Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 48039 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48039 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 240(@200wpm)___ 192(@250wpm)___ 160(@300wpm)
Every movement. Every smile. Every glance.
She looks across the table again, her eyes lingering a fraction longer than before.
Not an accident.
Not imagination.
A challenge.
My jaw tightens when Torres makes some joke that draws her into a bright grin.
Possessiveness flares hot and ugly in my chest.
I want to tell him to shut up.
I want to drag her outside and ask her why she left without me.
I want to tell her I wrote to her every month for a decade.
I want to tell her I rebuilt my family’s home on the ashes of the night I lost her.
I want to tell her that every time I look at her, I feel the same thing I did when I was sixteen and stupid and in love.
But I say none of those things.
Instead I grip my fork until the metal warps again.
Savannah sees.
Of course she sees.
She always saw right through me.
Her expression shifts, subtle but unmistakable—her eyes soften, like she’s trying to read my thoughts, decode the storm brewing behind my ribs.
Then she bites her lip.
Lightly.
Almost absently.
It shouldn’t be a big deal.
It shatters me.
Heat surges through me so fast my vision nearly blurs. I look away because if I don’t, I’ll forget every reason I have for keeping my distance.
Distance keeps her safe.
Distance keeps me sane.
Distance keeps the past where it belongs.
Except the past is sitting across the table, laughing with my crew, bright and alive and so goddamn beautiful I can barely breathe.
Torres elbows me. “Hey. You okay?”
No.
“Fine,” I grind out.
“Cause you’re looking at her like she’s dessert and you haven’t eaten in a week.”
I glare. “Eat your pasta, Torres.”
He shrugs. “Just saying. If you don’t make a move soon, someone else will.”
Savannah glances over right as he says it.
Color rises under her cheeks.
Our eyes meet again.
This time neither of us looks away.
The firehouse noise fades. The voices blur. The lights dim. Everything shrinks to the space between us—charged, magnetic, inevitable.
And I know.
She feels it.
The pull.
The history.
The hunger neither of us wants to name.
I drag my gaze away before I do something irreversible.
Before the guys notice.
Before she notices too much.
Before she sees the truth burning in me:
She’s mine.
Even if she never wants to be.
Even if she never was.
Even if we’re a decade too late.
Right now isn’t the moment.
She’s been through hell.
She deserves gentleness, joy, something light.
Not a man made of smoke and regret.
So I swallow every reckless impulse and pick up a new fork.
I focus on breathing.
On eating.
On pretending I’m not two seconds away from breaking every rule I’ve ever lived by to take back the girl I lost.
But then she smiles at me.
Not at Torres.
Not at the room.
At me.
And that one small smile?
It’s enough to tell me this slow, burning, torturous thing between us—
It’s not one-sided.
It never was.
And it sure as hell isn’t dying anytime soon.
Chapter Six
Savannah
Later that night the rental cabin creaks—old bones complaining, old wood flexing. I don’t mind it. The sound is honest. Mountain wind presses its cold face against my window, and the Phantom River chatters a low, steady secret behind the trees. I flip through incident notes at my tiny kitchen table, a mug cooling beside me, the lamp throwing a warm halo across the page.
My porch light flickers. Twice. Then steadies.
I glance up in time to catch headlights sliding along the snowbank at the end of my drive. A black truck glides past. Slow enough to count the bolts on my mailbox. Slow enough to know the driver isn’t in any hurry.
My heart gives an undisciplined thud.
I wait.
Ten minutes later, the truck passes again.
I don’t even pretend to read after that. The mug is halfway to my mouth when I set it down, grab my jacket, and step outside into breath-stinging air.
The sky is a deep cobalt, the kind that makes the snow glow. The porch boards are cold through my socks—stupid, I know—but I’m moving before sense can catch up. I hit the top step just as the truck slows for a third pass and pulls to the shoulder.
The driver’s door opens.
Axel climbs out like gravity was built for him and him alone. Big. Quiet. Shoulders filling out a navy jacket, collar raised against the wind. Snow decides to soften around him, apparently charmed, which is irritating. His breath shows in long, controlled streams. He sees me on the porch and goes very, very still.
“Evening,” I say, voice light in a way that’s not natural for me, not anymore. “Patrol’s late in this neighborhood.”
He looks like he’d prefer a two-alarm fire to this conversation. “Power lines,” he says. “After the storm.”
I lean on the porch post and deliberately glance up at the steady, non-flickering lines. “Mm. They look very… liney.”
He huffs, the closest thing to a laugh. “Sometimes they don’t look wrong until they’re wrong.”
“Is that a technical term, Captain?”
“I’m not a captain,” he mutters.
“To me you are.” I smile, and his jaw tightens like I tugged a string attached to his pulse.