Chapter 55
KNOX
We’d gone from tangled in the sheets to fully dressed and pacing within minutes. The photo sat on her phone like a grenade with the pin pulled. A moment that had been ours, now poisoned by six words from an unknown number.
NO ONE TAKES WHAT IS MINE.
We didn’t have to say his name. We both knew. Only one person on this earth would have followed us to a grocery store and snapped that photo. Claimed her as his. Only one person would have wanted us to know he was watching.
Silas.
Harper sat on the edge of the bed with her arms wrapped around herself, and I wore a path into the floor between the window and the door, checking the locks for the third time, scanning the tree line for the fourth.
I’d already called Ryker. He was rallying the guys.
All I could do now was wait, and waiting had never been something I did well.
Making coffee and watching Harper seemed as good a distraction as any.
In the kitchen, Harper busied herself with cleaning.
“I think you should move out,” Harper suddenly said.
Six words. Seven, if you count the knife she twisted between them.
I set my coffee mug down slowly. “Pardon me?”
Harper rearranged dishes that didn’t need rearranging. She wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t even glance over her shoulder. Which told me everything I needed to know. Whatever she was about to say next, it was going to be complete bullshit, and she knew that if I saw her face, I’d call it exactly that.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said carefully. “And I think it would be best if we lived apart.”
I leaned back in my chair and studied the rigid line of her spine. The way her fingers gripped the edge of the countertop just a little too hard. The slight tremor in her shoulders she thought I couldn’t see.
I could always see.
I scrubbed a hand over my face and leaned forward. “We can move,” I said quietly. “Somewhere new. Somewhere he doesn’t know about.”
Because I already knew what this was really about. It had nothing to do with our relationship and everything to do with the six-foot shadow she couldn’t outrun.
Her lower lip trembled. “I did that already.” Her voice cracked on the last word. “He found me anyway. He’ll just find me again.”
Something hot and dangerous stirred in my chest. I pressed my tongue against my molars and breathed through it.
“And if he finds you here?” I asked. “And I’m not around to protect you?”
She swiped at a tear before it could fall. “I can protect myself. If you’re not living with me, I can buy a gun. Register it legally. It won’t violate your parole.”
The words hit me like a sucker punch.
This woman. This five-foot-four, hundred-twenty-pound woman, who flinched when a cabinet door closed too hard, was telling me she wanted to arm herself against a man twice her size.
Not because she felt strong. Because she was terrified.
And she loved me enough to face that terror alone rather than risk my freedom.
I wanted to flip the table. I wanted to hunt Silas down and finish what every instinct in my body had been screaming at me to do since the moment I first saw the scar on her face.
Instead, I focused on my breathing. “Would a Glock make you feel safer than having me next to you?”
She looked at me then. Finally. Those green eyes, red-rimmed and glassy, and she couldn’t even pretend. Couldn’t manufacture another one of those plastic smiles.
“You don’t want me here,” I said, “because if he shows up, you’re afraid I’ll end up back in prison for protecting you.”
“You can’t go back to prison.” Her voice splintered. “I just got you, Knox.”
“I just got you.”
Words that opened a wound I didn’t know I still had.
Fourteen years behind concrete walls and steel doors.
I’d counted every single day. Not for myself.
For Gwen. For every birthday I missed, every nightmare I wasn’t there to chase away, every school play where the seat I should’ve been sitting in stayed empty.
I’d served my time. I’d gotten my second chance.
And now I had Harper, who looked at me like I was something worth saving.
And the sick, honest truth? The one I would never say out loud?
I’d go back. I’d rot in that cell for another eleven years, another lifetime, if it meant she stayed breathing.
But I also had a daughter who’d already lost her father once. And a better man, a smarter man, would make damn sure it didn’t come to that.
There had to be a way out of this nightmare.
The restraining order that Harper had filed after he’d hit her was a start.
If the prison had filed charges against Silas rather than simply firing him, that would have helped too.
But some prisons don’t air their dirty laundry. They handle things internally.
“You can’t endanger your life to protect mine,” she said.
“Ditto, Princess.”
Her eyes flashed. I almost smiled. Because even terrified and trembling, Harper had enough fight in her to go toe to toe with me, and God help me, I loved her for it.
My lip quirked. “If you want to kick me out because I’m a terrible boyfriend or because you’ve decided this relationship isn’t what you want, I’ll accept that.” I held her gaze. “But you’re going to have to look me in the eyes and tell me that’s the truth.”
She swallowed again. Said nothing.
“Okay then.” I leaned back, spreading my hands. “Seeing as how I’m apparently an incredible boyfriend and you very much want this relationship to continue, this isn’t about us. It’s about your safety.”
“And yours,” she shot back, stepping closer. Her fingernail was still working that spot on her thumb raw. “Knox, you’re not hearing me. If he comes after me …”
“If he comes after you, I will protect you.”
“Exactly.” She threw up her hands. “That’s exactly the problem.
I know you will. Just like you protected me from Doyle.
But you can’t get into any kind of violent confrontation.
Not a shove, not a punch, not even a look that a parole officer could twist into a threat.
One incident, and you go back for at least eleven more years.
Longer if you hurt him. Forever if you …
” Her voice dropped, and when she spoke again, it was barely above a whisper.
