Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
CHARLES
Something was wrong with Eamon.
I noticed it the moment he came back inside from his supposed check on the firewood.
Where before he’d been relaxed and affectionate, now he moved like a man expecting an attack.
His shoulders were tense, his jaw set in a hard line, and his eyes kept darting to the windows as if he could see threats lurking in the pristine snow outside.
“Everything really okay out there?” I asked, studying his profile as he hung his jacket by the door after stepping outside again for a moment to get some fresh air.
Fresh air, my ass.
“Fine,” he said, but his smile was strained. “Just cold. Makes you appreciate being inside.”
I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him. But the man who’d made love to me in the kitchen mere hours ago had been replaced by someone who looked like he was preparing for war.
I tried to focus on normal things. The dough I’d started that morning was ready to bake, and I busied myself shaping it into two loaves and preheating the ancient oven.
The familiar routine should have been soothing, but I could feel Eamon’s restless energy from across the room like static electricity.
The bread baked while we sat in the living room, the warm scent of yeast and flour filling the cabin with domestic comfort.
I tried to read my book, but I was too aware of Eamon beside me.
He was supposedly reading, too, but I caught him checking his phone every few minutes, frowning at the blank screen.
“I thought there was no signal up here,” I said finally.
Eamon startled slightly, like he’d forgotten I was there. “What?”
“Your phone. You keep checking it.”
“Oh.” He set the device aside with obvious reluctance. “Habit, I guess. Hard to break, even when you know it’s pointless.”
Another deflection. Another non-answer that raised more questions than it resolved.
As the afternoon wore on, Eamon’s behavior became more unsettling. He got up frequently, ostensibly to tend the fire or get water, but I noticed he always found excuses to check the windows and doors. At one point, I caught him testing the locks—not once, but three times in the span of an hour.
“Eamon,” I said when he returned from yet another circuit of the cabin. “What’s going on?”
He positioned himself on the couch so he had a clear view of both the front door and the kitchen entrance. “Just being thorough.”
“Thorough about what?”
He was quiet for a long moment, staring into the fire. When he finally looked at me, there was something desperate in his green eyes. “I can’t lose you.”
The words should’ve been romantic. Instead, they sounded like a man who already knew loss was inevitable. I didn’t know what to say, not when every question I’d asked him had gone unanswered.
When the bread was ready, we ate it warm with butter and jam, sitting at the small kitchen table while snow continued to fall outside. The bread was perfect—crusty on the outside, soft and airy within—but Eamon barely seemed to taste it.
“This is good,” he said, but his attention was divided, his gaze constantly shifting to the windows.
I set down my slice and leaned forward. “What are you looking for out there?”
“Nothing specific. Just…” He trailed off, running a hand through his hair. “It’s my job to be paranoid, Charles. Better safe than sorry.”
“Is it paranoia when you’re right to be worried?”
The question seemed to hit him like a physical blow. For a moment, his careful mask slipped entirely, and I saw raw fear in his expression. Not fear for himself—fear for me. “Charles—”
“Don’t.” I reached across the table to cover his hand with mine. “Don’t lie to me again. Please. I can see you’re scared, and that scares me. If we’re in danger, I need to know.”
Eamon stared down at our joined hands, his jaw working like he was fighting an internal battle. When he looked up, his eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“I want to tell you everything,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You have no idea how much I want to tell you the truth.”
“So tell me.”
“I can’t.” The words sounded like they were being torn from his throat. “If I could, if there was any way…but I can’t, Charles. Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” He closed his eyes, pressing his lips together. “Because you wouldn’t understand. Because it would change everything between us. Because—”
“Because you don’t trust me.”
“No!” His eyes flew open, fierce and desperate. “Because I trust you too much. Because I love—” He cut himself off, shaking his head. “Fuck.”
My heart stopped. “You love what?”
Eamon pulled his hand from mine, standing abruptly and turning toward the window. “Nothing. Forget I said anything.”
But I couldn’t forget. I could still hear the word hanging unfinished between us, could see the tension in every line of his body as he stared out at the darkening afternoon.
I stood and walked over to him, placing my hand on his shoulder. “Whatever you’re hiding, whatever you think is so terrible that you can’t tell me— It won’t change how I feel about you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.” I turned him to face me, my hands framing his face. “I know you, Eamon. Maybe not all the details of your past, maybe not your whole story, but I know who you are. I know you’re good and kind and protective and that you care about me more than you probably should. That’s what matters.”
“Charles…” His voice broke on my name.
“I don’t need to know everything right now.” I brushed my thumb across his cheekbone. “But I need you to trust that I’m stronger than you think I am. That I won’t break or run away when you’re ready to tell me the truth. Can you do that?”
