Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
MADDEN
Hoyt came to get us himself.
I registered that fact the way I registered everything else after the clinic: distantly, as if it belonged to someone else’s night.
Someone else’s emergency. He didn’t say much beyond that everything had been contained, which seemed like a strange word to apply to something that had erased an entire floating square of my life from existence.
Contained.
As if fire respected boundaries.
I opened my mouth to protest out of reflex. I didn’t need this. I didn’t want to be an imposition. I could manage. I always managed.
But the protest stalled halfway to my throat, because the truth crept in sideways.
Neither Rios nor I had our vehicles.
And somewhere between the clinic room and Hoyt’s truck, it finally sank in that the only things I actually still owned were whatever was in my car.
Everything else—clothes, books, notes, mementos, the stupid coffee mug I’d had since law school, the last physical trace of Gwen’s life I’d still been able to reach—had been on the Second Wind.
Past tense.
There was no question the boat had been destroyed. No question whatever hadn’t burned had sunk. I didn’t need anyone to say it out loud for me to be certain. The absence echoed already, like a phantom limb I hadn’t yet learned not to reach for.
My throat hurt. My head hurt. My body felt like it had been wrung out and left to dry somewhere it didn’t quite belong.
So I didn’t fight.
I climbed into the truck and let the door shut behind me.
Rios stayed close. Not hovering, exactly—he wasn’t that kind of man—but near enough that I sensed him without looking.
His presence registered on a level below thought, like pressure or gravity.
I couldn’t tell if he was waiting for something else to happen—for someone to jump us, for me to finally crack—or if he needed me close for his own reasons.
Like perhaps he needed the reassurance that I was still breathing.
The idea of that last one slid in unexpectedly, and something warm unfurled in my chest.
Which unfortunately made me think of the kiss.
Which immediately took that warmth and set it on fire.
I stared out the window and told myself not to analyze it. Analysis was dangerous territory tonight. Analysis led to spirals, and spirals led to questions I didn’t have the bandwidth to answer.
The truck slowed. Turned. Stopped.
Caroline and Hoyt’s house sat quiet and dark, the kind of late-night stillness that meant the children had been put to bed hours ago and the adults had made the fragile transition from managing to waiting. The porch light was on.
Caroline was already in the doorway.
One moment I was standing just outside the door, still orienting myself to the house, still vaguely aware of the night pressing in around me, and the next she’d wrapped her arms around me. No questions. No pause to assess whether I wanted it.
Just contact.
“Oh, honey,” she murmured, brief and low, pulling me in against her shoulder somehow, even though I was taller than her by about four inches.
She smelled like clean cotton and something faintly herbal, and the absolute momness of it hit me sideways.
Because I’d never had anything like this from my own mother.
She pulled back just enough to look at my face, hands still on my arms, thumbs pressing lightly as if checking I was solid. Her gaze flicked over me in quick, practiced passes before turning sharply toward Rios.
The Spanish came fast and familiar, a tumble of syllables I was too tired to follow but didn’t need translated. The tone told me enough: relief threaded through with scolding, affection sharpened by fear that had already burned off.
Rios answered in kind, quieter, defensive but conceding ground. The exchange had the cadence of siblings who’d done this dance their whole lives.
Caroline exhaled through her nose and released me, already pivoting away. “Okay,” she said, brisk now. “Come on.”
She disappeared down the hall and returned almost immediately with her arms full. She set the stack on the chair beside the door and added a toiletry bag on top.
“These should work,” she said. “They’re clean. Bathroom’s up the stairs and down the hall. Towels are in the cabinet.”
I stared at the pile longer than made sense. Pajamas. A toothbrush. Ordinary things that suddenly seemed enormous because it came bundled with the reminder that I had nothing. Nothing of my own to change into. Nothing familiar to anchor me.
I shut that thought down immediately.
There would be time for grief later. Time to inventory loss and decide how to survive it. Right now, all I could manage was the present moment, and the present moment required oxygen and vertical posture.
“Thank you.” The word barely made it past my abused throat.
She waved it off like it was nothing, already moving again. “Take your time.”
Then she paused, glanced back at me, and something in her expression gentled with assurance. “You’re safe here.”
Rios opened his mouth.
Caroline cut him off without missing a beat.
“If you think either of you is going back to that boat, think again. Madden, you’re in the guest room. Rios, you’re—”
“With her.” The words landed fast and solid, with no hesitation in them at all.
I opened my mouth. Closed it again.
Part of me wanted to protest. Another part—a quieter, more honest part—was already clinging to the idea like a life raft.
“I’ll take the floor. Nobody’s getting to you again.”
That did it. Whatever argument I might have mounted dissolved. The image of him between me and the rest of the world was so deeply comforting it almost hurt.
Caroline’s expression shifted into something thoughtful.
Whatever opinions she had about this development, she kept them to herself.
There was more bustling. Extra bedding pulled from a closet.
Efficient, purposeful motion that communicated you are safe here now without requiring additional reassurance.
And then suddenly, impossibly, we were alone.
The guest room was dim and quiet, the air cool against my skin. Rios handed me fresh towels and the borrowed pajamas, along with the small collection of toiletries Caroline had assembled like a professional emergency responder.
