Ransom tried to get up, but the movement failed him. I reached out, and he let me help, which told me more about his headspace than any words would’ve. I hauled him to standing, and for a second we just stood shoulder to shoulder, facing the ruined wall.
He broke first. “I should’ve known it was coming. I always do. Can’t let anything nice stay around me for long.”
I bristled at that. “He attacked you because of me, too. Because of this,” I said, gesturing at the space between us. “Maybe he wanted to send a message.”
Ransom’s lip curled. “Yeah, message received. Go back to the closet or we’ll burn you out.”
“Not going to happen,” I said. My voice cracked, and I felt the heat rising in my face, but I didn’t care if he saw. “Not in my fucking county.”
He tried to laugh, but it was broken glass. “I’d like to see you enforce that.”
I put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed hard enough that it bordered on painful. “I will,” I said. “I’ll find him. And when I do, I’ll make sure he never touches anything of yours again.”
He looked at me, the sarcasm gone. For a second, the mask dropped and I saw the real damage—the fear, the self-loathing, the part of him that still believed he deserved this. I wanted to say a thousand things: that he was wrong, that I’d protect him, that nobody was going to chase us out of this place ever again. But I’d never been good at words, not when it counted.
So I just stood with him, while he took one last look at the ruins of his life.
He said, quiet, “I don’t want to start over. I just want to go home.”
The word stuck in my chest. I wanted to promise him a home, but all I could offer was the shell of one.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, and this time, when I put my arm around him, he leaned in.
As we walked out, I looked back once at the wall. The color wasn’t right, and the scars were still there, but I knew how this kind of thing worked. You could cover the wounds all you wanted. It never really hid what happened underneath.
I made a promise, there in the blue glow of a ruined shop, that whoever did this was going to pay. Not because I was the sheriff. Not because I owed the town. But because I belonged to the man next to me, and I protected what was mine.
With everything I had left.
* * * *
The house had never felt this full. I don’t mean full of people—hell, it was just us—but full of something denser. Denser than grief. Denser than pain. It was like the air itself didn’t know what to do with two men stubborn enough to let the world burn down around them and still crawl home together.
The first thing I did was get him inside, past the half-finished porch and the pile of packages my ex-wife had left on the stoop. Ransom made a noise about the state of the entryway, but I shushed him and dragged him straight through to the kitchen.
“You hungry?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
He stared at the floor, brow creased. “Not really.”
“Bullshit,” I said, already rooting through the fridge. “You haven’t eaten since the hospital.”
He didn’t argue. Just stood in the archway, arms folded so tight he looked like he might splinter. His eyes were fixed on the far corner, where the dog bed sat empty, the old beagle having gone to my sister’s after the first night Ransom stayed over. I’dmeant to get another dog, but now the idea seemed too risky. Like I might curse it.
I managed to microwave leftovers without further incident—meatloaf, mashed potatoes, the kind of food that sticks in your gut and tells you to keep going. I watched him eat. The first few bites, he just chewed, slow, mechanical. But after a while he started to speed up, jaw moving with a little more purpose. The flush of his cheeks came back, the scar on his left eyebrow standing out against the pink.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Don’t get used to this, Sheriff. Once my shop’s back up, you’re not getting any more free meals.”
I snorted, the motion nearly doubling me over. The ribs were a constant low burn, but I was good at compartmentalizing. “If I wanted to date a chef, I’d have gone for Rosie.”
“Rosie’s taken,” he said, and that was true enough.
He finished eating, then washed the plate and set it to dry, which is when I knew he was stalling.
I said, “You can shower first, if you want.”
He hesitated, then nodded. I listened as he climbed the stairs. The man moved like a predator, all economy and intent, but now there was a drag to his steps, a drag that made me want to go up after him, hold him at the top of the landing and tell him it was all going to be okay.
Instead, I went to the living room and turned on the fire, the old gas unit whooshing to life and painting the walls with a flicker of orange. I sat on the edge of the couch, breathing careful, waiting for the sound of the water to stop. I expected it to be quick—he wasn’t a man who lingered over creature comforts—but the minutes stretched. Ten, fifteen, almost twenty.
