Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Savannah
Later that night the rental cabin creaks—old bones complaining, old wood flexing.
I don’t mind it. The sound is honest. Mountain wind presses its cold face against my window, and the Phantom River chatters a low, steady secret behind the trees.
I flip through incident notes at my tiny kitchen table, a mug cooling beside me, the lamp throwing a warm halo across the page.
My porch light flickers. Twice. Then steadies.
I glance up in time to catch headlights sliding along the snowbank at the end of my drive. A black truck glides past. Slow enough to count the bolts on my mailbox. Slow enough to know the driver isn’t in any hurry.
My heart gives an undisciplined thud.
I wait.
Ten minutes later, the truck passes again.
I don’t even pretend to read after that. The mug is halfway to my mouth when I set it down, grab my jacket, and step outside into breath-stinging air.
The sky is a deep cobalt, the kind that makes the snow glow. The porch boards are cold through my socks—stupid, I know—but I’m moving before sense can catch up. I hit the top step just as the truck slows for a third pass and pulls to the shoulder.
The driver’s door opens.
Axel climbs out like gravity was built for him and him alone.
Big. Quiet. Shoulders filling out a navy jacket, collar raised against the wind.
Snow decides to soften around him, apparently charmed, which is irritating.
His breath shows in long, controlled streams. He sees me on the porch and goes very, very still.
“Evening,” I say, voice light in a way that’s not natural for me, not anymore. “Patrol’s late in this neighborhood.”
He looks like he’d prefer a two-alarm fire to this conversation. “Power lines,” he says. “After the storm.”
I lean on the porch post and deliberately glance up at the steady, non-flickering lines. “Mm. They look very… liney.”
He huffs, the closest thing to a laugh. “Sometimes they don’t look wrong until they’re wrong.”
“Is that a technical term, Captain?”
“I’m not a captain,” he mutters.
“To me you are.” I smile, and his jaw tightens like I tugged a string attached to his pulse.
His gaze drags over my socks—pink with little snowflakes—and then up my bare shins to the hem of my sleep shorts, lingering there a fraction too long before he jerks his focus to my face like he’s punishing himself.
“It’s twenty-four degrees,” he says, somehow making it sound like a sin. “Where are your boots?”
“Inside,” I say. “Where boots go.”
He stares, deadpan. “Put them on, Snowflake.”
“You can’t order me around on my own porch, Ramirez.”
He takes a slow step to the base of my stairs and tips his head up. “You going to come down here, or do I need to drag you into the house and make you put real clothes on?”
Heat flashes through me so fast my breath fogs twice as hard. I raise a brow. “Threatening a paramedic. Bold choice.”
“Observation,” he says, too calm. “You’re shivering.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m—” A full-body shiver picks that exact moment to rattle me. I scowl. He doesn’t smile, but his eyes heat in a way that says he wants to.
“Fine,” I say, trying not to curl my toes against the cold boards. “Neighborhood Watch, hm? Are you going to write me a citation for improper sock usage?”
“Thinking about it.” Another step. He’s one tread away now, looking up at me like we’ve rewound ten years and we’re arguing about who gets the river rope swing. Except nothing about this feels young.
He shields his eyes from the porch light with two fingers, scanning the eaves, the lines, the street. He’s not faking it, I notice. He actually checks the transformer down the road, the connections at the pole, the icicles hanging in dagger rows off my roofline.
“You really came to check the power lines?” I ask, softer.
He shrugs one shoulder. “Storm hit a couple of weak spots on my street. Figured I’d look.” A beat. “And drive by.”
“Twice.”
His mouth curves. “Three. If we’re telling the truth.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. “Why?”
He drags a hand over the back of his neck. The motion lifts his jacket just enough to reveal the worn hem of his gray t-shirt and the bracket of muscle at his hip. I look away before I stare like an idiot.
“Wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says simply.
“I was okay the first time.”
“Didn’t feel like enough.”
Oh. Okay. That lands low and warm.
“Also,” he adds, eyes flicking to the porch light, “your light’s dirty. That can cause a flicker.”
“Oh no,” I deadpan. “Not… dirt.”
His mouth twitches. “You need a ladder?”
“I have a chair.”
“Chairs aren’t ladders.”
“They are if you believe in them,” I say, and the corner of his mouth actually, actually lifts.
“Get your boots, Savannah,” he says, low.
The way he says my name steals heat from my hands and puts it—unhelpfully—elsewhere.
“Fine. Bossy.” I turn to go in.
He clears his throat. “Lock the door behind you.”
I pause, hand on the knob. “Is the neighborhood dangerous?”
“Only if you invite trouble onto the porch.”
