28. Claiming Protection Through Ice Cream And Whisky Part One
Claiming Protection Through Ice Cream And Whisky Part One
~MAVERICK~
T he restaurant's neon sign flickers to life just as I pull into the back corner of the parking lot, choosing the spot furthest from the other cars where shadows pool thick between the dumpsters and delivery trucks.
My fingers tap against the steering wheel— a nervous habit I thought I'd broken years ago —as I shift the truck into park and let the engine idle, the vibration a steady thrum beneath us that should wake anyone who wasn't completely exhausted.
"You hungry?" I ask, already reaching for my wallet in the center console. "They've got decent steaks here, or we could grab something quick and?—"
Silence.
I turn to look at her, and the words die in my throat.
Willa's fast asleep, her head tilted forward at an angle that's going to murder her neck if she stays like that much longer.
The evening light slanting through the windshield turns her hair into something between copper and gold, but it also highlights things I should have noticed before—the dark circles under her eyes, purple-blue like old bruises, the way her cheekbones seem sharper than they did even yesterday.
How long has she been running on empty?
Her lips are slightly parted, breath coming in soft, even waves that fog the window beside her.
One hand rests in her lap, fingers curled loose like a child's, while the other clutches the door handle like even in sleep she needs an escape route.
The silk of that borrowed dress— still wrinkled from Austin's rodeo adventures —rides up her thighs, and I force my eyes away from the exposed skin, focusing instead on the concerning pallor beneath her freckles.
"Willa," I whisper, reaching over to gently adjust her head. My fingers barely graze her jaw before her head drops forward again, chin nearly touching her chest. "Come on, sweetheart. You're gonna hate yourself if you sleep like that."
I try again, cupping the back of her neck this time, thumb brushing the baby-soft hair at her nape. Her skin is warm, pulse steady beneath my touch, but she's dead to the world. Her head lolls back for a moment before gravity wins again, pulling her forward into that same uncomfortable position.
"Stubborn even when you're unconscious," I mutter, though there's no heat in it.
The third attempt is equally futile.
She's like a rag doll, all her usual tension dissolved in sleep, leaving her boneless and pliant in a way that makes something protective and fierce rise in my chest.
This isn't normal tired—this is bone-deep exhaustion, the kind that comes from running on adrenaline and anxiety for too long.
"Alright, different approach."
I unbuckle my seatbelt and shift sideways in my seat, creating a space against my shoulder.
Moving slowly, carefully, I slide one arm behind her back and use the other to guide her toward me.
She makes a small sound of protest— something between a whimper and a sigh —but doesn't wake as I ease her across the center console until her head finds my shoulder.
"There we go," I breathe, adjusting her position until she's tucked against my side, her temple pressed to the junction of my neck and shoulder. "That's better."
She mutters something in her sleep—words that might be "too bright" or "so tired" or nothing coherent at all—and then she does something that stops my heart for a full second.
She takes a deep breath, the kind that expands her whole chest, and I feel the exact moment my scent registers even through her unconsciousness.
Her entire body relaxes, melting against me like I'm the safest thing in her world, and she lets out this long, satisfied exhale that sounds like relief personified.
"'M safe," she mumbles, words slurred with sleep. "Mavi's here."
Christ.
I sit there frozen, her trust a physical weight against my chest, and realize I'm smiling. Not smirking or grinning or any of my usual calculated expressions— actually smiling like some lovesick teenager. When's the last time that happened? When was the last time anything made me feel this... soft?
Her breathing evens out again, deep and slow, the rhythm of someone who won't be waking anytime soon.
I should move her, should drive us home where she can sleep properly in an actual bed.
Should do a lot of things that don't involve sitting in a restaurant parking lot, holding her while she drools slightly on my shirt.
But I don't move. Can't move. Because this—her weight against me, her absolute faith that I'll keep her safe even in sleep—is everything I've been trying not to want.
It's also terrifying as hell.
I'm not a man who acts on impulse.
Everything I do is calculated, measured, weighed against potential outcomes and escape routes. It's how I've survived this long, how I've kept the people I care about safe.
But today?
