Chapter 3
LUCY
I wake to the smell of coffee and bacon. For a moment, I don’t know where I am. Then the trees outside the window trigger a rush of memories: the death threat, the surprise of learning the man who broke my heart is the man assigned to protect me this week.
Every damn day.
I never stopped missing you.
My chest tightens as I remember his words and the care and patience in his voice when the lights went out. The way he held me through my panic attack, calm and steady like he used to be. Like no time had passed at all.
But time did pass. Eight years of it.
I pull on jeans and an oversized sweater, running my fingers through my messy hair. When I go downstairs, I find Damien at the stove, already dressed in a thermal shirt and jeans, stirring eggs in a cast iron pan.
“You’re cooking. Again.” I yawn, searching for the coffee.
He doesn’t turn around, but I catch his smile in the window reflection. “Figured you’d be hungry. Coffee’s ready.” He gestures to a steaming pot of coffee and reaches to grab a mug from the cabinet.
This feels surreal. Everything between us has shifted, but I’m still trying to wrap my mind around seeing him again. I pour coffee into a mug, hyperaware of his presence, unable to stop looking at the breadth of his shoulders. Despite everything, this feels normal.
“Sleep okay?” he asks, serving up breakfast on a couple of white plates.
“Eventually.” I settle at the small table, wrapping my hands around the warm mug. “You?”
“I don’t sleep much anymore.”
The casual way he says it makes my chest ache. There’s so much I don’t know about him now.
We eat in a silence that’s only slightly awkward; the only sounds our forks against our plates and coffee being sipped. Outside, the storm has passed, and it’s almost peaceful, but I can’t forget why we’re here.
“So what’s the plan today?” I ask, rejoining him at the table with fresh coffee after I finish washing the dishes.
He stands, collecting the satellite phone from the counter. “I have to check in with Ghost Security.”
“Right. The asset management protocols.” The words taste bitter. “I heard Jake say that.”
Damien pauses, something shifting in his expression. “You’re not an asset, Lucy.”
“What am I, then?”
He turns to face me fully, and I see vulnerability flash across his features before he speaks. “You’re the woman I never stopped loving.”
My breath catches, my coffee mug frozen halfway to my lips.
“Damien. That’s not fair.” I put down my mug so hard that coffee sloshes onto the table.
“I know.” He sets the phone down carefully. “I know I don’t have the right to say that. Not after what I did. But you asked what you are to me, and that’s the truth.”
Damien’s statement makes me pause, though my heart is still pounding against my ribs.
Part of me wants to throw my arms around him, to fall back into the bliss of loving him.
But I also remember the devastation when he left me.
How I only warranted a disjointed email when he ended things.
Just seeing Damien is opening up emotions I thought I had healed years ago.
“We can’t just pick up where we left off,” I manage. I want to, more than anything, but life and love aren’t that easy. I also want to jump his bones and have been intensely turned on since I saw him at The Lodge, but I remind myself that that desire should be filed under Bad Ideas.
“I’m not asking to.” He leans against the counter, arms crossed. “I’m asking for a chance to show you the man I am now. Not the boy who ran.”
Before I can respond, the satellite phone buzzes. Damien straightens, his entire demeanor shifting to professional efficiency.
“Ghost Security, this is Pine Haven. Reading you clear, over.”
He pauses for a moment, giving a quick nod. I watch this new side of him, and it’s attractive in a way that both thrills and unsettles me.
“No unusual activity overnight. Package is stable.”
Package . I try not to wince at being reduced to cargo.
“Understood. That’s good news. Pine Haven out.”
Damien clips the phone to his belt, already moving toward the door. “Good news is, Kozlov and his men have gone to ground. There’s nothing indicating they have any idea where you are or if they’re even still in town.”
“That’s great news,” Lucy says, sighing in relief.
“It is,” I agree. I grab my jacket and head toward the door. “I need to do that perimeter check. Stay inside.”
“Can I come with you?”
“No.”
The flat refusal stings. “Why not?”
He pauses, hand on the doorframe. For a moment, I think he’ll give me some tactical reason, but instead, he says, “Because I can’t protect you and watch you at the same time.”
“I’m not helpless, Damien,” I say, trying to hide my frustration.
“I know you’re not. But you have to realize how dangerous Kozlov’s men are and how much they want you…gone.” He winces as he says the last word, his eyes filled with emotion. “That’s not what this is about.”
Twenty minutes later, he returns to find me pacing the main room in frustration.
“Sorry,” he says, noting my restlessness. “Until we know that Kozlov’s men don’t know where you are, you have to stay inside. They might have drones.”
“I understand,” I say, though that doesn’t stop my frustration and yearning to go outside.
Being inside with Damien is starting to feel like a timebomb, between the way we’re looking at each other and the way we’re slowly talking about the past. I don’t know if this cabin is big enough for both of us if that time bomb goes off.
Damien shrugs off his coat and puts his revolver in a drawer in the kitchen, then gets a fresh cup of coffee.
“Tell me about the journalist thing,” he says as he takes a seat on the couch. “What made you leave social work?”
The question catches me off guard. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because I want to understand who you became. Who you are now. How you ended up here, in protective custody. Social workers usually don’t get death threats from dangerous European criminals.”
I join him on the couch, tucking my legs under me, and consider how much to share. “After we broke up, I got a roommate. Mila. She quickly became my best friend. We lived together through junior and senior year and my first year of grad school.”
Damien nods, encouraging me to continue. He leans back on the couch, but I feel his attention like he’s touching my skin. “Tell me about Mila.”
