Beau parks in Gabriel's driveway but doesn't immediately move to get out. We sit in the gathering dusk, the truck's engine ticking as it cools, neither of us ready to break the spell of the day we've woven together.
"I should go," he says finally, but he doesn't move toward his door handle.
"You should," I whisper, but I don't reach for mine either.
"Lucy." My name in his voice is different than it sounds when Colt says it, different from Gabriel's careful pronunciation. From Beau, it sounds like something precious, something he's been saving up to say just right.
I turn to face him completely, my breath catching at the intensity burning in his gray eyes.
"Today..." He stops, runs a hand through his dark hair, messing up the careful style. "Today was perfect."
The simple honesty in his voice undoes me completely. Before I can think better of it, I'm leaning across the console, my hand finding the warm line of his jaw, and then somehow we're kissing.
This kiss is different from Colt's gentle exploration, different from Gabriel's claiming possession.
Beau kisses me like a man who's been holding his breath for years and I'm his first taste of air. His hands frame my face with a reverence that makes my chest tight, and when his tongue sweeps across my lower lip, I open for him with a soft sound that makes him groan low in his throat.
The kiss deepens, becomes desperate, and I find myself twisted awkwardly in my seat, trying to get closer to him despite the truck's interior. One of his hands slides into my hair while the other grips my hip like he's afraid I might disappear, and I can feel the barely leashed control in his touch, the way he's holding himself back from taking more.
When we finally break apart, we're both breathing hard. Beau's eyes are dark, almost black in the dim light, and there's something wild in his expression that makes my pulse race like a thoroughbred.
"I have to go," he says, his voice rough and low. "But this isn't over, Lucy. Not by a long shot."
The promise in his words sends heat racing through me like wildfire, and I nod because I don't trust my voice not to beg him to stay.
He climbs out of the truck and comes around to help me down, his hands lingering at my waist longer than necessary, thumb brushing against my hip bone through my sweater. At Gabriel's front door, he pauses, looking down at me with those intense gray eyes that see too much.
"Be careful tonight," I whisper, reaching up to touch his face one more time, memorizing the feel of stubble against my palm.
"I won't take unnecessary risks," he says, but there's something soft in his expression as he covers my hand with his. "I've got too much to come back to now."
Then he's gone, leaving me standing on Gabriel's porch with my lips still tingling and my heart racing like I've just run a marathon uphill.
Inside, the house feels too quiet, too empty. I sink onto the couch with Tyson, my fingers unconsciously tracing my mouth as I replay the day, the kiss, the way Beau looked at me like I was something worth treasuring instead of something temporary.
Three men. Three completely different ways of making me feel alive, desired, protected. Three different kinds of danger to the careful walls I've built around my heart over the past two years.
In a few hours, they'll be putting themselves at risk to catch the people who hurt me.
And I'm still lying to them. Still hiding the truth about who I am, what I'm running from, why I can't stay even though every day makes leaving feel more impossible.
The guilt sits heavy in my stomach as I listen to the grandfather clock tick in the hallway and wait for them to come home safe. Because that's what this place has become, what they've become. Home.
And I'm terrified I'm going to lose it all.
21
Gabriel
The patrol car's headlights cut through the darkness as I navigate the winding mountain roads toward home, rain beginning to spatter against the windshield in fat, irregular drops that blur the world into watercolor smears.
My jaw aches where Jake Cutter's fist connected before we got the cuffs on him, and my ribs protest every time I shift in the driver's seat. Small price to pay for getting one of those bastards off the streets permanently.
The plan worked. Mostly.
Cindy took the bait exactly as predicted, slipping out of the Dusty Spur twenty minutes after Colt and Beau's very public argument about needing ketamine for emergency surgery. My deputies and I followed her up a godforsaken mountain road to a camouflaged shack hidden behind mesh netting and strategically placed branches.
Jake was there, passed out drunk on a filthy mattress surrounded by enough drug paraphernalia to put him away for the next decade.