Today, I saw Blake Harrison's smug face and lost every ounce of that careful control.
Kissed Willa in front of half the town like some possessive asshole, carried her to my truck like she was mine to claim.
The same wild, reactive energy that made me break protocol all those years ago.
My free hand clenches into a fist against my thigh, the phantom weight of command settling over my shoulders like a burial shroud. Different situation, same fundamental flaw—when someone I'm supposed to protect is threatened, all my training goes out the window.
All that careful control shatters like spun glass, leaving nothing but raw instinct and the driving need to save them, consequences be damned.
And look how well that worked out last time.
The memory comes without warning, triggered by something as simple as the way Willa's breath catches—just for a second, a tiny hitch that sounds too much like smoke inhalation, like lungs fighting for clean air that isn't there.
Suddenly, I'm not in my truck anymore.
I'm standing in the briefing room five years ago, tactical gear heavy on my shoulders, listening to Chief Morrison explain why we shouldn't be going into the Riverside Apartments at all.
"Building's been condemned for three months," he's saying, pointing at blueprints that show a structure held together by prayer and rust. "City was supposed to demolish it last week, but red tape, budget constraints, you know the drill."
But there's a fire. There are people inside. That's all that matters.
The smell hits first—not woodsmoke but the chemical reek of burning insulation, melting plastic, synthetic carpets turned to toxic soup.
My team moves through the ground floor in practiced formation, each room checked and cleared with military precision.
Second floor's already fully involved, flames licking through gaps in the ceiling, but the thermal imaging shows heat signatures on the third floor.
"Building's not gonna hold," Rodriguez says through the radio, and he's right. I can hear it in the way the structure groans, feel it in how the floor shifts beneath our boots. Every instinct screams to pull back, follow protocol, wait for the aerial ladder.
Then I hear it. Crying. Thin and high and terrified.
"There's a kid up there."
The words taste like ash in my mouth, both then and now.
Willa shifts against my shoulder, mumbling something about horses, and I force myself to breathe through the phantom smoke that isn't there.
My hand finds her hair, fingers threading through the tangled strands, anchoring myself in the present even as the past drags me under.
"Protocol says we wait," Chen had argued, ever the voice of reason. "Structure's compromised. We go up there, we might not come back."
But the crying gets louder, more desperate, and I'm already moving. "Protocol didn't account for a fucking child. Rodriguez, Chen, with me. Everyone else, establish a water curtain at the stairwell."
The third floor is hell. Visibility zero, heat so intense it feels like my gear is melting onto my skin.
We move by touch and instinct, following the sound of terror through a maze of smoke and flame.
I find her in a back bedroom—maybe four years old, curled in a closet, clutching a stuffed elephant like a lifeline.
"Hey, sweetheart," I remember saying, trying to keep my voice calm despite the ceiling starting to buckle above us. "We're gonna get you out of here."
She couldn't have weighed more than forty pounds. I cradled her against my chest, her face buried in my shoulder to protect her from the smoke, and gave the order that haunts me still: "Straight line exit, no deviations. Move!"
We made it halfway.
The collapse started in the northeast corner—a grinding, shrieking protest of metal and wood giving way.
The floor beneath Chen disappeared first, just vanished like a magic trick, taking him down to the inferno below before any of us could react.
Rodriguez tried to grab him, overbalanced, and followed him down.
The chain reaction rippled outward, supports failing in sequence, and I had a split second to choose: follow protocol and try to save my team, or get the child out.
I ran.
Made it to the stairwell just as the third floor ceased to exist, rode the collapse down two stories on a prayer and adrenaline, somehow keeping the kid safe in my arms. She lived. Smoke inhalation, minor burns, but she lived.
Chen and Rodriguez didn't.
"You did what any of us would have done," Captain Morris told me later, after the funerals, after the investigations, after the sleepless nights replaying every second. "That building should have been demolished. No one could have predicted a catastrophic failure like that."
But I knew better.
I'd felt the weakness in the structure, heard the warnings in every groan and crack. I'd made a command decision that saved one life and cost two others, and no amount of rationalization changes that math.