“It got late,” he says. “Then it got… wrong. Mack went looking for him. Came back with that look on his face. The one that tells you something changed forever.”
My throat tightens. “What happened?”
Crewe’s fingers curl around his fork like he needs something solid in his hands. “There was an accident,” he says quietly. “That’s what they told us. Down by the river. His truck off the road. But…”
He shakes his head once, sharp. “They never found his body.”
A chill runs through me that has nothing to do with the snow outside.
“They never found him,” I whisper.
Crewe’s eyes flick up, and there’s something raw there. Something young. Something wounded.
“Nash didn’t accept it,” he says. “He enlisted not long after. Said he needed to be somewhere that made sense. Somewhere he could do something.” He exhales, slow. “Then one by one, we all followed. Like we couldn’t breathe in that town anymore. Like the only way to live with the hole was to become something harder.”
My chest aches.
I reach across the table without thinking and lay my hand over his.
His skin is warm. Solid.
He stills, but he doesn’t pull away.
I hold his gaze. “I’m sorry.”
He blinks, once. “Don’t be.”
“I am anyway,” I whisper.
For a moment, it’s just us—the firelight, the safe house, his hand under mine.
And suddenly I understand something about Crewe Hawthorne that has nothing to do with missions or muscle or danger.
He’s not just a protector because he’s trained to be.
He’s a protector because he learned, young, what it feels like to lose someone and never get them back.
I swallow hard. “So Nash called because… he thinks your dad might not be dead.”
Crewe’s jaw tightens. His eyes go distant. “Yeah,” he says. “Maddox Security thinks he’s alive. In trouble.”
“And you believe it?”
He’s silent long enough that my heart stutters.
Then he says, quietly, “I don’t know what I believe. But Nash doesn’t chase ghosts unless there’s something to hold.”
I squeeze his hand gently. “That’s… a lot.”
“It is.”
I take a breath. “Thank you for telling me.”
Crewe’s eyes lift to mine, and for a second the intensity of him settles fully on me—like I’m the only thing in the room.
“Riley,” he says, voice low.
“Yeah?”
