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He just wanted me—loud, stubborn, messy, scarred.

Me, with all my cracks and missing pieces.

Me, exactly as I am.

The fucking dream.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

PAIN IN MY FUCKING ASS

HENRY

I like to think I’m a man who doesn’t shock easily. Life’s handed me enough beatings to last ten lifetimes, and being sheriff of a town like Thunder Ridge? It means you see behind the masks. You learn quickly who people really are when the chips are down, and let me tell you—there are some sorry motherfuckers hiding in plain sight. Wolves in church clothes. Monsters behind apple pie smiles.

But nothing—and I mean nothing—knocked the wind out of me like the woman sitting to my right.

Louisiana Wright.

The great love of my life.

The biggest pain in my fucking ass, and, apparently, the most heartbreakingly stubborn woman God ever put breath into.

She sat there, cradling that baby with a fierce, bone-deep tenderness only she could possess—like she’d poured every ounce of love she had into the curve of her arms. Then she looked up at me, eyes shining with unshed tears, those honeyed depths wide and wrecked, and whispered, “I can’t give you this,” and the whole world just…stopped.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t fucking think.

She said it like a confession. Like a curse. Like she expected me to nod and walk away because the future she imagined I wanted was suddenly off the table.

But all I could do was stare at her.

Because that? That was it? That’s what she’d been holding back all these years? That was the God damn reason she’d kept me at a distance, built walls between us, filled every space with fire and fury just to make me stay away?

Because she couldn’t have kids?

My heart cracked wide open. Not because I gave a damn about babies, but because she thought that made her less.

She thought that made her unworthy of love.

Of me.

And God damn if that didn’t gut me.

I wanted to take her face in my hands and scream that I didn’t fucking care. That I never did. That all I’ve ever wanted, since I was too damn young to know what love even meant, was her. Messy. Unruly. Stubborn. Loyal. Brave. Broken in all the ways that made her beautiful.

But there was another part of me—burning white-hot with fury. Not at her. Never at her. At the grief she carried alone. At the lies she told herself. At the way she looked at me like I’d want something else. Someone else. Like she thought I could live in a world where she didn’t belong front and center.

She was ready to give me up. Not because she didn’t love me—but because she loved me too much to let me settle for a life she didn’t think she could give.

Boy, did that fucking break me.

All these years spent playing by her rules, trying like hell to worm my way back to us, but tonight it all clicked into place. How she apologized to me when Dallas told her she looked like a real mom, and the silence that wrapped around her when babies came up—how Sophie would look at her, sad and soft, like she was holding a truth that wasn’t hers to name.

She’s been bleeding for years and I didn’t see it. I didn’t fucking see it. I thought she was mad. Defensive. Guarded. I thought she just didn’t want me. But she wasn’t angry—she was mourning. Grieving what she thought she’d never have. Grieving what she believed made her less.

Jesus Christ, I missed it. I missed her, but not anymore.

Because now I see her—really fucking see her. And I know without a shred of doubt there’s no version of this life, no dream, no future I want if she’s not standing in the center of it. She thought she had to give me everything. That love meant giving me children. A legacy. A family she thought she couldn’t build.