“And who would that be?”
His eyes hold mine. Heavy. Hot. “Me.”
The word slices the air clean. My pulse hops. I shut the door because he told me to and because I need thirty seconds of wood between us to reset my breathing.
Boots. Jacket. Beanie. I open the door again and he’s still there, one hand braced on the rail now, head tipped back to watch the valley. He can be perfectly still in a way that used to make me crazy—like a coiled spring disguised as a statue.
“Approved attire?” I ask.
He gives me a slow once-over that feels like a warm hand down my spine. “Better.”
“Good. Because I’m not losing toes for your kink about footwear.”
He coughs into his fist. “Not a kink.”
“So you say.”
He looks like he’s choosing between laughing and throwing me over his shoulder. He doesn’t do either. “Show me your ladder-chair.”
I bring the chair out. He stares at it like it insulted his heritage. “That chair’s older than both of us.”
“Which means it’s trustworthy.” I set it under the light and reach for the fixture. He steps forward so fast the cold air shrinks.
“Absolutely not.” His palm wraps around my waist and pivots me aside—gentle, effortless, like I weigh the same as the wind.
My body knows him before my brain signs off. Heat leaps where his fingers press through my jacket. The porch, the river, the night—everything narrows to his hand and the scent of cedar and smoke.
“Axel,” I warn. It comes out thinner than I want.
“Stand there,” he says. Not unkind. Just unfiltered. He sets his big hands on the rickety chair and checks the wobble, expression flat with disapproval, then climbs up carefully, bracing one palm to the siding. The jacket stretches across his back. My mouth goes inconveniently dry.
He unscrews the cover, wipes the inside with his shirt hem like he promised me nothing explicit and then did that anyway, checks the bulb, reseats it, and clicks the cover back into place. The light glows steady and bright.
He steps down. He’s closer than he needs to be when his boots hit the boards. We don’t move.
“You were right,” he says, breath fogging between us. “Dirt.”
“Yikes,” I whisper. “A menace, truly.”
The corner of his mouth lifts again. I want to lick it. I don’t. I fold my arms to pin my hands to my ribs and pretend I’m not thinking about the angle his jaw would give me if he leaned down.
“You eat?” he asks, unexpected.
“Define ‘eat.’”
“Not coffee.”
“Rude.” I consider the truth. “I had a protein bar at four.”
His eyes close for half a second like he needs a prayer to deal with me. “Get your coat on properly. I’m taking you to the diner.”
“It’s nine-thirty.”
“Congratulations on knowing numbers. Let’s go.”
“Wow. Dictatorial.”
“It’s dinner.”
“Is this part of the Neighborhood Watch too?”
“It’s part of the Ramirez Program for People Who Work Until They Forget They Have Bodies,” he says flatly. “Get in the truck.”
I should bristle. He didn’t ask. He told.
But the way he does it—practical, protective, completely unbothered by whether I’ll say yes—makes something inside me unclench. Like I’m allowed to be taken care of for twenty minutes, whether I think I deserve it or not.
“I have soup,” I lie.
“What kind?”
“Canned.”
“Show me.”
I blink. “Show you?”
“Yeah.”
I cross my arms tighter. “No.”
He chuckles, low and dangerous. “Then get in the truck.”
I hold his stare for three beats, then sigh like he’s the most annoying person I’ve ever met. “Fine. But I’m not sitting on the same side of the booth.”
“Like hell you aren’t.”
My breath goes short. He seems to realize exactly what he said at the same time I do. The night tightens. The river hushes.
We don’t move for a long second.
Then he rocks back on his heels, tone dialing down a notch. “Front counter’s fine.”
I should toy with him. Tease. Make him sweat.
Instead I say, “Okay,” because that softening cost him something, and I recognize the way his hand flexes when he chooses the careful path.
We lock up. He walks me to the truck with that quiet, predatory grace that makes the hair on my arms rise. He opens the passenger door and waits like he always did, like there’s a universe where chivalry learned to bench-press and glower.
The diner is half empty, the kind of locals-only lull where everyone knows when you exhale. The waitress behind the counter lifts her chin at me, then at Axel, a slow smile creeping in like I just brought her a gossip cupcake.
“Evening,” she says. “Two for trouble?”
“Just food,” Axel says.
“For now,” she murmurs, and slides menus our way.
We order without thinking—him meatloaf, me grilled cheese with tomato because I have six-year-old taste in comfort food. He doesn’t tease. He just nods like he knew I’d say it.
“You look tired,” he says, elbows on the counter, forearms braced, hands loose. “You on tomorrow?”
“Day shift,” I say. “Training refreshers. You?”
“Double. We’re thin.”
