Chapter 38
My boots hit the pavement before the truck is fully in park.
I break into a sprint. A shot rings out.
My chest seizes. I know that gun. I know who pulled that trigger.
I cut across the grass, heart hammering against my ribs as I round the edge of the playground.
Sable is standing ten feet from a bench, both hands gripping the gun just the way I taught her. Elbows locked, knees slightly bent. Not trembling. Steady. But her face is ghost-white, frozen in that moment after action, when your brain hasn’t caught up to what your body just did.
Ashley’s torso rests heavy on the bench, one leg folded beneath her, the other rooted in place—abandoned in a moment that came too fast to outrun. Her head lolls at an unnatural angle against the metal armrest. Blood blooms from her back in a quick, dark patch.
Dead.
Bash is coughing, choking back sobs as he scrambles away from her collapsed body. Purple marks darken around his throat. At the sound of her son’s pain, Sable drops the gun and gathers him against her, clutching him tight as if the world is still poised to take him away.
They fall together into the grass, a tangle of arms and hair and broken sounds.
She’s saying something—I can’t make it out yet—but I can feel it. Her whole body is shaking. Her fingers thread through Bash’s curls, palm firm against his back, rocking him in a rhythm meant to block everything else out.
I slow my approach, but only just. Eyes scanning the perimeter.
People saw. A jogger’s already on the phone. A woman with a stroller is pointing, talking fast to someone off-screen. Good. Let them talk. Let them tell the story. Because what happened here? It’s justified.
I reach them as Bash hiccups and sobs into her chest, and she looks up at me.
Her face—God, her face.
Not scared of consequences. Not yet. But wrecked. Shattered. Red-rimmed eyes locked in a stunned gaze, her parted lips trembling on the edge of a breath she can’t fully find.
“She had him,” she says, voice raw. “She had her hands on his throat.”
“I know, baby, ” I breathe, crouching beside them. “You did what you had to do.”
She nods, once, wanting to believe it. But her eyes keep darting back to the bench. To Ashley. To the red spilling down her blouse. To the silence where there should’ve been more screaming.
Sable’s not used to death.
I am.
She wanted to handle this the right way. Courts. Restraining orders. Logic. Paper trails. She dotted every i, crossed every t, begged the system to see the truth.
But the system doesn’t always get there in time.
She did. The moment forced her hand.
Even if it broke something inside her.
The sirens are close now. Maybe five minutes out. But there’s enough here. Witnesses. Bash’s bruised neck. Her legal weapon.
I watch her cradle her son, one hand still trembling, eyes far away. The gun lay in the grass where she dropped it. There was no panic, no concealment to question.
I know she’s thinking about the fact that she killed someone.
Maybe imagining how close she came to losing Bash.
And I can’t fix that for her.
But I can be here when it lands.
I kneel beside her and curl an arm around both of them, pulling them into me, letting Bash’s sobs soak through my shirt, letting Sable collapse against my chest.
“I didn’t want this,” she whispers.
“I know,” I murmur into her hair, holding her tighter. “You wanted this to end the right way. But it didn’t. It ended the way it had to.”
And God help anyone who tries to take her down for it.
The moment we cross the threshold of Sable’s house, it feels different. The air hangs heavier, charged with the energy of what she just lived through.
Sable moves in a haze, holding Bash to her chest, his arms wrapped tight around her neck. His face is tucked into her shoulder, tear-streaked and red, but he’s calm now. Tired. Worn out.
The paramedics checked him. He’s okay. Bruised, shaken, but physically okay. Recommended, in time, to speak to a professional to work through the event.
They said the marks on his neck would fade in a few days. But we’ll all remember those marks long after they are gone.
Andrew’s already pulling into the driveway and hopping out of his truck. I hold the front door for him. He gives me a slight nod and the second he steps inside his eyes go to Bash.
“Bash,” he breathes, voice cracking, and in three strides he’s there.
Sable lets him go, and Bash doesn’t hesitate, drawn forward to the man he knows. His dad.
Andrew sinks to the floor, clutching his son to his chest, his head bowed low, fingers splayed protectively over Bash’s back. His shoulders shake. No words. Just that raw, helpless grip of a father who realizes how close he came to losing his child.
I back off, giving them space.
I send JT and Will quick texts of what happened, but I don’t wait for a response. My eyes find Sable.
Frozen in the entryway, her hands hang limp at her sides, her body suddenly foreign in the absence of adrenaline.
She doesn’t look at me. She looks at Andrew and Bash curled up on the couch, whispering.
Her eyes drink them in with the quiet desperation of someone trying to remember what safety looks like. Someone trying to believe it's real.
I step to her. Wrap both arms around her without a word.
Sable folds into me immediately, her head pressing against my chest like her body’s just given up the fight. My hand finds the back of her head, fingers sliding into her hair, anchoring her there. I press a kiss to her temple.
“I’m not leaving you,” I murmur. “Not tonight. Not tomorrow. If I have to move into this house and post up twenty-four-seven to make sure nothing like this ever happens again, I will. I’m not going anywhere.”
She doesn’t respond.
Just breathes. Shallow. Fragile.
Then, finally, she speaks. “I don’t feel bad.”
I pause.
“I don’t feel anything,” she says, a little louder this time. “Not guilt. Not shame. Just… relief. And I don’t know what that says about me.”
Her voice breaks near the end of her words, but tears don’t fall. They just swell in her eyes, turning them glassy and wide.
I pull back enough to cradle her face in my hands.
“It says you’re a mother,” I tell her, my voice low, steady. “It says you protected your son. That you made a choice no one should ever have to make. But you made it. You survived it. You gave him a chance to grow up.”
She stares at me, eyes rimmed in red, torn between wanting to believe me and punish herself.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Sable,” I say. “You stopped someone from doing something evil.”
Her shoulders tremble.
And then she’s back in my chest again, arms around my waist, clinging like she might come undone if she lets go.
I hold her as long as she needs. We don’t move. We don’t speak.
Then, eventually, she whispers, “Can we go outside?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, baby. Come on.”
I guide her gently through the front door. The sky is soft with the beginning of twilight, the street quiet, calm. She sits down on the steps of the porch, barefoot and pale. A breeze lifts strands of hair off her face.
I sit beside her.
The porch light clicks on behind us, spilling gold over her skin.
She stares at the angelonias beside the railing. Soft purple and white petals color the edge of her house.
“They’re blooming,” she murmurs, more to herself than me.
“Yeah. They’re strong,” I say. “Took root fast. Didn’t need much.”
She nods slowly. Doesn’t look at me.
Just breathes.
And then, barely audible I hear:
“I love you.”
It’s not grand. It’s not tearful. It’s solid. Like a truth she’s known longer than she could admit. Like the words finally caught up to the feeling.
I glance over at her, but I don’t speak. I don’t need to. Wrapping my arm around her and pulling her into my lap, I kiss her temple again and repeat the words back to her.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I don’t look. It’s likely Will or JT trying to figure things out. The fight at Stauder’s warehouse starts in less than an hour.
Too fucking bad.
This is where I’m needed, and this is where I’ll stay.