Chapter 21
Bodie
God, I hoped she was asleep. The last thing I wanted was for her to see me like this—scraped up and hollow-eyed, wearing the night’s violence like a second skin.
The screen door creaked anyway, betraying me.
The hinges had been protesting for months now, a reminder I kept meaning to add to the growing list of things that needed fixing around here.
I quietly toed off my boots and set my keys in the ceramic bowl by the door—a delayed wedding gift from… I’d already forgotten.
I was already imagining the relief of a pillow under my head for a few precious hours before the world demanded I put the uniform back on and pretend I had it all together.
Rubble padded in from the hall with a low chuff of greeting, her tail swishing once in sleepy acknowledgment before she turned in a careful circle and flopped down on her kitchen bed with a soft groan that said it was too damned early.
I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until a light snapped on in the kitchen, the sudden brightness making me wince.
Emmaline.
She stood in the doorway like she’d been waiting, though I knew better.
More likely, she’d been getting up anyway to start her day.
I still hadn’t gotten used to the baker’s hours she kept.
Her dark hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, wisps escaping around her face in the way that always made my fingers itch to stroke it back.
She wore a faded T-shirt that might have been mine once upon a time, knotted at the hip over cotton shorts.
She froze when she saw me standing there in the half-light of the entryway, her hand still on the light switch. Then her eyes moved to my face, and I saw the exact moment she registered the damage.
The gasp she made was soft but sharp enough to cut through the quiet. “Bodie.”
My name came out like a prayer and a curse all at once.
And then she was across the kitchen before I could come up with any excuse that might make this look less bad than it was.
Her bare feet moved silently, and her hands hovered near my jaw like she was afraid to touch, afraid she might make it worse.
Then she pressed the heel of one palm gently against the side of my cheekbone where the bruise bloomed ugly and purple.
Her touch made something inside my chest break open.
“What happened?” The question was barely above a whisper, but there was steel underneath—the same tone she’d used when we were kids and someone had dared to mess with her brother.
I let out a humorless breath, easing into one of the kitchen chairs before she ordered me to.
The wood creaked under my weight, and I realized I was still wearing my utility belt, the radio crackling softly with distant dispatch calls.
“Domestic call. Husband throwing fists. Wife wasn’t gonna press charges—I saw it in her eyes before we even got her statement. ”
Emmaline’s jaw tightened, and I knew she was already putting the pieces together.
“So I let him take a swing at me.”
Her brows knit together, and the expression that crossed her face was pure horror mixed with something that might have been admiration. “You goaded him.”
I shrugged, the movement making my back complain where I’d hit the trailer’s aluminum siding.
“Assaulting an officer buys me forty-eight hours to keep him off her. Might give somebody—her sister, her friends, whoever—a chance to talk sense into her. Maybe it’s enough time for her to see what the rest of us can see clear as day. ”
She shook her head like she couldn’t believe me, like I was the most frustrating man she’d ever encountered. “You’re out of your mind.” But her voice softened on the next breath, taking on that quality that always undid me. “You’re a good man, Bodie Gibson.”
The words hit harder than Tommy Castellanos’s fist had, stealing the air from my lungs.
Coming from anyone else, they might have been easy to dismiss.
But from Emmaline—Emmaline who had every reason to think the worst of me, whose family had been at odds with mine since before we were born—they felt like absolution I didn’t deserve.
She disappeared for a moment, rummaging in the cabinet under the sink.
When she came back, she had the first-aid kit I kept there for emergencies, along with an ice pack from the freezer.
She set everything on the table with the efficient movements of someone who’d done this before.
Given what she’d grown up with, I supposed she had plenty of practice.
I didn’t remember the last time anyone had bothered to patch me up.
She snapped the kit open and pulled out gauze and antiseptic wipes. No hesitation, no questions about whether I wanted help. She tended to me like it was second nature, like we’d been doing this dance for years instead of stumbling through whatever this marriage of convenience was becoming.
Her fingers brushed my skin as she dabbed carefully at the cut along my brow, the antiseptic stinging sharp and clean.
But the sting was nothing compared to the warmth of her touch, the way her breath ghosted across my cheek as she leaned in to get a better look.
The intimacy of it was almost unbearable—too much like something real, something chosen rather than forced by circumstance and legal documents.
My body remembered too much, like it always did around her. Like the first time she’d patched me up when we were kids, back when the world was simpler and the space between our families felt like an adventure rather than a chasm.
I was thirteen, scraped raw from sliding down Miller’s Ridge on a dare that had seemed like a good idea until gravity took over.
She’d found me there in the woods, all skinny elbows and fierce determination, bossy as hell even then.
“Stop being such a baby, Bodie Gibson.” She’d crouched beside me with her dented thermos and a pack of tissues she’d probably swiped from her grandmother’s purse.
She’d poured water from that thermos onto a tissue and wiped the gravel out of my knees with hands just as gentle as they were now, muttering about how boys never had the sense God gave a goose.
Even at twelve years old, she’d had that way about her—like she could fix anything if you just gave her the right tools and stopped squirming long enough to let her work.
That memory twined with this moment until I couldn’t tell past from present, only that Emmaline Maddox had always been the one person who could make pain feel less sharp, who could make the world manageable again.
I should’ve pulled back. Should’ve broken the contact before I leaned too far into it, before I started wanting things I had no right to want. But the truth was, I didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to lose the weight of her attention, the careful way she held my face steady while she worked.
Her thumb swept just under the bruise, feather-light, and the air between us charged like a live wire.
Her face was close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in her gray eyes.
Her lips parted as if she had something more to say, some words that hung in the space between us, heavy with possibility.
And damn me, I wanted to hear them. Wanted to close the distance between us and find out if she tasted like the cinnamon rolls she baked almost daily, if her hair was as soft as it looked in the kitchen light.
The ice pack slipped against my cheek, startling us both back to reality. She pulled her hand back quickly, busying herself with shoving bandages and ointment back into the kit like she hadn’t just unraveled me with a touch. Her cheeks were flushed, and she wouldn’t quite meet my eyes.
“There.” Her voice was too brisk, too carefully controlled; her hands too precise as she snapped the lid closed with more force than necessary. “You should try to get some sleep. You’ve got to be back at the station in a few hours.”
I cleared my throat, forcing myself upright on unsteady legs. The kitchen was suddenly too small, the air too thick. “That’s the plan. Thanks for…” I gestured vaguely at my face, at the neat bandage she’d applied, at the ice pack that was already numbing the worst of the swelling.
She gave me a small, wobbly smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes and turned away, already reaching for her shoes by the door.
In half an hour she’d be at the bakery, sleeves rolled up, elbows deep in bread dough while the town slowly came to life around her.
She’d step into her day like nothing had happened, like we hadn’t just shared something that felt dangerously close to real.
I wasn’t sure I could do the same.
By the time I made it to my bedroom, exhaustion crashed over me in a wave that left me dizzy.
I stretched out on the mattress without bothering to do more than strip off my duty belt and Kevlar vest, the pillow blessedly cool against my temple.
The house settled around me with familiar creaks and sighs, the sound of Emmaline moving quietly in the kitchen below, then the rumble of her car engine as she left for work.
Rubble jumped up a moment later, her weight familiar and comforting as she circled twice before settling heavy against my legs.
I reached down absently to scratch behind her ears, but my mind was still back in the kitchen—with Emmaline’s soft touch, her worried eyes, the whisper of her voice calling me a good man like she might actually mean it.
That was the last thing I remembered before sleep dragged me under, pulling me down into dreams where the space between us wasn’t a minefield, where touching her was allowed, where the words she’d almost said were ones I was brave enough to hear.