Chapter 10
BY THE TIME CALLEN pulled the SUV up beside the cabin, the woods had softened into that deep, early-evening hush that only the forest could conjure.
The solitude wrapped around him like a worn blanket, thick with the scent of pine and smoke and something faintly sweet drifting from the cracked-open window.
He stepped out into the gravel and exhaled slowly, letting the tension of the drive roll off his shoulders. His arms were sore from gripping the wheel, and his jaw ached from clenching it. The bag of supplies weighed next to nothing in comparison.
But the moment he stepped into the cabin, a singular thought pushed everything else aside: He needed a drink.
Because chaos had a sound, and it lived in his childhood cabin now.
The kids were everywhere, and he had no idea how three kindergarteners sounded like an entire classroom running rampant in his cabin.
Sophie was singing off-key in the living room, spinning in dizzy circles with a pillowcase tied around her neck like a cape.
Willie hopped between furniture cushions, pretending the floor was lava, and Lucas was in a heated debate with Meaghan over whether or not melted crayons could be used as tactical camouflage.
Meaghan was trying—God bless her—to maintain some order, crouched on the floor with a construction paper crown half-finished in her lap, glue stick in one hand and a bandage in the other.
Crayons rolled across the hardwood floor as a paper plate hit the wall and fluttered to the ground. Someone knocked over a cup of juice, and a high-pitched shriek rang out, but Callen couldn’t tell whether it was in delight or dismay.
It was the sound of cabin fever. High-pitched. Inescapable. And relentless.
Callen scanned the room once, jaw ticking. His shoulders were already tight from the drive, but this? This tipped him dangerously close to the edge.
God, he needed that drink.
He set the bag of supplies down on the counter and headed straight for the pantry. Opened the door, giving the contents a quick scan. Nothing.
Not in the flour bin. Not in the cupboard over the stove. Not in the cookie tin labeled “Oatmeal” that he already knew was a lie.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
“What’s wrong?” Meaghan asked from the living room, where she sat cross-legged on the rug with Sophie and Willie, carefully separating a pile of crayons.
“I know you hid the bottle you took from me last night.”
She didn’t even look up. “Did I?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” she said calmly, “maybe I poured it out. Or maybe I’m just saving you from making a dumb decision.”
Callen opened another cabinet just to spite her. Empty.
“Making a dumb decision?” He bit back the growl, not wanting the children to see him frustrated. “I kept you from getting shot. I helped protect your students. One drink is not a dumb decision. It’s a calming ritual.”
“I didn’t ask you to show up.” She glanced up at him, shrugging. “That was my father. And I won’t have you drinking around the children. Sets a poor example.”
He had to walk away.
“I have some repairs to do while I’m here.”
“Have fun,” she said, dropping her gaze back to the crayons.
Grabbing the hammer and a bucket of nails from the gear trunk, he headed outside to the side window with the crooked frame. Might as well get something done before his temper unraveled completely.
But just as he reached for the latch, the window creaked open from the other side.
As he looked up, a small hand appeared, followed by a serious-faced Lucas.
Callen blinked. “What do you want? You should be in the front room with Meaghan. Go on now.”
The kid said nothing at first, just reached through the gap and passed over the bottle Meaghan took from Callen the night before.
“She hid it inside the couch cushions in her bedroom,” the small boy said. “My dad likes this kind too. He drinks a glass at night out on the porch.
Callen took it, startled into silence.
Lucas’s gaze didn’t waver. “Are we gonna roast marshmallows tonight? That’s what you do when camping. And hot dogs. I love cooking hot dogs on a fire.”
Callen swallowed down the knot in his throat. “Yeah, buddy. We’ll roast marshmallows.”
“And hot dogs?”
Callen chuckled. “And hot dogs.”
Lucas nodded once, then closed the window without another word.
Callen stared at the bottle in his hands.
He didn’t open it. Just set it in his bucket as he went about his repairs.
The rhythm of hammering boards and resetting window screens helped bleed off some of the tension curling beneath his ribs, but not all of it.
