Chapter 35
I’m stuck in the car line, engine vibrating beneath me with the same restless energy crawling under my skin.
Inching forward, I pretend I’m not clenching the wheel hard enough to leave marks.
I try not to check the clock again and spiral into what-ifs.
But my stomach’s already tying itself into knots, and no amount of deep breathing is undoing them.
Today’s the hearing to make the restraining order against Ashley permanent. If it goes through, it won’t just protect me, it’ll protect Bash, and Andrew, too. It’ll put something legal and solid between us and the woman who turned my life into a nightmare.
I should feel empowered. I should feel ready.
Instead, I just feel... exposed.
Lately, the only peace I’ve found is in the quiet hours with Hex.
When Bash is asleep. When the shop is closed and the bar’s lights have gone dark.
Sometimes he shows up late—so late it’s almost morning—slips under my covers with that big, warm body of his, holding onto me.
A need so quiet it barely breathes. He never stays long.
He’s always gone before Bash opens his eyes.
But for those few hours, I forget everything else.
We’ve hooked up a few times during that stretch.
God, the way he touches me… it feels… almost sacred, like he memorized me in another life.
His hands move with certainty, always finding what I need before I ever have to ask.
I can still feel the drag of his mouth against my neck, the way he whispers my name.
There’s something unspoken in the way he moves with me, as if he’s trying to etch the moment into memory before it slips through his fingers.
As if part of him is already halfway out the door.
That’s what’s been bothering me.
The way he’s been quieter lately. Not distant, not with me—if anything, he’s more attentive, more intense—but there’s a weight behind his stare that didn’t exist before. Something unsaid. Last night, his arms wrapped around me, but his head lived somewhere else entirely. I could feel it.
Something bigger than what he is telling me happened in that conversation with Stauder.
He didn’t speak much about it—just said it’s nothing I need to worry about—but I’m learning that tone.
That careful brush-off. Hex hasn’t lied yet, not really.
But he shields. He protects. Even when it means carrying too much on his own.
And I let him.
There was blood on his knuckles when he returned after speaking to him. I watched him from across the shop, that unreadable stillness he wears like armor. He didn’t say who’s blood. I didn’t ask.
That’s the problem, isn’t it?
I haven’t asked.
I don’t know what that makes me… apathetic? Complicit? Stupid?
Or maybe… maybe I know exactly what it makes me.
Someone who’s tired of being good. Someone who’s learning that good doesn’t always keep you safe.
But what if he goes too far one day? What if I wake up and realize I let my son get close to a man who doesn’t draw the same lines I do?
Or worse… what if I’m already too far gone to care?
He says he protects people. That he only hurts the ones who deserve it. But that’s a line you draw in sand, not stone.
What scares me isn’t that he’s dark.
It’s when he looks at me with those eyes like I’m the only thing anchoring him to something decent…
And all I can think about is how badly I want Hex beside me today. Not just in spirit, but standing next to me, hand in mine. Even if he won’t be. Even if whatever’s weighing on him keeps him away.
A car horn startles me. I blink and realize I’ve let the gap grow too wide between me and the car in front. I idle forward and spot Bash’s teacher at the curb with the line of kids starting to emerge. My heart gives a little jump.
But she doesn’t wave for Bash to come forward.
Instead, she steps up to my window, her expression polite but puzzled.
I roll it down. “Hey, everything okay?”
“Oh, yes,” she says with a small smile. “I’m just surprised to see you, Ms. Hawthorne. Sebastian has already been picked up.”
I blink. “What?”
“One of his approved pickups came through the line. Demi Kincaid? She had her ID, and we checked the list. You wrote her down as authorized.”
My blood runs cold.
“Demi?” I repeat, more to myself than to her. “She picked him up?”
The teacher nods, trying to assure me this is all routine with an all too big smile. “Yes, a few minutes ago. ID matched, everything looked great.”
That doesn’t make sense. Demi’s never picked Bash up.
She’s only on the emergency pick up list in case I’m with a client or Andrew can’t get away from the dealership.
She wouldn’t even know how the car line works without calling me first in a panic, asking where to go, what lane to be in, how to not piss off the line monitors.
Something’s wrong.
My fingers fumble with my phone. I scroll fast, my hands shaking now, until I land on a photo of Demi from her birthday last year. She’s mid-laugh, one eye half-closed, holding a mimosa. Not flattering, but unmistakably her.
I flip the phone toward the teacher. “Is this who picked him up?”
She leans in. Then her face shifts.
“No,” she says slowly. “That’s not her. The woman who picked him up was blonde. But her ID said Demi Kincaid.” She doubles down, acting as if she didn’t just make a colossal fucking mistake.
The words don’t compute.
All I hear is… blonde.
My lungs constrict for a second as if they forgot how to function.
My heart is hammering so loud I can barely hear her when she says, “Do you want me to call the school resource officer?”
