Chapter Sixteen
~ Floyd ~
The quiet in my hospital room wasn't really quiet. Under the surface, the place always hummed. There was the heart monitor, which beeped every time it decided I was weak, and the portable oxygen hissed like it was auditioning for a horror movie. There was the distant rattle of a janitor’s cart, and, at intervals, the shouting from the nurses' station when they forgot anyone had ears outside their bubble.
But when it came to Vivian Hardesty, all those sounds ducked for cover and made way.
She didn't slam the door when she walked in again—probably realized it didn't have the satisfying, courthouse boom she was used to. Instead, she stalked three steps in, planted herself at the foot of my bed, and said nothing. Her jaw clenched so tight the sides of her face quivered like they were trying to break free. You could see the years peeling back, layer by layer, to the raw core of a woman who’d built her whole life out of appearances and control.
Ransom didn’t move, but I could feel the shift in his posture: squared up, hand gripping mine, the warmth of his thumb tracing a slow, reassuring arc across my knuckle.
He didn’t bother to let go, and neither did I.
We both knew the second we unclasped, the whole balance of the room would tip in her favor.
Vivian’s eyes flicked from our hands to my face, then to Ransom, and I watched the color rise in her cheeks, starting at the collarbone and working its way up like an incoming storm.
“My lover, Ransom McKenzie,” I’d said again in case she forgot or thought I was joking. She needed to understand just who Ransom was to me.
She chewed on the words, tasting each one, before spitting them out in a voice that could cut through inch-thick glass. “Your lover,” she repeated, the syllables stretched thin and brittle. “This criminal?”
She didn’t even look at Ransom now, just the tattoos that ran up his arms, the way his t-shirt strained over muscle, the dark, perfectly-groomed beard. The disgust was so rich it practically glimmered in the sterile light.
I could have folded then. I could have thrown Ransom under the bus, or played the “bad judgment while concussed” card, but something in the way he held my hand made it impossible.
There was a steadiness to it, a grounding I hadn’t realized I’d missed for years.
I squeezed back, hard enough that he knew I meant it.
“Yes, Vivian,” I said, letting the weight of the words drag her closer to the edge. “My lover. And he’s not a criminal—he owns a business and employs half the kids who’d be on your desk for juvie otherwise. He’s a good man.”
Vivian let out a laugh that could have flayed paint. “A good man? He nearly killed my son—”
Ransom cut her off, tone so level it made the threat more real. “Your son started that fight. I finished it.” He didn’t look away from her, but he didn’t escalate, either. He just held the line, like a bouncer at a bar who already knows the outcome.
She ignored him, turned her fury back on me. “You’re the Sheriff,” she hissed, voice starting to climb in volume. “The face of this community. What do you think will happen when everyone finds out about—about this?” She waved her hand at our joined arms, as if the act itself was contagious.
I felt the fear then, that old, familiar fear of being found out, of losing everything I’d worked for because I couldn’t control the part of myself that still wanted more.
But I was too tired for it to matter. The drugs, the pain, the weeks of living like a ghost—all of it boiled off, leaving something hard and clean underneath.
“What do you think will happen, Viv?” I asked. “Think the sky will fall? Think Main Street will board up the windows and tell their kids not to say my name?”
She didn’t answer. She was waiting for me to flinch, but I’d already played out that scenario every night since I first met Ransom. What I hadn’t done was consider how it might feel to say it out loud, in front of him, and see the reaction not on her face but his.
He didn’t smirk. He didn’t gloat. His thumb just kept moving, slow and steady, reminding me with every pass that I wasn’t alone.
Vivian’s voice got louder, probably so she could be heard in the next county.
“What about your job, Floyd? What about your reputation? All the years you spent building this—” She pointed to the badge on my jacket, draped over the IV stand like an afterthought.
“You’re going to throw it away for some… some phase?”
I almost laughed at that. If she thought any of this was a phase, she clearly hadn’t spent much time in my head.
“What about my happiness?” I said.
She blinked, and for the first time, I saw real confusion there. She didn’t have a comeback. She looked at me, then at Ransom, then back, like she was hoping someone would step in and make it a fair fight.
Nobody did.