Not even close. It wasn’t until the sun dipped below the treeline and the kids’ voices lifted in anticipation of the promised marshmallows that he finally let himself breathe.
The fire pit crackled to life just after dusk, a ring of stones set up in the clearing behind the cabin.
Meaghan passed out metal skewers she’d found in a drawer while Callen supervised the chaotic rotation of hot dogs.
The kids squealed with delight over charred ends and burnt marshmallows, and despite the noise, the stickiness, and the smoke, Callen found himself smiling.
Sophie demanded help with every step, and Willie needed constant reassurance that his s’more wasn’t too melty. Lucas insisted on roasting everything until it looked like lava, then dropped half of it into the fire and needed a new skewer.
Callen tried to stay patient. He really did.
But by the third time someone yelled his name in a five-second span, his left eye twitched.
“You okay?” Meaghan asked as she slid a paper plate into his hands.
He grunted. “Just thinking about why I didn’t take you straight to your father.”
“Because you hate him as much as I do,” she said bluntly.
He glanced at his hands, sneering. “I hate sticky and being called every two seconds to referee marshmallow drama or to put more on a stick just to watch them fall in a fire.” He dropped his hands to his lap, shaking his head. “I’m better at dodging bullets and finding the bad guys.”
She grinned at him over the rim of her cup, her eyes sparkling with firelight. “Well, for the record, you’re doing great.”
That earned her a look. “You’re enjoying this.”
She bobbed her head, her smile growing. “I am. Immensely.”
Still, her smile softened when she saw the tension settle between his shoulders. She turned to the kids, clapping her palms on her thighs. “All right, sugar monsters. Time to get cleaned up and see if we can find some jammies.”
Callen scoffed. “Good luck with that.”
“Awww!” came three voices at once.
“Nope. No arguments,” she said, standing. “Ranger Callen says lights out at eight-thirty. He’s got night patrol, remember?”
The kids lit up at that. “Oooh, night patrol!”
Callen rolled his eyes as he took another bite of his hot dog, ripping it off with a snarl. “Now I’m a bedtime excuse?”
“Yup,” she said with zero shame.
The kids groaned in unison, dragging their feet toward the cabin like bedtime was the end of the world.
Lucas muttered something about injustice, Willie clutched a half-eaten marshmallow like it was a treasured relic, and Sophie announced she was only brushing her teeth if someone sang to her.
Meaghan herded them all inside with the maternal authority that brooked no argument, throwing Callen a smirk over her shoulder as she disappeared into the doorway.
That left him with the firepit, the scorched sticks, and a battlefield of half-eaten hot dogs and graham cracker casualties.
He didn’t mind. Give him clean up over pouty bedtime theatrics any day.
It was quiet out here—peaceful. He drawled around the fire pit, letting the final embers crackle down while the sky darkened to indigo above the tree line.
By the time he stepped back inside, the cabin was dim, the air warm and thick with the scent of wood smoke and melted sugar. He didn’t make it far before a blur of fabric swirled past him.
Callen paused in the hallway, blinking in disbelief as Sophie twirled past him, wearing one of his old Navy PT shirts that now dragged past her knees like a nightgown.
Willie followed behind her, sleeves of a faded concert tee flapping like bat wings, the hem tucked into the waistband of his little joggers.
Lucas, for his part, had claimed a long-sleeved thermal—one Callen distinctly remembered wearing on a frostbitten night during survival training.
The elbows were threadbare. He’d kept it because of the memory.
Apparently now, it belonged to a five-year-old.
“Where the… heck… did they get those?” he asked, brow furrowing.
Meaghan, kneeling by the fireplace and folding blankets with her usual calm, didn’t even flinch. “They were in the bottom drawer of your old room. Thought I’d make use of them.”
“They’re my clothes.”
She looked up, eyes twinkling. “We can’t exactly have them wearing the same things every day now, can we?”
“But… why my clothes?”
