Silence pressed in between them.
“Lock up. If anything else happens,” Luke said finally, the cop in him slipping through despite everything, “call it in.”
“I know,” she said.
She closed the door.
Luke stood there for a second longer than he should have, hands curled uselessly at his sides. The house was quiet again, sealed off from him completely.
He turned and walked back down the steps.
She hadn’t wanted him tonight.
And more than that?—
She hadn’t needed him either.
He satin the driver’s seat. Grace’s porch light was on, casting a pale square onto the steps he’d just climbed like he had a right to be there.
Luke dragged a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. He’d spent years training himself to read threats.
But this was different. This wasn’t a case file.
This was Grace,hisGrace, standing on her own porch with a man inside her house and another one scaring her, and Luke hearing about it secondhand. Like it was gossip instead of vital information.
He should have been there.
Not only tonight—before. When the window was broken. When the sedan showed up.
And not only hadn’t he been there, he wasn’t even the one she called.
Luke’s jaw tightened.
He’d drawn the lines. He’d made the rules. He’d been very clear about when he showed up and when he didn’t. Late nights. Quiet entrances. No witnesses. No complications.
Luke stared through the windshield at her home. The street was quiet now. Maple Street looked the way it always did: tidy, harmless, like the kind of place where nothing bad ever really happened.
That was a lie.
Someone had waited until she was alone. Had stood on her porch and scared her.
He’d touched her.
The detail slid through his mind like a blade. The man had touched her hair—an intimate gesture, a violation.
Luke’s hands curled into fists.
This wasn’t someone clumsy or drunk or stupid. They’d been deliberate. Confident. Testing boundaries.
His gaze flicked to the dark windows, to the faint glow leaking through the curtains. Someone moved inside—just a shadow passing a hallway light.
Jealousy stirred, sharp and unwelcome.
He pushed it down hard.
This wasn’t about that.
This was about the fact that there was a threat near her, and Luke was sitting in his car like a stranger instead of doing something about it.
