He’d marched her straight back to Sarah while Monica pouted and tried to climb him like a tree. Then he’d put the fear of God into the whole giggling group, found them rides, and went home, wishing he could scrub the whole night from his memory.
Never again.
What he actually needed was to get the hell out of Northfield and away from the well-meaning people who kept thanking him, shaking his hand, calling him a hero like he hadn’tfailed. Like he hadn’t stood in ice-cold water and watched a mother slip below the surface while he cradled her daughter in his arms.
Every time he saw the Whitmores around town, it twisted the knife.
He needed space.
Quiet.
Somewhere he could go without being reminded of everything he couldn’t save.
“Fine,” Sarah huffed. “Rachel’s friends are older. What if she sets you up with that one girl who calls you Sheriff Sugar Buns?”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Rachel said. “Lyssa and Kaylin have both asked about you since you helped me move.”
“Oh yeah.” Sarah nodded. “Bold move, leaving their panties in your coat pocket. Did you ever give those back?”
Rush groaned, heat crawling up his neck as his sisters cackled. This was what he’d been dealing with for months, and it was getting worse. The girls had it in their heads that all he needed was a girlfriend or a hookup.
What he really needed was distance—to get away from the guilt, the praise, the pity, and the memories that hit like a sledgehammer when he wasn’t expecting them.
Besides, he’d already had a hookup. If you could call a weekend snowed in with Lily Hart a hookup. Which, technically, you could.
But he hadn’t exactly walked away from it feeling lighter. Yet another avenue he didn’t let his mind wander down, at least at the office.
But in the middle of the night, her breathy little moans haunted him.
Definitely not appropriate thoughts at work.
He dragged his mind back to the present. The girls didn’tknow yet, but he’d flown to Boston for the interview with the security firm he’d be contracting with. They’d offered him the job, and he’d accepted it. The words had come out easily enough, but ever since, he’d been talking himself into it like a man trying to believe he wanted what he didn’t
The girls didn’t need him around anymore. They were grown and living on their own, building lives that didn’t revolve around him. Still, the guilt gnawed at him. The idea of leaving town, leaving Pop in the nursing home, leaving the girls, sat heavy on his chest. He told himself they’d be fine. That he’d come back often to visit and that they didn’t need him like they used to. Rachel was a nurse, and she’d moved back home to help take care of Pop. Sarah had her own apartment, and she was a semester away from graduating. They were okay. They would be okay.
He didn’t want to abandon them.
But living and working in Northfield was starting to bleed into him in ways he couldn’t shake, even a year later. Every siren brought him back to the water. Every time he drove the long, winding road next to the canal. The ice. The little girl’s soaked hair tangled in his arms. The mother he couldn’t reach in time.
He was slowly unraveling.
Grant Clairmont had seen it in him when they met for a drink over the summer. Grant was Mayor Theo Clairmont’s older brother, a Boston detective, and one of the few men Rush still trusted from his days in the Marines. They’d been through fire together overseas, and it was Grant who’d quietly pulled strings to get Rush an interview at the private security firm in Boston.
If not for that, Rush might’ve talked himself out of leaving. But Grant had given him an out—a chance to disappear into a city where no one knew his name, where no one called him ahero, and no one looked at him with pity for not saving her mother.
Rachel snorted. “Sex releases endorphins. It also boosts your immune system and burns about one hundred calories per session.”
“I’m dropping Riggs at home and getting some dinner,” he muttered, grabbing his keys and shoving them into his pocket. He hadn’t had much of an appetite lately, but he wasn’t ready to go home to half-packed boxes and an empty fridge. “And we’re never talking about this again.”
“Oh, please,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes. “You’re even grumpier than Riggs, and you know it.”
“Bye,” he said pointedly.
“Fine. We love you,” Rachel said softly, her voice sobering. “You’re always worrying about everyone else. Maybe let someone worry about you for once?”
“I’ll tell Monica to call—” Sarah said just as he clicked End.
Rush locked his office, said good night to the two deputies who were just starting their shift, and stepped out into the icy evening.
