Chapter 20
HAZEL
The door eased open, the hinge giving a soft sigh before Gideon stepped through.
He didn’t make much noise—he never did—but even his quiet filled the room.
I was still propped against the pillows where he’d left me, the sheet gathered in my fists, my heartbeat remembering last night in scattered, uneven beats.
He saw me awake and something unclenched in his shoulders. Just a fraction, but enough to make my chest loosen, too.
“Hey,” I whispered.
He came straight to the bed, sitting beside me like he belonged there—like the space he took up was mine to lean into. His hand cupped the back of my neck, warm and steady, thumb brushing once behind my ear in a way that got my breath all wrong.
“Breakfast is almost ready,” he said. “And a friend of mine, Elias, will be here soon. Less than an hour.”
“That soon?” My voice was thin, scraped out.
“He’s not coming alone,” Gideon said, nodding. “Says he’s bringing people. They’ll help us.”
He looked at me again, taking inventory in that quiet, thorough way of his.
“You didn’t sleep,” I said.
“Didn’t need to.” His fingers slid down to trace my jaw. “Not when you needed watching.”
A shiver went down my spine—fear, safety, and a pulse of something darker passing through me like a chord struck clean.
“You can’t monitor everything,” I said softly.
He tipped my chin up, eyes steady and unblinking. “Watch me.”
It landed like truth, not ego. A promise from a man who’d, apparently, lived his life at thresholds—protecting, anticipating, eliminating threats before they had a chance to breathe.
“Gideon …” My voice shook.
He leaned his forehead to mine, breath warm against my lips. “He won’t touch you. Not while I’m breathing.”
I swallowed hard. “You can’t stop him from existing.”
“No,” he said, eyes steady and frighteningly calm. “But don’t mistake that for inability. If I wanted to end him, Hazel, I could. Quickly. Cleanly.”
His fingers brushed my jaw, gentling what his voice didn’t. “For now, I’m settling for keeping him away from you. But understand something—if he forces my hand, I won’t hesitate.”
Heat pooled low in my belly at the casual violence wrapped around me like a blanket. I shouldn’t have liked it. I did.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“First? We shower. We eat. You get your strength back.”
“And after that?”
“We meet Elias and his people,” he said. “Figure out a plan.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
He kissed my forehead like he’d just negotiated a contract. “Come on,” he said. “We should get moving, before my backup gets here.”
He seemed buoyed by the reinforcements. A muscle jumped in his cheek. “You’ll like them.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
His mouth curved. “Only if they forget whose girl you are.”
The words shouldn’t have hit me the way they did. I was a full grown woman, not sixteen. I’d changed my name in front of a judge. I paid my own taxes. I owned a whole dilapidated inn. But hearing him say my girl in that low, matter-of-fact tone rewired something inside me.
“I am, huh?”
He rolled, pinning me under his weight in one smooth move, bracing on his forearms so his body covered mine without crushing. There was nothing playful about the way he looked at me then. He was deadly serious and a little unhinged and all mine.
“Hazel Bradford,” he said, voice gone quiet and lethal. “Listen carefully. You are not available anymore. Any man who looks at you like you’re something they can take?” His mouth brushed mine, a near-kiss that made my toes curl. “They’ll have to answer to me.”
A laugh caught in my throat, tangled with something softer. “That’s a very specific policy.”
“I’m a very specific man.” He kissed me then, slow and deep, not morning-gentle at all. His tongue swept my mouth like he was reminding both of us exactly who I belonged to. By the time he pulled back, my thoughts were liquid and my body was two steps from begging.
“We don’t have time,” he said against my lips, sounding personally offended by the concept. “They’ll be here soon.”
I exhaled shakily. “Whoever ‘they’ are, I already don’t like them.”
He chuckled, a low rumble I felt everywhere. “Shower,” he said, nipping my lower lip. “Before I change my mind and barricade the door.”
He let me up reluctantly, hands sliding off my hips like he was leaving fingerprints only I could see. I padded toward the bathroom, legs wobbly, heart doing complicated choreography. At the doorway, I glanced back.
He was watching me, propped on one elbow in the bed. His gaze was hot and unapologetic.
“Are you coming?” I asked.
Something flashed in his eyes—want, yes, but also restraint sharpened to a blade. “If I go in there with you, you’re not coming back out upright.”
“Promises, promises,” I muttered, but my cheeks went warm.
I was enjoying this.
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Rain check, babe. I need to keep my brain online right now.”
“Fine,” I sighed theatrically.
His voice followed me as I closed the door. “The second you need me, you say my name. I don’t care if I’m halfway across the marsh.”
There it was again, that dark, absolute thing in him.
I turned on the water and let the room fill with steam. As I stepped under the spray, I caught a flash in my mind of another kitchen long ago and water running and my mother’s voice turning to nothing. My lungs tried to close.
“Gideon?”
The door opened on the second syllable. He didn’t barge in—he just cracked it, staying on the dry side of the threshold. “Yeah?”
“I’m okay,” I said quickly. “I just—wanted to make sure you were still there.”
His shoulders dropped half an inch. “I’m not going anywhere.” He rested his palm flat against the doorframe, like he was bracing the whole room. “Get clean. I’ll be right outside.”
