“I’ll draft something and send it to you in the next hour.” Tessa paused. “Rowan—whatever is happening, you need to deal with it soon. I can hold things together for a little while longer, but this story is moving, and it’s not moving in your direction.”
“I know it isn’t,” Rowan said.
She ended the call and remained on the edge of the bed.
Vince had given an interview.
He hopes she’s getting the support she needs.
Anger burned through her at the thought.
She thought about Thayer Holt’s family reading those words. If she didn’t speak up, Vince would get away with this. Could she really live with herself if she let that happen?
She didn’t have to think about that for long.
No, she couldn’t.
CHAPTER 33
Rowan stepped backinto the kitchen and froze when she saw Wes.
He sat at the table with Grace asleep against his chest, one large hand spread across the baby’s back, his expression as steady as it always was.
The image stopped her. This man who’d faced gunmen and criminals . . . he now sat at her family’s kitchen table with a sleeping baby on his chest.
Her heart jerked into her throat, and she could barely breathe.
The image made her fast-forward in time. Made her wonder what her life would have been like if she’d settled down. Started a family. Started a family withWes.
One thing was for sure. She wouldn’t be inthismess right now.
Again, the weight of her choices pressed on her.
She looked away from Wes before the sight of him with Grace could do anything more to her.
Instead, she looked at her mother.
“Everything okay?” Her mom’s gaze appeared patient.
Rowan met her mother’s eyes. “It is.”
Her mom held her gaze for one long moment—long enough to say she’d heard both the answer and what was underneath it—and then she nodded, lifted her mug, and let it go.
For now.
An hour later, Wes found Caleb near the kennel.
The late-afternoon light had started turning gold across the back pasture, and long shadows stretched toward the fence line.
Caleb stood beside the kennel with his arms folded, watching Hamilton nose around in the grass.
“You look like someone ran over your dog,” Caleb said as Wes approached.
“Not mine.” Wes stopped beside him. “Yours.”
Caleb’s expression sharpened.
Wes showed him a picture of the surveillance photograph that had been left in his room. The one of Rowan in the woods looking at the site of the fire. Sheriff Sutherland had taken the hard copy, but Wes had wanted a copy for himself.
