Page 56

"I know exactly who you are." Her arms tighten around Lainey, protective and immovable, a woman built entirely out of steel in this one single moment. Her eyes rake over me, head to boots, like she's cataloging every single thing about me she intends to hold against me for the rest of her life. She hisses, "You're him."

The word him lands like an accusation and a verdict already delivered. I don't have a defense ready for it. So I stand there dripping cold sweat with my heart still slamming from the run. Snow melts off my shoulders and onto a rug that probably cost more than my truck.

"I need to talk to Lainey," I manage.

"You don't get to talk to my daughter." She steps in front of Lainey, chin lifted, shoulders squared, every inch of her radiating a warning I'd be a fool to ignore. "You had eleven months to talk to my daughter. Instead, she cried herself to sleep more nights than I can count, wondering why a man would leave his fiancée on New Year's Eve and fool a stranger into sleeping with him!"

"I did look for her!" My voice cracks on it, raw and desperate. "I looked every single day. I didn't have her last name. I didn't have anything, and I have spent eleven months tearing this county apart trying to find a woman who vanished off the face of the earth⁠—"

"You forget about that beautiful yet clueless wife you have on this ranch?" Her voice climbs, sharp enough that it echoes off the vaulted ceiling.

"She's not my wife," I declare.

"Oh, save your lies for someone else!" she warns.

I catch Lainey's eyes. "Lainey⁠—"

Her mother continues, "My daughter had nothing. No help, no support, nobody but her father and me while she figured out how to build an entire life around a child on her own. So forgive me if I don't particularly care how hard you looked."

"Ma'am, please." I hold both hands up, palms out, the closest thing to surrender I know how to offer a woman who looks ready to take my head off with her bare hands. "I'm not here to fight you. I just need to understand what's happening. I'm not the enemy here."

"Aren't you?" Her laugh comes out short and humorless, no warmth in it at all. "From where I'm standing, you're the exact reason my daughter's been crying in her sleep for the better part of a year. You're the reason she almost didn't take this job. You're also the reason she's standing in this room right now, shaking like a leaf instead of doing that job in peace. So you'll forgive me if I don't rush to hand you the benefit of the doubt."

"Please. There's been a⁠—"

"Save it." The words come out sharp enough to cut. "I don't care what you spent looking, and I don't care what you need to understand. I care about my daughter, and right now, she can't stop shaking, and you standing in my doorway isn't helping either one of us."

Lainey lifts her head from her mother's shoulder. Her face is a wreck, streaked and swollen, her eyes wide with fear. She resembles a woman bracing for the exact moment her whole world caves in, both arms wrapped around her own middle now like she's trying to hold herself together by hand.

"Lainey." Her name comes out of me rough, pleading, every ounce of the swagger I usually hide behind gone completely. "What did you mean out there? Just tell me what you meant."

She doesn't answer. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again, and nothing comes out except a broken, wordless sound that guts me worse than any actual answer could. Her fisted hands tremble in the fabric of her jacket.

Watching her fight this hard just to breathe steady rearranges every plan I had for how this conversation was supposed to go. "Tell me," I press, taking a step farther into the room, ignoring the older woman's glare boring straight through my chest like she's deciding exactly where to aim if I take one more. "Please. I need you to tell me. I'm not leaving until somebody in this house tells me the truth."

"Get out of my house," her mother snaps, stepping fully between us now. One hand braces flat against my chest. Her palm slightly shakes even though her voice stays hard as flint.

I don't move, staring at Lainey.

Neither of them says a word.

The silence stretches long enough that I can hear my own pulse hammering in my ears, while the wind still howls outside.

Lainey's ragged breathing hitches over and over like she's fighting a losing battle against her own lungs.

I stand there frozen between two women who both clearly know exactly what I'm asking and clearly have no intention of answering it.

From somewhere down the hallway, a wail breaks out, unmistakably from a baby.

The sound hits me like a physical blow. A thin, furious wail rises fast. Every hair on my arms lifts at once. Chills race down my spine so hard, I have to lock my knees to stay upright. It's the most terrifying, most beautiful sound I've ever heard in my entire life.

Lainey's whole body flinches toward the sound, some deep, automatic instinct pulling her half a step in that direction before her mother's hand lands on her arm, holding her back.

Lainey's eyes go wider, fixed on me now instead of the hallway, fear written so plain across her face that it steals whatever breath I had left. "Jagger, don't." Her voice comes out cracked, barely a whisper. "Please."

I don't hear her. Not really. Not over the sound of my baby's cry building louder down the hall. Not over the roar of blood in my own ears, and not over eleven months of searching finally collapsing into a single, undeniable truth I have to see with my own eyes before I'll fully believe it.

I push past both of them, ignoring her mother's hand grabbing for my sleeve, and Lainey's broken, "Please," chasing me down the hallway. I follow that cry to a half-open door at the end of the hall, my whole body going numb except for the thundering in my chest.