“She was brilliant and funny. Obsessed with butterflies.” I smile at the memory, touching the small butterfly tattoo on my wrist. “She had a hard childhood and had this theory that butterflies were proof that beauty could emerge from even the darkest places.”
Something about Damien’s silence makes me glance away. His face has gone carefully neutral—the expression of someone preparing for bad news.
“She disappeared during a summer vacation trip to Europe. I was supposed to be with her, but I landed a great internship that I couldn’t pass up,” I continue. “Her last Instagram post was from some club in Bucharest. Then nothing.”
Damien rubs his face and looks at the fire. “Jesus, Lucy.”
“The police said she probably moved on and didn’t want to be found. But I knew Mila. She wouldn’t vanish without a word.” I pause. “So I went after her.”
“You went to Europe? Alone?”
I nod. “I’ve gone a few times. Whenever I have vacation time, I go back and search for her, to find more clues.
I return to every club, every contact, every breadcrumb she left on social media.
” The path opens into a small clearing, and I turn to face him.
“That’s how I learned what was really happening.
The network of clubs that were fronts, the men who preyed on girls like Mila. ”
His face has gone pale. “Did you find her?”
The question I’ve been dreading. “Not in time. She was found dead in Croatia.” My voice cracks slightly.
“But I found the bastards who took her. And I found Harley. Apparently, I wasn’t subtle about the questions I was asking and the research I was conducting.
Someone mentioned me to him, and he ended up taking me under his wing. ”
“I wondered how you knew him,” Damien says, his eyes fixed on me. “He’s not exactly the kind of man a woman like you knows.”
I nod in agreement. “Yeah. He’s how I’m here right now.
We’ve been in contact for a couple of years now, and I share my research with him.
When everything happened with the death threat, he was the first person I called, and he contacted Ghost Security and set this up.
He taught me how to investigate properly, how to stay safe while getting the story.
” I touch my tattoo again. “I became a journalist because someone has to tell these stories. Someone has to make sure girls like Mila aren’t forgotten. ”
Damien looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time.
“I’ve been searching for Mila, for justice for her, for five years.” I meet his gaze steadily. “Kozlov has to pay for what he’s done.”
“That’s brave,” he says, something like awe in his voice.
“It’s necessary.”
“It’s brave,” he repeats firmly. “You turned your pain into purpose. That’s rare. It’s also incredibly dangerous.”
The compliment warms me more than it should. “What did you turn yours into?”
His jaw tightens, and his eyes darken. “More pain, mostly.”
I watch him, taking in the man he’s become since we last saw each other. “Do you miss it? The military?”
“Parts of it.” He stands up to add a log to the fireplace. “I miss the clarity. When you’re downrange, everything’s simple. Protect your team, complete the mission, get everyone home. Some things I don’t miss.”
“Like what?”
He stirs the fire with the poker, taking a long moment before turning back to me. “The dark parts. They nearly killed me.”
The rawness in his voice makes my chest tighten.
“Is that why you didn’t come back?” I ask gently. “Because you thought it might kill you?”
“No.” He finishes with the fire and props the poker next to the fireplace. “I kept extending my tours because I was in a dark place and got addicted to the danger.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
“Damien—”
“I couldn’t reconcile anything.” He looks out at the mountains, pain etched in every line of his face. “So I stayed in the war. And I got good at it. Really good.”
Something in his tone makes my blood run cold. “What does that mean?”
“It means I became the guy they called when nobody else could handle it. When the mission was too dangerous, too morally complicated, too likely to get everyone killed.” He meets my eyes, letting me see the truth.
“It means I started volunteering for assignments that had a low probability of survival.”
The pieces click into place with horrible clarity. “You were trying to die.”
“I was trying to matter .” His voice becomes urgent and strong.
“I thought if I saved enough people, fought enough battles, maybe I could feel like I was making a difference. When I took the time to think about it, which wasn’t often, I was scared of who I was becoming but not scared enough to try and change.
I thought you wouldn’t love me if you knew what I’d become. ”
Anger flares hot and sudden. “That’s not how love works!”
“I know that now.” He sighs as he sits next to me on the couch, close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his green eyes. “But then? I was drowning, and I thought I was protecting you by staying away.”
“You were being selfish.” The accusation comes out sharper than I intended.
“Maybe I was.” He doesn’t flinch from it. “In the end, it was a bad decision. And then it was too late to admit to you that I was wrong. When I finally came home, I assumed you had met someone else and had a whole new life. I didn’t have a right to contact you and stir things up.”
We sit there looking at each other, eight years of hurt and misunderstanding finally laid bare. I want to rage at him, to make him feel every sleepless night I spent wondering if he was alive. Instead, the fight drains out of me, replaced by exhaustion.
I study his face—older now, marked by experiences I’m not sure I want to imagine, but still unmistakably the man I fell in love with. The man who held me through thunderstorms and made me laugh until my sides ached. The man with a protective streak as wide as the sky.
Damien clears his throat. “There’s something else. Natural hot springs about a mile from here. If you’re interested, we could hike there this afternoon. Still within the secure perimeter.”
I glance at him sideways. “Hot springs?”
“Thought you might like it. After everything.” He seems almost shy asking. “But if you’d rather stay at the cabin—”
“What about needing to stay indoors,” I ask, confused. “Is it safe?”
“We’re remote, and we’ve made the trails so casual hikers don’t come through here. I shouldn’t, but I’ll take you out. I’ll keep you safe.”
“Okay. I’d love to go.”
The smile that spreads across his face is the first genuinely happy expression I’ve seen from him since our reunion. It transforms his entire face, reminding me exactly why I fell so hard for him the first time.
And why it would be so easy to fall for him again.