Chapter 47 Buck
BUCK
I’ve spent three years carrying Tyler, Mason, Reed, and Holt like a live coal in the center of my chest.
Some days, the memory of what happened to them burns hot enough to make breathing feel like work. Other days, it just sits there, heavy and familiar, and I couldn’t imagine myself setting it down.
I told myself it was loyalty, and guilt was the price of surviving when part of my team hadn’t.
Then, Elena moved to Moon Ridge.
When I realized I wanted her, my guilt expanded into something I figured I’d spend the rest of my life trying to make peace with but never fully forgiving.
But now that Kozlov is dead and the threat is finally over, something inside me is loosening.
It’s not disappearing—I don’t want Tyler and the other men gone—but the heaviness is easing.
Elena is tucked against my side on the couch in her living room.
One leg is folded beneath her, and she’s absently tracing the seam of my t-shirt near my ribs.
Weston’s at the other end of the couch, close enough to brush Elena’s calf now and then.
Calder’s in one of the armchairs, elbows braced on his knees, even quieter than usual.
It’s late, and the house is still now that the dishes are done and T.J.’s gone to bed.
Elena tips her head back against my shoulder and looks up at me, then at the other two men. “This is going to sound strange.”
Weston squeezes her leg. “Are we talking regular strange or Moon Ridge strange?”
“Moon Ridge isn’t strange.” She sounds like she’s frowning at him.
“You haven’t been here long enough,” I say. “Just wait.”
“Hmm,” she says, and I can feel the hum of it against me. “Now I’m intrigued.”
I brush my knuckles along her arm. “Tell us what you were going to say.”
The teasing fades from her voice, and her body stiffens slightly. “When I put Tyler’s things on the shelf the other day … when I hung that photo …” She pauses for a second. “I felt peaceful. More than peaceful, really. It was like something settled.”
Weston and Calder both fix her in their gaze.
“I don’t know if I believe in signs,” she says after swallowing. “I don’t know if I believe Tyler was really there, but it didn’t feel like I was leaving him behind. It felt like … maybe he was letting me go. Like he was giving me permission to be happy.”
My first instinct is to reach for logic.
Grief does strange things to people. It opens doors in the mind and makes patterns where maybe there aren’t any.
I’ve seen it in widows at funerals and fathers standing over flag-draped coffins.
I’ve experienced it myself when I’ve spent nights staring into the dark and wishing for one chance to go back and do something differently.
But this is Elena. Tyler’s wife. A woman who has every right to decide what peace feels like if it’s finally found her.
I drop a kiss to her temple. “I’m skeptical as hell.”
Her laugh is soft. “I know.”
I lean down so I can see her face. “But if anyone was stubborn enough to find a way to communicate from beyond the grave, it’d be Tyler.”
That gets a laugh out of Weston and a low snort from Calder.
“Man never knew how to quit,” I say with a faint smile. “If there’s any way for him to get a message through, he’d have figured it out just so he could feel smug about it.”
Elena’s eyes shine, but she’s smiling, too. “That does sound like him.”
“Damn right,” Weston murmurs.
Things go quiet after that, and Elena’s body is soft against mine again, but my mind won’t settle.
All this time, I’ve felt like I was stealing something from Tyler by being with Elena. Like I was failing him twice.
Elena must feel a change in my body, because she twists to look up at me, flattening a hand against my chest. “Buck? You okay?”
I catch her hand and hold it there, while I collect my thoughts. When I speak, my voice is so thick, I barely recognize it. “I couldn’t save him. That truth doesn’t change, and I’ll carry it ‘til the day I die.”
Elena’s hand squeezes a handful of my shirt, then she rubs my chest, like she’s trying to comfort my heart.
“You’ve got me thinking, though, that maybe I don’t have to punish myself forever, and it sure as hell doesn’t mean I’m dishonoring him by loving the family he left behind.”
“It doesn’t,” Elena says softly, but firmly.
“It’s about time you figured that out.” Weston’s tone is gentle, but there’s no humor there.
“You already knew it?” I challenge.
Weston shrugs. “I kept thinking the guilt would catch up with us, like if we got too happy, we’d have to answer for it.” He looks at Elena then. “But I’m done with that. I loved him, and I love you.” His familiar smile comes back. “And apparently I tolerate these two.”
Calder snorts.
“On a permanent basis,” Weston adds.
Elena makes a sound that’s halfway between laughter and tears.
I look over at Calder. “You in?”
Calder looks back at me for a long second, then he looks at Elena, and whatever he sees in her face seems to settle something in him, too. “I was in before I knew what hit me.”
“Me too,” Elena says. “With all of you.”
Calder nods once. “Permanent. No backup plan.”
“No half measures,” Weston says.
Something deep and quiet clicks into place for me.
When I moved to Moon Ridge, I told myself it was going to be home, but it never fully settled in my bones that way. I put down roots, took the job, and built a life, but some part of me stayed separate from it, like I was living in the aftermath instead of the present or future.
Sitting here now, with Elena warm against me and my teammates looking more like family than brothers-in-arms, I finally understand the difference. Home was never the place, it was the people.
Weston leans forward and takes Elena’s hand, then Calder comes over and kneels beside her. With a hand on her waist, I hold her steady in the center of us.
Elena looks around at each of us. “No more guilt.”
“No more guilt,” Weston agrees.
Calder nods.
I press my mouth to the side of her neck. “No more guilt.”
Her breath catches, she tips her head back against my shoulder, and the air in the room changes.
A warmth settles in that makes my blood move lower and slower.
It makes me more aware of her mouth, the line of her throat, the way Weston’s thumb strokes over her knuckles while Calder’s hand settles onto her knee.
It’s not just desire. It’s trust, commitment, and a feeling so deep it has nowhere to go except into touch.
Weston brushes his fingers under her chin, then kisses her, slow and unhurried. Calder’s hand slides up her thigh, reverent. I spread my palm over her stomach and hold her against me as I kiss a tender spot beneath her ear and send a shiver through her.
She makes a helpless sound into Weston’s mouth.
Then a small voice drifts out from the hallway. “Mom?”
All four of us freeze, and I close my eyes briefly against a laugh.
Weston and Calder sit back, and Elena calls out to her son, a little breathless. “Come in, Bug.”
T.J. pads into the room in green dinosaur pajamas, his hair sticking up on one side. He clutches his stuffed frog as he squints at all of us.
I’ve faced down active shooters, raging fires, and enough bad situations to fill a few lifetimes, but somehow it’s an eight-year-old in pajamas who can make me sit up straighter on instinct.
T.J. rubs one eye. “I can’t sleep.”
Elena opens her arms right away. “Bad dream?”
He shrugs, which means yes, or close enough to it. He climbs up beside her, wedging himself in the space between her and Weston like he belongs there, because he does.
The energy in the room changes again with the boy’s arrival. Nothing’s lost, it’s just redirected onto something more important at the moment.
T.J.’s gaze moves around from Elena to the three of us men, and he frowns in that serious way he has. “Were you guys having another talk?”
I can’t help smiling. “We were.”
“An important one?”
“An important kind,” Weston says.
T.J. thinks for a moment, then fixes his eyes on Elena. “About if they’re gonna be my dads now?”