19. Chapter 19 Evidence and Ultimatums
Suzanne
We're all crammed into the back office of the Watering Hole. Me, Cole, Nash, Willa, and Jett, who has approximately four monitors worth of security camera feeds and zero patience for anyone touching his equipment.
"There." Jett taps the screen.
Vance Adams. Clear as anything. He walks in forty minutes before he approaches our table, gets a drink at the far end of the bar, and positions himself where he can watch without being watched.
The camera above the hallway catches his face head-on when he moves toward me.
Expression flat. Deliberate. A man running a play he's run before.
My stomach turns.
"That's his approach," Nash says, arms crossed. "He scoped the room first. Identified exits. Waited until she was relaxed." He pauses. "This isn't personal. It's operational."
"It feels pretty personal," I say.
Nash looks at me. "That's the point."
Beau calls while we're still watching. He's been on the phone with his PI for the last hour, and when he talks, everyone in the room goes quiet.
"Vance Adams worked the Dalton campaign two cycles ago," Beau says through the speaker.
"Buried a paternity suit for one of Dalton's staffers.
Before that, a harassment settlement for a state senator.
He's been cleaning up messes for fifteen years.
" A beat. "And he's been on Daniel Harrison's payroll since January. "
Daniel Harrison.
The name drops into the room like something heavy.
I've been avoiding saying it out loud. Like saying it makes it more real. Like it gives him more power than he already has.
Daniel Harrison. State senate candidate. Married. Charming. The kind of man who makes a room feel warmer just by walking in. I know better than anyone how cold he actually runs.
"January," Cole says quietly. "That's before she came back to Whiskey Bend."
"He's been tracking her since before she left the city," Nash confirms. "He knew she was pregnant before she got here."
The room is very still.
I look at my hands in my lap. They're not shaking. I'm almost surprised.
I've been scared for so long it's started to feel like a baseline. Like the weather. Just the permanent condition of being me, being in this situation, carrying this baby and this secret and this weight.
But sitting here, in Jett's cluttered back office with camera footage and a PI report and four people who showed up without being asked, something shifts.
The fear is still there.
But under it, something else is burning.
"We have his face, his timeline, and a financial connection to Harrison's campaign," Beau says. "My PI is pulling phone records. Give him forty-eight hours."
"We have forty-eight hours," Cole says. His voice is even. "Vance gave her a week."
"Then we'll be done in two days," Beau says. Like it's simple. Like he's rerouting a fence line, not dismantling a political operative.
I love this family so much it scares me.
Willa squeezes my hand under the table. I squeeze back.
We break up around one in the morning. Nash takes Willa home. Jett stays to lock up, and I can hear him having what sounds like a stern conversation with General Tso through the back door. The rooster must have slipped into the storage room again.
Cole walks me out.
The street is quiet. Butter & Bean sits dark across the way, the new locks catching the streetlight. Cole had those installed a week ago. New cameras, too. Every window, every door.
He built a perimeter around my life before I even asked him to.
I stop in the middle of the street.
"I need to go in," I say. "There are things I need to prepare for the morning opening. I won't be long."
Cole looks at me. "It's one in the morning."
"I know what time it is."
He studies my face for a second, then nods and follows me across the street without another word.
I unlock the front door and flip on the back kitchen lights only.
The shop settles around me, familiar and mine.
The smell of coffee and old wood and the faint sweetness of whatever I baked yesterday.
My grandmother's menu board is on the wall.
Her apron still hangs on the hook by the door because I can't bring myself to move it.
I don't go to the prep counter.
I stand in the middle of the kitchen, and I shake.
Not fear. Not exactly. It comes up fast and sideways, the way emotion does when you've been holding it back for hours, and your body finally decides it's enough.
Cole is behind me before I finish the first breath. Both arms around me, my back to his chest, his chin dropping to the top of my head.
"I've got you," he says.
"I know." My voice cracks. "That's the thing. I know you do."
He holds me while I get it out. He doesn't tell me it's okay or that everything will be fine. He just holds on, solid and warm and steady, until the shaking stops and I can breathe again.
And then I turn around.
I look up at him in the low light. His jaw is tight, his eyes dark, watching me the way he always does. Like I'm something worth watching. Like I matter.
The fear is still in me. It probably always will be, some small version of it, for a while.
But so is this.
I grab the front of his shirt and pull him down to me.
He makes a low sound against my mouth, not surprise, more like relief, and his hands go to my hips and haul me in.
We collide in the middle of the kitchen in the dark, and it's not soft.
It's not careful. It's all the hours of tonight and last night and every night before it, all the fear and the fury and the wanting, and it finally has somewhere to go.
He lifts me onto the prep counter like I weigh nothing, stepping between my knees, and I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer.
"Suzanne." My name in his mouth, rough and low.
"Don't stop," I say against his lips.
He doesn't.
His hands push up under my shirt, palms flat against my ribs, thumbs tracing the underwire of my bra like he's learning me by touch. I arch into it. His mouth drags down my throat, teeth grazing my pulse point, and I dig my fingers into his hair and hold on.
"Cole." Barely a word. More breath than sound.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. The kitchen is dark, and his eyes are darker, and the way he's looking at me makes my whole chest ache.
"Tell me what you need," he says.
I reach for the hem of my shirt and pull it over my head.
That's an answer enough.
He takes his time even though we're both desperate, even though my fingers are digging into his shoulders and he's breathing hard against my skin.
He unclasps my bra and drops it somewhere behind me, and then his mouth is on me, slow and deliberate, and I have to brace both hands on the counter behind me just to stay upright.
"You're going to be the end of me," I breathe.
I feel him smile against my skin. "That's the plan."
He works me like he has all night. Like there's nothing else, no threat, no evidence, no fixer with a candidate's name in his contact list, just the low light and his hands and his mouth and the small sounds I stop trying to swallow.
When his fingers find the waistband of my jeans, I lift my hips and let him work them down, and he looks up at me once, checking, and I nod before he even finishes the question.
His touch is precise and unhurried, and I am not. I grip the back of his neck and press my forehead to his hair and come apart quietly in my grandmother's kitchen, biting down hard on the sound, my whole body shaking for an entirely different reason than before.
He holds me through it. Both arms around me, my face tucked against his throat.
When I finally come back, I reach for his belt.
He catches my hands.
"Hey." His voice is rough, but his eyes are soft. "Tonight was a lot. We don't have to…"
"Cole." I look at him steadily. "I know what I want."
A beat. Something moves through his face.
Then he lets me.
We're not quiet about it this time. The counter is cold at my back, and he is very much not, and at some point, he says my name like it's the only word left, and I pull him closer and think yes, this, exactly this.
When we finally come back down, I'm half in his lap on the prep counter, my head against his chest, his hand resting flat on my belly. Gentle. Present. He does that without thinking, reaches for the baby as if it's already instinct.
My eyes sting.
The kitchen is quiet. The streetlight comes through the high window in a thin stripe across the floor. Somewhere outside, Jett's truck starts up and pulls away.
Cole shifts just enough to press his forehead to mine. I close my eyes.
For a second, it's just this, just us, just the quiet and his breath and mine.
His hand on my belly tightens. Just slightly. Like he's holding on to something he's scared to lose.
"Marry me."
His voice is low. Certain. Not a question.
But his breath catches on the last word. Just barely. Enough that I feel it against my skin.
Not a question at all.
My eyes open.
He's already looking at me. And for the first time, Cole Harper doesn't look steady at all.