EJ was responsible for Tessa’s disappearance, then we finally have a starting point. A real one. And I’ll follow it until there’s nothing left to chase.” His voice settled into something fierce and protective. “I’ll do whatever it takes to find out what happened to her. I swear it.”
The ambulance rolled to a stop twenty feet away, its lights strobing across the asphalt. Sterling carried Linda toward the paramedics, calling for blankets, saline, and a stretcher.
Fallon held on to Buddy like he was the only solid thing left in a world that had tried to split open beneath her feet. His eyes—God, those eyes—were steady and warm and full of a love she could actually see, now, not just feel.
In that moment, she knew—absolutely, undeniably—that this man would walk through hell for her. And … she’d wrestle an angry python and a mother alligator at the same damn time for him.
Her chest swelled with something she hadn’t dared imagine she’d ever get again.
A future.
A real one.
For the first time in her adult life, she saw it—sharp and whole, and not the least bit temporary. She saw the porch light and the picket fence. She saw the baby carriage. She saw them. Together.
Hopefully, the baby carriage part wouldn’t scare him away.
Though, judging by the way he held her—bloody, battered, refusing to let go—she didn’t think anything could.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Aegis office didn’t look any different than it had the week before—same tired paint, same humming window units, same stubborn patch of mildew near the back corner—but the air felt different. Lighter somehow. Or maybe that was just Buddy finally breathing again.
He eased into the old rolling chair behind the desk he’d brought from the Jacksonville office, because he liked stability, and he liked having roots, which was odd, considering he’d been single for a long time.
Not anymore.
He stretched his leg, and it protested the movement. A dull throb radiated up his thigh, but he ignored it. The stitches would hold. The doctor had warned him about “overexertion,” which Buddy translated to “don’t be an idiot,” and then promptly went back to work, anyway.
He set aside a stack of reports—Flagler’s preliminary statements, DHS logs, Miami PD confirmations—and was halfway through signing the last incident form when a shadow crossed the doorway.
Trent stood there.
Still too pale. Still too thin. Still moving like every stitch in his body had been pulled in the wrong direction. But upright, breathing, and wearing a lopsided grin.
“Got a minute?” Trent asked.
