Chapter 46
forty-six
. . .
SUTTON
THREE MONTHS LATER
“Are you excited?” Lane asked, his nose nuzzling mine.
“Yes,” I admitted. “But also nervous?”
“You’ll be fine, sunny. It’s like riding a bike.”
I smacked him playfully on the shoulder. “I know how to do my job. I’m talking about facing everyone after everything.”
He brushed my hair back from my face, his hand resting on my cheek. “You did nothing wrong, sunny. You were the victim of a very emotionally unstable woman and a jealous man. If anyone gives you shit for it, you send them my way, and I’ll deal with it.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not going to whine to my boyfriend if people are mean to me.”
“Why not? I don’t know if you know this, but your boyfriend? He’s kind of the sheriff of this whole county.”
“How could I forget, Chief?”
Lane playfully smacked my ass and dragged me closer.
Though I knew he was trying to reassure me, I didn’t think I’d fully be able to shake these nerves until tomorrow when I finally walked into the firehouse for the first time in, hell, almost four months.
Logically, I knew Lane was right, but I worried my colleagues would still look at me differently.
At least I’d have Crew there.
It had been a long three months of healing.
In addition to a pretty severe concussion and the wound to my abdomen we still couldn’t explain the source of—my memories of the actual accident were a blackhole, and for that, I was thankful—I’d also broken my wrist. I was now the proud owner of a gnarly scar on my stomach and was prone to headaches if I spent too much time staring at a screen.
Addie had also survived the accident and, in a cruel twist of fate that pissed me off to no end, had been declared clinically unfit to stand trial.
Because I had no energy to prolong the process, to wait around for months or even years for Addie to be declared “sane” again, Berkley had instead reached a settlement agreement.
Hopefully, Addie stayed locked up forever.
I was grateful she was out of our lives for good, but it still irked me to know she would likely get out one day and be free to terrorize the world yet again.
Still, we filed restraining orders against her as a failsafe in case that did happen, and we were trying to move on with our lives.
I’d spent a lot more time in therapy, often having three or more sessions a week. I had so much I needed to unpack, the whole ordeal triggering a lot of things I thought I’d moved past.
The settlement agreement was a big one. The fact that, yet again, someone who had deeply harmed me wouldn’t serve proper prison time for their actions.
Lane had been a rock at my side, even while dealing with his own shit, namely the high turnover rate at the department.
Johns was set to stand trial early next year, facing a whole slew of charges including aiding and abetting and conspiracy.
Though he’d tried to flip on Addie, by that time, she’d already been declared insane, so any information he could’ve provided wouldn’t do any good.
I hoped he would spend a long time behind bars, but we filed restraining orders against him as well. Just in case.
In the months since, Lane had let a handful of deputies go, ones who had helped Johns in his plot against Lane, or who had stood by and done nothing to stop him.
God, that sounded so cheesy, like the plot of some thriller movie.
In a much-needed stroke of luck, everything coincided with college graduations, which meant he’d had no shortage of applicants for the open positions.
Things seemed to be on the upswing. My house held too many bad memories now, so shortly after being discharged from the hospital, I put it on the market. Last week, we officially closed the sale to a wonderful newlywed couple.
After having our entire lives upended in the most dramatic way, I was grateful we’d returned mostly to normal.
“Where’d you go?” Lane asked.
I shook my head. “Sorry, just thinking about everything.”
He grinned, leaning in to kiss me. “How about I take your mind off it?”
In response, I slung my leg over his hip. We were laying side by side in bed, already naked from the night before, and it was too easy for him to roll his hips and slide inside me.
We both sighed happily.
Lane wrapped his hand around my thigh, holding me in place as he slowly fucked me.
“I was so scared I lost you for good,” he said as he rocked into me.
“Now you know how I felt,” I joked, though my laughter morphed into a moan as he hit that sweet spot deep inside.
There was nothing hurried about his strokes, and while the slow build drove me insane, it was also doing wonders to clear my head of all the bad shit we’d endured, exactly as he’d intended.
“Never again, sunny,” he said, pace increasing slightly.
“You got it, Chief,” I gasped, my legs starting to shake as pleasure coiled tighter in my core. “Now make me come.”
Rolling us so I was on my back, he gripped the backs of my thighs and spread me wide, pounding into me with enough force to make the headboard snap against the wall repeatedly.
“Fuck, fuck,” I breathed as the pressure got to be too much. “Ahh, I’m—”
My words choked off into a scream as I shattered.
Lane followed me down, pulsing and spilling inside me, burying his face in my neck as he said, “Fuck, I love you.”
I smoothed my hands down the tense muscles of his back until he relaxed, then pulled out and flopped onto the bed at my side.
Turning toward him, he opened his arm, and I nestled against his chest.
“Not as much as I love you.”
He grinned and kissed my nose. “Agree to disagree.”