She stood, tossed a blanket over the back of the couch, and gestured toward the room. “What other clothes are there, Callen? It’s not like we packed bags when we fled a literal shooting. Unless you’ve got a secret Target run hidden in the woods?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. And then rubbed the back of his neck.
She smirked and walked past him, whispering. “Besides, they look better on them.”
He couldn’t argue with that. He just followed her to the bedroom hallway and stopped at the cracked door.
Callen watched through the opening as Meaghan went through the bedtime routine like she’d been doing it all her life.
Lucas needed help to brush his teeth and a reminder not to punch his pillow into submission.
Sophie required two stories and three different nightlights because strange things stared at her in the dark, and Willie whispered that he missed his grandma.
Meaghan just pulled him onto her lap and rocked him until he drifted off.
She was something else.
He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, not even trying to hide the way he watched her.
The woman who used to storm out of family dinners. Who challenged every teacher that said she “talked too much” and who once decked a boy in sixth grade for teasing another girl about hand-me-down shoes. She hadn’t changed.
But she’d grown sharper. Stronger. Softer in ways that scared the hell out of him.
And she would have made a damn good mother.
That thought hit him harder than expected.
He hadn’t thought about kids in years. Never let himself. But watching her with these three broken, frightened little souls… it made something inside him ache.
Eventually, the house was silent again.
Callen stood by the fireplace, absently stoking the coals, when she came back out. Her hair was loose, her skin glowing from firelight and motherhood, and her smile just barely there.
“Well, you survived another day,” she said.
He scoffed. “Barely.”
“I think Lucas likes you.”
“He handed me back my whiskey. Apparently, his father likes to have a drink out on the porch.”
“When he’s ever around,” she said with a sigh.
Callen didn’t know what to say to that.
Meaghan stared at him for a moment, her expression softening, and then she walked over to him, reaching out to take his hand. “Come on.”
“To where?”
“Someplace quiet.”
He took a deep breath. “Um, Meaghan, I didn’t bring—”
She placed a finger to his lips, hushing him. “Don’t worry. I’m protected.” She tugged his hand. “Now come with me.”
He followed, unable to keep his gaze from traveling down her body to watch her ass sway.
She led him into her room. Into the dark and into her arms. She smiled up at him as she raked her fingers through his hair. “I’ve missed you.” And then she leaned in to kiss him, soft, tender, her lips warm against his.
This time, there were no words. No jokes. Just lips and hands and breath. The careful unbuttoning of clothes. The slow slide beneath the covers as he slid his fingers into her hair. Her name on his mouth.
They tried to be quiet.
God, they really did.
But the old mattress groaned beneath their shifting weight, and her breath hitched the moment his mouth found the hollow of her throat.
He pressed his palm against her lower back, guiding her beneath him with a touch that wasn’t rushed, never rushed, like he was rediscovering something sacred he thought he’d never hold again.
Her skin was warm beneath his hands, smooth and soft and already familiar in that haunting way memory makes the body ache.
She arched into him, lips parted, chest rising and falling in rhythm with the storm building between them.
The moonlight painted her in silver as she whispered his name like it was a prayer she’d been holding onto for ten years.
And he kissed her like he had something to prove.
Like he’d been gone too long.
Like he wanted to memorize every sound she made.
His hands moved slowly, reverently, brushing over the curve of her hip, the dip of her waist, the inside of her thigh as if her body might vanish if he touched too fast. Every movement was careful. Every breath was a quiet fire.
She wrapped around him, legs drawing him in, arms holding tight. He buried his face in her hair, swallowing a groan as she moved with him, matching him in rhythm and want and memory. It wasn’t frantic; it was full. Every stroke of his body into hers felt like rewriting the past.
This wasn’t a reunion.
It was a reclamation.
She trembled beneath him, gasped again, hands fisting in his hair as he whispered her name into the crook of her shoulder. The air was thick with need and memory, with the warmth of skin on skin, and with the unspoken truth of every year they’d spent apart.
And when she came apart beneath him, whispering his name like it belonged to her, he let go of everything he’d been carrying.
The world didn’t just disappear.
It finally made sense.