“No,” I say too quickly. My voice is tight, too bright. “It’s probably just a misunderstanding. Demi must’ve dyed her hair or something. I’m sure it’s fine.”
I give her the best fake smile I can muster and roll the window up before she can ask another question.
My fingers are already moving, but I don’t call Demi.
I call Hex.
It barely rings once before he answers. “Hey—”
“She took him,” I say, but the voice that comes out feels borrowed “Ashley. She took Bash.”
Saying her name makes my throat close up.
“What?” Hex’s voice shifts immediately. No more softness. Just steel. “Where are you?”
“At the school. Car line. His teacher said Demi picked him up. But it wasn’t her. She had an ID with her name, blonde hair—but it wasn’t Demi. Hex, it was Ashley. I know it.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “I’m on my way. Send me your location. I’m getting JT on her now. We’ll find them.”
“I should’ve come earlier. I could’ve prevented this—”
“Stop. None of that,” he snaps, low and firm. “She’s the one who did this. Not you.”
My breath stutters out of me. I’m already picturing the worst. Bash in some strange car. Ashley’s voice in his ear. Her hands on him. My stomach twists so hard I nearly gag from the nausea.
“I should’ve known she’d try something today,” I whisper. “I felt it.”
“And now we know,” Hex says. “And I swear to you, we’ll get him back.”
I nod, even though he can’t see it. My fingers fly to share my location, heart in my throat. The sound of Hex’s truck roaring in the background is the only thing keeping me from falling apart.
“JT’s already moving,” he tells me. “We’ll get her location as well. Just sit tight. I’ve got you.”
But I’m not sure I can sit still. Not with every part of me screaming to run. To fight. To tear the world apart until my son is back in my arms.
Because Ashley didn’t just take him.
She declared war.
“I’ve got her location,” Hex says, still on the line. “She’s at the park off Meadow Ridge. Two blocks from you. I’m ten minutes out.”
My heart lurches.
The park.
That’s where Bash always wants to go after school when the weather’s good. There’s a little trail he likes to run, a jungle gym he’s too big for but still climbs anyway. Our spot.
“Do you have the gun?” Hex asks, his voice clipped now. Controlled. “The one I gave you?”
I pop the glove compartment open with trembling fingers.
The case is there, black and smooth, tucked between a wad of tissues and an expired insurance card.
I snap it open. My name’s on the registration card tucked inside.
Hex made damn sure everything checked out as legal, registered, proper. Safe.
He never gave me that thing lightly.
I wrap my hand around the grip, the cool weight of it anchoring me.
“Yeah,” I say, voice flat. “I’ve got it.”
“Don’t do anything,” he says quickly. “Wait for me.”
“I can’t wait,” I bite out. “She has my son, Hex.”
Silence on the other end. But it’s not because he disagrees. It’s because he knows.
He taught me what to do when the decision’s already made. When waiting isn’t an option.
I hear him exhale. “Call the cops. Tell them what happened. Keep your phone on you. Sable—don’t hesitate.”
I nod. “I won’t.”
And I hang up.
I dial 911 with one hand, the other snapping the case shut and stuffing it into the glove box. I slip the weapon into my purse and secure it the way he drilled into me: barrel down, safety on, no room for error.
When the dispatcher answers, my voice is surprisingly steady. “My name is Sable Hawthorne. My son Sebastian was just abducted by a woman named Ashley Vaughn. She used a fake ID to pick him up from school. We have her location. She’s at the Meadow Ridge Park. I’m on my way there now.”
I rattle off the make and model of my car, my plates, the color hoodie Bash wore when I dropped him off at school this morning. I know what to say.
As soon as I end the call, something shifts inside me. The panic that was clawing at my throat settles into something colder. More focused. I pull out of the school lot and head toward the park. My pulse is a war drum, pounding out every second I’ve lost, every second she’s had him.
I run through everything Hex ever taught me. Every scenario, every control point, every hard-earned lesson he drilled into me at the gun range. How to stay alert. When to speak. When to stay quiet. When to stop waiting for someone else to save you.
This is one of those moments. A situation where the decision is obvious.
But beneath the focus, under the steady breath and the clinical movements, something older and darker pulses through me.
Not panic. Not fear.
Rage.
Cold, righteous rage.
The kind I’ve buried for years under calm smiles and crisis plans. Under the belief that if I just fixed everything fast enough, maybe the world wouldn’t fall apart.
But I’m not fixing anything today.
I’m choosing.
Choosing to be the kind of woman who doesn’t wait for permission to protect what’s hers.
I used to think I had to be good.
But I’m not scared of the dark anymore.
I’m in love with someone who lives in it.
And right now, I don’t want the light.
For once, I’m not scrambling to find the line between right and wrong. I’m standing in the middle of it. Gun in my purse. Steel in my spine.
I don’t care how this ends. I only care that it does.
I want my fucking son back.