“You just got your daughter back. You just got your life back. We just started our life. I know we haven’t been together that long, but I can’t imagine a single day without you in it anymore.
And I won’t survive if you end up on the other side of those bars again. ”
The words settled over the room like ash after an explosion.
I sat there and let them burn.
Because she wasn’t wrong. That was the part that gutted me. She wasn’t being dramatic or irrational. She was laying out the exact nightmare we were now facing.
If Silas came for her and I did what every cell in my body demanded, I’d lose everything. My freedom. My daughter. The woman who’d somehow made me believe I deserved a life outside those walls.
But if I did nothing? If I just waited for police and hoped they’d lock him away for life BEFORE he committed a crime that would put him there? If I stood there and watched while he …
My hands stretched. Not a crack. A stretch. The kind that meant my patience was dissolving and something far more primal was taking its place.
Harper’s eyes tracked my hands, and I watched the flicker of recognition cross her face. She knew what that meant. She’d learned to read me the way I’d learned to read her.
I moved toward her. Slowly. The way you approach someone who’s been conditioned to expect the worst from the people who are supposed to love them.
I bent my knees so I wasn’t towering over her. Brought myself down to her level, close enough that I could see the faint gold flecks in those green eyes.
“Hey,” I said softly.
She blinked, and two more tears slipped free.
I lifted my hand and cupped the side of her neck, my thumb resting just below her jaw. Beneath my palm, her pulse was hammering. Frantic. A trapped-bird rhythm that made my chest ache.
Then, slowly, beat by beat, it started to settle.
Her breathing evened out. Her shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. The tension in her jaw released. Like my touch was a frequency her body recognized. A signal that said safe.
And I thought, If I’m not here to do this, if I’m locked in a cell and she’s out here alone and her pulse is racing like this and there’s no one to bring her back down …
I closed my eyes. Swallowed the thought before it could destroy me.
“Look,” she whispered, her voice steadier now. “Maybe when you were in prison, all you could do was take things one day at a time. But out here, we have options. We have choices. We don’t have to sit in a cell and imagine how we’d fight back. We can actually do something.”
I opened my eyes. Rubbed my thumb gently along the curve of her neck. “When did you get so smart?”
“I’ve always been this smart. You were just too distracted by my ass to notice.”
A surprised laugh broke out of me. She gave me a watery smile, and I pulled her closer, pressing my lips to her forehead.
“Okay,” I murmured against her skin. “Let’s talk options.”
She nodded and pulled back just enough to look at me. “Okay.”
“We can set up a security system. Cameras, sensors, the whole thing.” I let my hand slide from her neck to her shoulder, keeping contact. Needing contact. “We could move into the Sinners and Saints mansion. Get armed detail if we want it.”
“Like bodyguards?”
“Like armed men who get paid to make sure nobody gets within a hundred yards of you.”
Her brow furrowed. “Would that violate your parole?”
“I’ll call my parole officer and find out. But a security detail protecting my residence shouldn’t be an issue. I’m not the one carrying the weapons.”
She chewed her lip, processing. I could practically see the gears turning.
“We could also relocate under someone else’s name,” I added. “New address. New lease. Put the paperwork under a business name or something so Silas can’t find it in a search.”
She nodded slowly, some of the panic draining from her posture. Not all of it. Not even most. But enough that she wasn’t vibrating anymore.
“While we debate a longer-term solution, I’ll talk to Jace.” I tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear, letting my fingers linger. “With any luck, we’ll have security in place by tomorrow.”
She leaned into my hand, and for a moment, the kitchen was quiet. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the soft flicker of a lavender candle and the sound of two people holding on to each other because the alternative was unthinkable.
I pulled her against my chest and rested my chin on top of her head. Felt her arms wrap around my waist, her fingers gripping the back of my shirt like I might disappear.
I wouldn’t. Not if I had any say in it. I’d burn the whole world down before I let anyone take this from us.
The next day, Jace had a security team at our door by noon. Two guys. Former military. The kind of men who scanned rooftops out of habit and slept with one eye open. They parked a black SUV at the end of the driveway like a period at the end of a sentence.
We filed a police report about the photo. Handed over the phone. Answered every question they had. And then we waited.
Days passed. Then a week. Then two.
During which time, Harper had been on edge.
When we got a flat tire, she was convinced it was Silas—biting her nail, fearful eyes darting to every passing car, waiting for him to materialize.
When junk mail arrived from a legal firm that specialized in wills, her hands went still over the envelope for a long moment before she set it down.
But nothing came of any of it. Small things. Explainable things. And the police kept reminding us there had been no new official incidents from Silas. No more photos. No more texts. No unknown numbers lighting up her phone in the dark.
“My guess is, he’s running out of money and running out of options,” the detective said. “Men like him don’t stick around when the game stops being fun.”
I wanted to believe that. Harper needed me to believe that.
So, I tried.
The security team became part of the background, and after a while, we stopped noticing them. Harper went back to work. We cooked dinner together and fell asleep on the couch, watching movies, and woke up with her hair in my mouth and her cold feet pressed against my shins.
Normal. We were building something normal.
And maybe that was the problem. Maybe we let ourselves become complacent …