“You always are.”
He makes a noncommittal sound that means don’t worry about me. I roll my eyes. He notices. He always notices.
“Why the drive-bys, really?” I ask, twirling the straw in my water. “And don’t say lines. The lines are fine.”
He studies my face like he’s cataloging microfractures I don’t know I have. “Wanted to be sure nothing… surprised you.”
I blink. “Like what?”
“Like this mountain sometimes does what it wants. Like a memory. Like a night you didn’t see coming.” His voice drops. “Like today.”
The truth lands in the softest part of me. I swallow. “You saw me go out to the property.”
He nods once. “Didn’t want you there alone.”
“I’ve been alone a long time, Axel.”
“Yeah.” He looks at his hands. “I know.”
Our food arrives. He pushes the ketchup toward me because he remembers I dump it on grilled cheese like a heathen. I take it, and when my fingers brush the glass bottle, his eyes flick up like I touched him instead.
We eat. Or we try. Every motion scrapes nerve endings raw.
He catches me looking at his hands. I catch him looking at my mouth.
It’s a problem.
Colleen floats by with pie offers and a wink aimed at both of us like she approves of whatever this is and plans to officiate the wedding.
After, he pays before I can reach my wallet. I protest; he ignores me.
Back in the truck, the heater hums, and the windows fog a little with our mingled breath. He doesn’t start the engine. He stares at the windshield like answers are written in frost.
“You can’t keep checking on me,” I say gently.
“Can’t or shouldn’t?” He glances over. His profile in the dash glow is almost too much—strong nose, stubborn mouth, eyes that hold entire storms.
“Both.”
He taps the steering wheel twice. “I’ll try.”
He won’t. And part of me doesn’t want him to.
Outside, snow thickens. The world shrinks to the circle of light from the streetlamp. We breathe in sync without meaning to. The truck is too small again, and his attention is a physical thing sliding along my skin.
“Savannah,” he says, like a warning. Or a plea.
I turn toward him fully. “What?”
His jaw works. “I’m not… good at pretending nothing’s happening.”
“No,” I say, breathless and honest. “You’re not.”
He exhales like relief hurts. “You feel it.”
It’s not a question.
I lift my chin. “You know I do.”
Silence crackles between us, hot and cold at once. He reaches up and tugs his beanie off, drags a hand through his hair, then braces that hand against the back of my headrest without touching me.
“Tell me to stop,” he says. Voice low. Rough. “And I will.”
I don’t tell him anything.
I just sit there, painfully still, heartbeat in my mouth, while he looks at me like I’m the first sunrise he’s seen in a decade.
He leans in—a fraction, then another—then doesn’t. He arrests the motion with a quiet, savage sound, head tipping back to the ceiling like he’s wrestling himself to the floor of the ring.
“I can’t screw this up,” he says, not to me, not really. “I won’t.”
“Then don’t,” I whisper.
He laughs once, broken. “Right. Simple.”
We don’t kiss. He doesn’t touch me. We sit and breathe and burn until my skin tingles and my spine refuses to hold me upright.
He starts the truck with a rough twist. The world widens again.
He drives me the one minute back to my cabin. Leaves the engine running. Walks me to the porch like we’re eighty and etiquette is life and death. Stands one step below me, hands in his jacket pockets so he can’t do anything we’ll both regret.
“Your light’s steady,” he says.
“Thank you for defeating dirt.”
“You’re welcome.”
I look up at him, snow lacing his hair. He stares back down, an entire conversation locked in his eyes.
“You going to drive by again?” I ask.
He considers lying. He doesn’t bother. “Yeah.”
My mouth curves. “Okay.”
The admission puts a raw, unguarded satisfaction on his face that is pure trouble for a woman trying not to fall back into a fire she barely crawled out of once.
“Good night, Ax,” I say, soft.
His eyes flare at the name. He steps up one tread, close enough that the heat rolls off him, not close enough to do anything about it. His hand lifts like it has its own mind, hovers an inch from my cheek, then falls.
“Night, Savannah.”
I unlock my door and slip inside before I test my own restraint to failure. I lock it. Put my forehead to the wood. Breathe.
Through the peephole, I watch him walk back to the truck.
He pauses at the end of my path, looks up at the porch light one last time, then at the bedroom window like he can see straight through the curtains to the pulse in my throat.
He shakes his head at himself, a tiny, disbelieving smile breaking like dawn across his mouth.
Then he gets in and drives away.
Ten minutes later, the truck rolls by again. Slower. A little cocky this time, like we’ve both stopped pretending we don’t know what we’re doing.
I let myself smile in the dark.
The porch light stays steady all night.