What if it was all temporary for her?
The thought slid under my ribs and stayed there, cold and familiar. What if, once the year was up—once the paperwork no longer required me—she walked away? What if this wasn’t love to her, just survival? A solution she’d outgrow the moment she didn’t need it anymore?
Claire’s voice surfaced, sharp and final.It’s not the life I want.
What if Riley decided the same? What if she woke up one morning, looked at the fences and the horses and the early alarms and the quiet weight of this place, and realized it wasn’t what she’d chosen? What if she took Mia and left, and I was here again—alone in a house that echoed, surrounded by memories of something I almost had?
What if I wasn’t enough?
Again.
Owen’s voice cut through it all.So tell her.
Like it was easy. Like laying your heart out didn’t mean handing someone the knife. Like rejection wasn’t worse than the slow bleed of wondering what might’ve been.
But lying there in the dark, listening to the old house settle and breathe around me, I couldn’t pretend anymore.
I was already in too deep.
I loved her. I loved Mia. I loved the life we were building—even knowing it was supposed to end, even knowing she might leave when it was safe to do so, even knowing I might be setting myself up for the same kind of loss I’d barely survived before.
The question wasn’t whether I’d survive losing them.
The question was whether I had the courage to fight for them. To say the words out loud. To risk everything on the chance that she might feel it too.
Or whether I’d do what I’d always done—wait, quiet and hopeful, for someone else to choose me first
CHAPTER 12
Liam
Some callsyou shake off by the next shift. Some follow you home and sit in the passenger seat while you drive, quiet and heavy, refusing to leave. This one climbed into my chest and stayed.
The tones dropped at 2:47 AM, that particular shriek that yanks you out of sleep and into your boots before your brain catches up. Multi-vehicle accident on Highway 7. Multiple injuries. Possible fatalities. The words blurred together as I pulled on my gear, muscle memory taking over, thoughts still foggy with whatever dream I’d been having.
Something about Riley lingered. Her laugh—unexpected, unguarded. The way she’d looked at me over dinner, like she was seeing more than the joke, like she was weighing something she hadn’t decided to name yet.
But during the call, there was no room for that.
The thought burned off under the bite of diesel in the air, the familiar weight of my helmet settling into place. Muscle memory took over. Gloves on. Straps tight. Cal’s voice cut clean through the noise, sharp and grounding, and I moved without thinking,climbing into the engine as the world narrowed to heat and speed and orders.
For a while, that was all there was.
“MVA with entrapment. Semi versus minivan. State patrol’s on scene, requesting extrication.”
Semi versus minivan. The words landed wrong, sat heavy in my chest. I’d worked enough accidents to know what that meant. The physics of it. A forty-ton truck against three thousand pounds of steel and glass and the soft bodies inside.
Nobody spoke on the drive. The engine’s rumble filled the silence, punctuated by the occasional crackle of the radio. I watched the mile markers flash past in the darkness and tried not to do the math. Tried not to think about the time of night, the stretch of highway, the kind of family that would be driving a minivan at 2:47 in the morning. Road trip, maybe. Trying to get somewhere before the kids woke up. Let them sleep through the boring part.
My hands wouldn’t stay still. I pressed them flat against my thighs, feeling the rough fabric of my turnout pants, grounding myself in something solid. Breathe in. Breathe out. Compartmentalize. That’s what they taught us. Put everything in a box, deal with it later, do the job now.
The box wasn’t holding.
We were first on scene. The reality was worse than dispatch suggested. It always was.
The semi had jackknifed across both lanes, its trailer twisted at an angle that shouldn’t have been possible. Flares dotted the asphalt like fallen stars, their red glow casting everything in a color I’d never be able to look at the same way. State patrol had blocked off the road, but there was nowhere for the other cars to go anyway. The wreckage filled the world.
And the minivan. God, the minivan.
