They both go silent, shame coloring their faces red.
"Lucy," Colt starts again, gentler this time, "where do you want to stay? Who do you want to take care of you?"
Beau nods, though it clearly costs him everything. "Your choice, Sunshine. Whatever makes you feel safest."
They all stare at me expectantly. Colt with those wounded green eyes full of guilt and desperate hope. Beau with his careful control barely masking the concern eating him alive. And Gabriel, steady as granite, watching me with something I can't quite name but feels like understanding.
The choice should be impossible. These three men who've turned my carefully controlled life upside down, who make me want things I have no business wanting, who've shown me pieces of myself I thought were lost forever in the wreckage of the last two years.
I can't bear the thought of being the reason Colt and Beau start their Cold War all over again, not when they just started talking after two years of stubborn silence.
"Gabriel." His name falls from my lips before I can second-guess myself into paralysis. "I'll stay with Gabriel."
The silence that follows is loaded with enough unspoken emotion to power a small city. Colt's face falls before he catches himself, forcing a smile that doesn't come close to reaching his eyes.
Beau just nods once, jaw tight as a steel trap, accepting my choice with stoic grace.
"Okay." Gabriel's voice is carefully neutral, but surprise flickers behind those blue eyes. "I'll handle the arrangements."
"We should let you rest." Beau touches my hand briefly, the contact electric even through the pain medication fog. "But Lucy? This conversation about you living in a van? We're having it when you're better."
"All of us," Colt adds, pressing a kiss to my forehead that makes my heart stutter and skip. It feels more like a promise than a goodbye. "You don't have to do any of this alone anymore."
They file out like a parade of wounded soldiers, leaving me alone with Gabriel. He stays by the door, watching me with those intense eyes that see too much.
"Why me?" he asks quietly.
"Because you already knew my secret and didn't immediately try to rescue me."
The admission costs me, but the pain meds make me honest in ways I can't afford to be.
"Because right now I need someone who sees me as I am and doesn't start planning how to fix me."
He nods once, accepting this without argument. "I'll get the discharge paperwork started. My place is quiet, private. You'll have your own room, your own space. No pressure, no expectations. Just somewhere safe to heal."
"Gabriel?" I call as he turns to leave. "Thank you. For finding me. For not giving up."
"We all found you," he corrects, and something in his voice makes my chest go tight in ways that have nothing to do with bruised ribs.
The door closes behind him, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the steady beep of monitors counting out my heartbeat.
I close my eyes and let exhaustion drag me under like a riptide, dreaming of strong hands pulling me from cold water, of three voices calling my name through the darkness, of being found when I was certain I'd be lost forever.
I'm in deep trouble with these three men.
And for the first time in my life, I'm not sure I want to find a way out.
17
Gabriel
Lucy sits curled in the passenger seat of my patrol truck, looking smaller than she has any right to be. More fragile than the woman who walked into Colt's clinic with a dying dog and turned our lives upside down.
The drive from the hospital stretches out in loaded silence. Every pothole makes her wince, though she tries to hide it behind that stubborn brave face she wears like armor. I've been reading people long enough to recognize pain in the set of shoulders, the careful way someone breathes when their ribs are screaming.
The need to fix this, to take her pain away, claws at me like something feral. But I can't. Can only drive carefully and hope the road doesn't jar her too badly.
The memory hits sharp again. That moment when I saw the destroyed van, something primitive took over. Not sheriff training, not professional distance. Pure, animal fear that we were too late.