I thought about every time I’d told Ransom to leave out the back door. Every time I’d timed his visits around the neighbors, or hidden him in plain sight by never letting anyone see us together.
I thought about how many times I’d stared at the empty spot in my living room, waiting for him to come back, knowing that when he did, it would only be for a few hours, and that the rest of the world would never know what he meant to me.
I thought about happiness, and realized I’d never actually chosen it, not once, in forty-two years of life. Not for myself, anyway. I looked at Ransom, and his eyes were full of something I didn’t have a name for. Pride, maybe. Or just the simple miracle of being seen.
Vivian made one last attempt at sabotage. “You’re going to ruin yourself,” she snapped, voice gone shrill. “If you walk into work with him, you know what they’ll say. You know what they’ll call you.”
I shrugged. “They’ll call me honest. It’s more than I can say for you.”
Her jaw worked like she was chewing steel wool. “I’ll tell everyone,” she hissed, a child’s threat dressed up in Chanel and desperation.
I laughed, actually laughed, the sound surprising even me. “Go ahead,” I said. “Saves me the trouble.”
Something broke in her face then. Maybe it was the realization that she’d already lost, or that the town would move on and she’d still have to live with herself.
She stood there for a second, shaking. Then she turned and stalked out, leaving the door open so wide the nurses at the desk could get the whole show.
The second she was gone, the room let out a breath it didn’t know it was holding. Ransom slumped a little, but his hand never left mine.
The nurse at the station peered in, saw that the fireworks were over, and went back to whatever hospital business they had at midnight on a Wednesday.
I leaned my head back, the pillow suddenly less lumpy, and let the silence fill in the cracks.
“I’m proud of you,” Ransom said, voice soft.
“Never thought I’d see the day,” I replied.
He smiled, slow and wide, the kind of smile that made you think maybe, just maybe, things were going to turn out okay. I closed my eyes, squeezed his hand again, and let myself drift.
I was free.
And it felt fucking incredible.
The room was silent except for the beep-beep of Floyd’s monitor.
Ransom sat down again and squeezed my hand. “You know that’s going to be the talk of the town for the next twenty years.”
I leaned back, wincing, but my smile never left. “Good.”
We just sat there, hands twined, listening to the aftershock of what we’d just detonated.
“You sure you want to be seen with me in public?” Ransom asked.
I turned, eyes alive with something fierce. “I want everyone to see us.”
Ransom just leaned forward, pressed his forehead to mine, careful of the bandages and the bruises.
“I love you, Sheriff,” he whispered.
I grinned, all teeth. “I know.”
We both laughed, and it didn’t even hurt. Let the world burn. We were flameproof now. I was exactly where I belonged.
After Vivian’s tornado exit, the air in my chest was all helium and static. For a while, neither of us said a word. Just the soft, blissful hush of victory, and the faint metallic squeak as Ransom settled into the battered visitor’s chair. He didn’t let go of my hand. I didn’t let go, either.
The room felt different with her gone. It was still a shitbox, still had the vinyl stink and the creeping sense of institutional death, but with her out of the frame, everything came into sharper focus.
Ransom’s eyes were back on me—so dark they reflected their own light, searching mine for whatever was left after a lifetime of hiding.
He finally broke the silence, voice lower than the beeping monitor and twice as urgent. “Did you mean it?” he said. “What you said to her.”
I wanted to play it cool, make a joke about having selective amnesia, but all I could do was nod.
The word “yes” stuck to the back of my throat, sticky and sweet.
I raised his hand to my mouth and pressed my lips to his knuckles, just to prove it was real, just to feel the pulse there—solid and alive.
“Every word,” I said, soft. “I’m done hiding, Ransom. If the town wants a scandal, they can have it. I want you.”
He blinked, and for the first time since I’d met him, there was nothing cocky or invincible in the set of his jaw.
He looked stripped down, open. If he was a lesser man, I think he would’ve cried.
Instead, he squeezed my hand back and gave me a smile so unguarded it nearly broke me open all over again.
“I never thought you’d say it,” he whispered. “Not out loud. Not with witnesses.”
I shrugged, already feeling the freedom rush my veins. “You’re worth it.”
His cheeks pinked. He ducked his head, looked at the tiled floor, then back at me. “You know,” he said, “it’s gonna get messy. People are going to talk.”