For a moment, I thought he might crumble entirely. His hands came up to cover mine, his eyes squeezed shut like he was in pain.
“I don’t deserve you,” he whispered.
“That’s not your choice to make.”
He opened his eyes then, and what I saw there made my chest tight. Love, yes, but also a grief so profound it took my breath away. Like he was already mourning something he hadn’t lost yet.
“Come here,” I said, pulling him into my arms.
He held me like I might disappear, his face buried in my neck, his breathing uneven. I stroked his hair and murmured wordless comfort, wishing I could take away whatever pain he was carrying.
We stood like that for a long time, wrapped around each other in the fading afternoon light. Outside, the snow had stopped falling, leaving the world pristine and silent. Inside, the fire crackled softly, and the lingering scent of fresh bread made the cabin feel like a home.
It was perfect. Too perfect.
And I was beginning to understand that perfect moments were often the most fragile ones.
“What can you tell me?” I asked when he finally let go. “Has there been a new development in the case?”
He blew out a breath, his shoulders slumping. “The NYPD suspects they have a mole. Their undercover inside man went missing.”
I swallowed thickly. “What does that mean?”
“That means we no longer have eyes on Carlo, no longer know where he is or what his plans are.”
My blood ran cold, as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice down my back. “He could be looking for me.”
“Not could. He is.”
“Does he…?” I had to swallow again before I could continue, the fear constricting my throat. “Does he know where we are?”
“If he doesn’t yet, he’ll find out soon enough.”
Tears burned in my eyes, but I forced myself to stay calm. I’d wanted Eamon to be upfront with me, and now that he was, I needed to face it like an adult. “So he’s coming here?”
A curt nod, but Eamon’s eyes never left mine. “Do we go somewhere else?”
“It doesn’t get safer than here. It’s remote, and we can see and hear anyone coming. No matter where we go, he’ll find us.”
Well, that was encouraging. Not.
Then something else occurred to me, and I frowned. “How do you know all this?”
“Huh?”
“How do you know about the mole and everything? We don’t have cell signal here.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, as if he couldn’t bear to tell me another lie. “I can’t tell you.”
Honestly, I much preferred that over him trying to spin more lies. “Okay.”
“You… You accept that?”
I shrugged. “I told you I trust you. You’ll tell me when you can.”
He cradled my cheeks in his hands and pressed a soft kiss on my lips. “I’ll keep you safe, Charles. I swear.”
We made dinner together—pasta with a simple sauce made from canned tomatoes and herbs—and ate by candlelight when Eamon claimed the overhead bulb was too harsh. The romantic gesture might’ve fooled me if I hadn’t noticed the way the softer lighting made it easier to look out the windows.
“Tell me about your plans for the bakery,” Eamon said. “When we get back to Charming.”
The when sounded forced, like he was trying to convince himself as much as me. Still, I appreciated his attempt at normalcy.
“Well,” I said, playing along with the fiction that we had a normal future ahead of us, “I’ve been thinking about adding a café. Nothing fancy, but more warm lunch options, like soup, grilled cheese, warm subs, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds perfect for a place like Charming.”
“It is. If Justin hadn’t swindled me out of all that money, our place would’ve been a success.”
It didn’t hurt as much as it had before. Before I’d met Eamon. Before I’d realized what love was really supposed to feel like.
“You’ll make it successful again.”
“And I thought I could maybe teach some baking classes. Community center stuff, you know? Basic bread making, cookie decorating for kids’ birthday parties.”
Eamon smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’d be good at that. Teaching.”
“Would you…?” I hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Would you want to help sometimes? I mean, I know you have your police work, but if you ever wanted to try something different…”
The fork slipped from Eamon’s fingers, clattering against his plate. He stared at me with such naked longing that it hurt to look at him. “I would love that. More than you could possibly know.”
But again, there was that elegiac quality to his voice, like he was talking about something beautiful that could never be.
After dinner, we cleaned up together and settled by the fire. I curled up on the couch with my book while Eamon sat beside me, supposedly reading his own novel but spending more time watching me than the pages.
“Take a picture,” I teased. “It’ll last longer.”
“Maybe I will,” he said seriously. “Maybe I should.”
The comment sent a chill through me that had nothing to do with the temperature. “Eamon—”
And then we heard it. The distant rumble of engines, still far away but definitely getting closer. Multiple vehicles, from the sound of it, were climbing the winding mountain road that led to our isolated cabin.
The book slipped from my fingers as ice flooded my veins. The peaceful bubble of our afternoon shattered like glass, leaving me staring at the man I loved and finally understanding that whatever was coming for us had been inevitable from the start.
Our time was up.