“You go ahead and shower.” He nudged me gently toward the bathroom, as if momentum alone might keep me upright.
The water helped. For a little while, I lost myself in the mechanics of it—the simple act of standing still and letting warmth wash over skin that had been too close to fire. I focused on getting clean, on rinsing the smoke from my hair, on breathing through the lingering rasp in my chest.
I kept my brain turned off by force.
I knew it wouldn’t last. I knew the thoughts were waiting to devour me on the other side. But I clung to the reprieve with everything I had.
When I came out, Rios was already changed.
Pajama bottoms. Bare chest. Wet hair, proof he’d used another bathroom.
I deliberately did not stare.
Which, unfortunately, did nothing to stop my eyes from registering the sculpted lines of muscle, the strength of him rendered unguarded by the domesticity of the moment. The bandages on his arms helped. Visual punctuation marks reminding me why this wasn’t the time for anything but survival.
“You holding up?”
“I didn’t know what to do with…” I held up my clothes.
They were worse than I remembered. Soot-stained, singed, ruined beyond denial. My hands started to shake before I managed to stop them, the reality of loss crystallizing in that small, tangible pile.
Rios took them from me gently. “I’ll take care of it.”
He set them aside and pulled me into his arms before the tremor turned into something bigger.
The solid pressure of him anchored me, kept my feet on the floor when everything inside me wanted to float off into panic or numbness or both.
“Someone tried to kill me.” The words came out flat, like a statement of fact I hadn’t yet processed.
“Yeah. But they didn’t succeed.”
His hands moved slowly up and down my spine in a steady, grounding rhythm.
“Only because you were there. You were there, Rios. Risking your life for me.”
“It’s what partners do.” He said it simply. As if this arrangement we’d fallen into had always been. As if I had any idea what it was like to count on someone like that.
I clung tighter to him. “Jesus, if you hadn’t come—” I stopped myself before the image finished forming. Before my mind could supply the version of the night where I didn’t make it out.
“But I did come. I wish to God I’d come sooner. Maybe I could’ve caught the bastard. But your text said it wasn’t an emergency.”
“Text?” The memory flickered back into place, absurd in the context of everything else. “Oh, my God. With everything else, I forgot. I—someone wants to meet with me.”
He went still. “Who?”
“I don’t know. Someone on one of the forums I posted on. We hadn’t set any details yet. I wanted to get your take before I agreed to anything. But whoever it was said they might have some information.”
“About Priya? About someone else missing?”
“I don’t know. It was pretty vague. I messaged them back to get more details.”
He paused, gears visibly turning. “Was this a public forum?”
“I mean, behind a login, but public in the sense anyone can sign up, yes.” Even as I said it, the pieces started to align in a way I didn’t like. “You don’t think that had something to do with the fire?”
“If it does, that says someone’s watching what you’re doing a hell of a lot closer than we suspected. Somehow, somewhere, you’ve managed to step on someone’s toes enough that they thought they’d scare you off.”
I didn’t miss how he was trying to downplay it now. For himself? For me? I didn’t need that.
“Let’s call a spade a spade. It was a murder attempt.”
Rios shuddered.
My hands flexed against his chest. “I haven’t come this far to be scared away now.”
When his eyes met mine, I braced myself for an argument.
Instead, he cupped my cheek. “I know. And that’s what scares me.”
The idea of this man being scared of anything, least of all on my behalf left me feeling unmoored, clinging by my fingertips to some kind of emotional roller coaster that had no safety bar.
After a long humming beat, he nudged me toward the bed. “You need rest.”
I crawled beneath the covers, the mattress welcoming and unfamiliar. The moment I lay down, I missed his arms.
“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.” I forced myself to say it out loud.
“I’ve slept on worse.”
“I…” I drew in a breath, steadying myself. “I think I’d feel better if you were over here with me.”
The pause stretched. My heart thudded loud in my ears.
“Okay.”
He climbed into the bed beside me, careful and deliberate, then reached out to turn off the light. Darkness settled.
For a long moment, we lay there, both of us staring at the ceiling we couldn’t see, the silence filled with things neither of us was ready to say.
“About earlier,” he said.
I needed absolute clarity about which part of earlier he meant. I knew which one I was thinking about. “The kiss?”
“Yeah.”
I braced myself for the gentle letdown, the insistence that it was just a heat of the moment thing, a mistake.
“Look, I’m not trying to push you into anything. That would be a dick move. But I’m into you. I’m going to protect you through this, no matter what, even if you don’t feel the same.”
The inner teenage girl I pretended not to have squealed outright. He likes me! He really likes me!
“I… I’m into you, too.” Admitting it was more terrifying than the fire. Because this wasn’t about survival—this was about choice.
He shifted, and suddenly I was tucked against him, his body curved protectively around mine. “Good. That makes things easier.”
I relaxed into him by degrees, inch by inch. “You call this easy?”
“Oh, sweetheart, nothing about you is easy. Easy is boring. But not having to fight myself simplifies my life.”
“Oh.” Because what else could I say to that?
I felt his smile when he kissed my temple, soft and sweet. “Go to sleep, Counselor.”
And somehow—impossibly—I did.