I scrubbed faster than usual, but the hot water did its work, chasing the chill out of my bones. By the time I wrapped a towel around myself and stepped back into the bedroom, he’d already laid out clean clothes for me—soft T-shirt, worn shorts, one of his hoodies.
He looked me over, slow, checking for more than bruises. “You good?”
“As good as I’m going to be today.” I tugged his hoodie on and watched the way his eyes heated at the sight.
“That’s mine,” he said, completely illogical.
I lifted the hem and flashed him an inch of bare thigh. “Is it?”
His nostrils flared. “You’re trying to get me to throw you back in that shower.”
“And you’re the one saying we don’t have time,” I shot back, a little pleased with myself for still being capable of banter.
He disappeared into the bathroom long enough for the pipes to groan and the steam to billow—just a quick rinse, the kind a man takes when he wants to be clean but refuses to waste time. When he came back out, droplets still clinging to his hairline, he looked sharper, more dangerous, more Gideon.
His mouth curved as he dressed. “Come on, trouble. Breakfast before I forget we have problems.”
Downstairs, the kitchen smelled delicious.
“Sit,” Maude ordered the second she saw me, pointing at a chair like a general. “You look better. Still peaked, but better. We’ll fix that.”
I sat. Gideon hovered behind my chair, one hand on the back of it. Every time Maude moved too close to the back door or the window, his gaze tracked her. He was a caged wolf in a room full of people he’d decided were his.
She set a plate in front of me that could have fed a small regiment—eggs, bacon, biscuits, fruit. Another one landed in front of Gideon, even bigger.
“Eat,” she said. “You’re both too thin for my liking.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, because arguing with Maude about food was a waste of breath.
We dug in. For a few blessed minutes, the only conversation was between forks and plates. It wasn’t until my second biscuit that the question that had been sitting at the edge of my mind elbowed its way in.
“So,” I said, swallowing hard. “How do we … live? With him out there?”
The room tightened. Gideon’s hand found my shoulder, thumb drawing a line along my collarbone like he was reminding himself I was solid.
“We live like this,” he said. “We pay attention. We don’t give him more power than he already stole.”
“That sounds ideal,” I said dryly. “Please tell my nervous system.”
Maude snorted softly. “Your nervous system’s been doing overtime since you were twelve, dear. It could use time off.”
“I used to think if I was careful enough,” I said, staring at my coffee, “he couldn’t reach me. That if I stacked the odds in my favor with locks and lists and backup plans, I could outsmart his ghost.”
“What he did isn’t your responsibility to outsmart,” Gideon said. “It’s mine now.”
I looked up at him. “I can’t hide behind you twenty-four seven.”
“The hell you can’t.” He didn’t raise his voice, but the words rolled through the room and settled in my bones like something elemental.
Maude made a satisfied sound. “I like him,” she said.
I huffed a laugh despite myself. Before I could comment, the crunch of tires on gravel cut through the kitchen—deeper and heavier than the cab that had brought Sam.
Maude’s brows shot up. “Now who in heaven’s name—”
Gideon was already moving. His chair scraped back, his plate forgotten, his body slotting into that alert, predatory mode I was starting to recognize—the one that said he had cataloged every creak in this house and knew exactly which ones belonged and which didn’t.
“Stay here,” he told me. “Do not come outside until I tell you to.”
The command sat badly with the part of me that had been bossing herself around for years, but the part that had seen Sam’s eyes last night just nodded. “Okay.”
He brushed a kiss over the top of my head, quick and grounding, then stalked out, boots heavy and sure on the floorboards.
I went to the window, anyway. Pushing the curtain aside with two fingers, I peered out toward the drive.
The man who stepped out of the passenger side wasn’t what I expected.
Elias looked carved from something older and harder than muscle—all sharp jaw and cold, assessing blue eyes that scanned the inn like he was memorizing every angle for later use.
His hair was cut with military precision, every line deliberate, every inch of him a quiet declaration that he’d survived things most people didn’t walk away from.
He didn’t move quickly. Men like him didn’t need to. Presence did the talking.
He shut the truck door with a firm, unhurried click and squared his shoulders, and even from the window I felt it—that shift in the air, the unspoken don’t test me that clung to him the same way it did to Gideon.
He didn’t look reckless. He looked trained.
Controlled. The kind of controlled that could break into violence the moment it became necessary.
And he looked exactly like someone Gideon would trust.
Behind him, two other men climbed out—one massive and broad as a barn door, and another all strong lines and stillness. The big guy said something low under his breath that made the other one smirk, but he didn’t crack. He kept his gaze roaming the house, the yard, the tree line.
Gideon stepped onto the porch then, and for a moment the cold, tactical mask Elias wore loosened. Not much—just a flicker softening the edges of his mouth. They shook hands.
Then Gideon turned slightly, positioning himself instinctively between them and the front window—between them and me—and motioned for me to stay put.
But Elias had already seen me.
His gaze flicked up, caught mine for half a second, and there was recognition there. Not of me—but of what I meant to Gideon. Of who I was to him.
And in that moment, something in his expression shifted again. It said something in the silence.
It gave me approval. And warning.