“Let them.”
Ransom grinned, and in that moment he looked about sixteen, all nerves and hope and barely-contained energy. “You want to be the poster boys for small-town gay pride?”
I snorted, immediately regretting the pain the laugh sent down my ribs. “Don’t tempt me. Latham’s already placing bets at the station.”
He laughed with me, and it was better than morphine.
Our moment got interrupted by the doctor, who came in with a tablet and the same robotic bedside manner as a DMV clerk. He barely looked at Ransom, who ignored him back, instead scanning my chart and reciting numbers I couldn’t care less about.
“Concussion,” the doctor said, tapping the screen like it was a slot machine. “Three cracked ribs. Contusions on the face, a laceration above the eyebrow. We’d like to keep you at least one more night for observation.”
“Fine,” I said, “as long as he stays.” I nodded at Ransom, daring the doctor to argue.
The man looked startled. “Hospital protocol says—”
“He stays,” I repeated, and let my voice carry the authority of the badge even if I was wearing a paper gown and had track marks from the IV.
Ransom looked smug, stretching out in the chair like he’d just won the lottery.
The doctor blinked twice, then, defeated, made a note and left. I was going to pay for that at some point, but right now, I couldn’t have cared less.
Evening came slow and then all at once, the pale outside light bleeding out and leaving the room illuminated only by the soft green of the monitor and the little gold glow that seeped around the hallway door.
Ransom shifted in the chair, kicked his boots up onto the rail of the bed, and folded his arms across his chest, still never letting go of my hand. I watched him through half-lidded eyes, the pain meds and exhaustion tugging me back and forth across the threshold of sleep.
Every time I drifted, I woke up to find him still there. Sometimes he’d be reading something on his phone, sometimes staring out the window, but every time I checked, his fingers were wound through mine, thumb tracing absent circles on my skin like he was rewiring my nerves by touch alone.
Sometime after midnight, when the halls were finally quiet and my mind had stopped sprinting in circles, I whispered, “I was so afraid of losing my job that I almost lost you.”
Ransom didn’t miss a beat. “You won’t lose me now, Sheriff,” he said, voice ragged at the edges. “But fair warning—I’m going to be insufferable about this. The whole town’s going to know you’re mine.”
His possessiveness was more intoxicating than the drugs. I could feel my face heat up, ridiculous for a man my age, but I didn’t care.
I laced my fingers tighter in his, anchoring myself to the present. “I want everyone to know,” I said, and felt the truth of it burn through my whole body.
He smiled—small, genuine, private. The kind of smile you get to see only if you’re the luckiest bastard alive. Then he leaned in, pressed his lips to my forehead, careful of the stitches, and lingered there until I forgot all about the pain.
The rest of the night passed in the strange way time does when you’re halfway between hell and heaven. I dreamed of sunlight and open roads, of Ransom’s hands on the handlebars and my arms around his waist, of laughter echoing out across a place where nobody cared who loved who.
I woke up every couple hours, heart full, and found him always there, chin to his chest and breathing slow, refusing to leave even when the nurses tried to herd him out.
At some point, I realized I didn’t care what the world thought. That maybe I never had, not really. I just needed someone who made the fight worth it.
As dawn cracked over the horizon, flooding the room with pale blue, I watched Ransom sleep, his jaw slack and peaceful, for once not braced for impact. I thought about waking him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Instead, I whispered, “You’re safe, Ransom. I’m not letting go.”
He twitched, eyes half-open, and muttered, “You’d better not. I’m way too pretty for the witness protection program.”
I grinned, reached over, and tugged him by the hand, ignoring the sting in my ribs. He slid his palm over my chest, gentle, thumb rubbing circles on my sternum until my heart matched the pace.
“Get some rest, Sheriff,” he said, voice thick with love and sleep.
“Only if you stay,” I replied, and closed my eyes, letting the sound of his breathing lull me back under.
I’d spent my life following rules, locking every door against the things I wanted most. But here, in a shitty hospital bed with the man I loved asleep beside me, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years. Peace. And the promise of something better.
When I finally drifted off, my last thought was that whatever came next—scandal, gossip, even unemployment—it would be worth it. For him, I’d do it all over again. And next time, I wouldn’t waste a single second hiding.