Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The lights at Harvey’s Cabins glowed low, a handful of porch bulbs cutting through the night like memory—warm, tired, and just bright enough to remind him how late it was.
Buddy parked in front of Fallon’s place, shut off the engine, and sat there long enough for the crickets to fill the silence. The air hung thick with salt and swamp—Florida’s version of grief.
Trent was stable.
The doctor had said it three times, like Buddy wouldn’t believe him.
He’d seen the man himself—gray, pale, still managing to charm two nurses and make Dove blush hard enough to color the entire room. That was damn near impossible to do. But if those two lasted more than a week, it would be a miracle.
Buddy half expected to find Fallon at the hospital. Of course, he’d been late getting there, and she’d already left. So he came here—because he had to see her. Had to make sure she was actually fine.
Her house sat quiet except for the low hum of her AC unit kicking on and off. The porch light was still on, a habit she’d picked up after the night her friend disappeared. She’d told him that once, offhand, like it was nothing. But he knew better. People left lights on for ghosts.
He stepped onto the porch, boots whispering over the wood, and knocked.
A second later, the door opened. She stood in cutoff shorts and a thin tank, hair in a messy knot, eyes tired but alert.
She looked like someone who’d spent the last few hours replaying every second of her near miss—and then kept going because that’s what she did.
She was strong that way. One of the strongest people he knew. He admired her. Adored her.
The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. But he knew he’d already done that, and he couldn’t do it again.
“Hey,” she said quietly.
“Hey, back.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.” She hesitated, fingers still on the door. “I was just watching some stupid reality show. Women screaming at each other. It’s a lesson in mental health and my guilty pleasure.”
He chuckled. “I can’t picture you watching that crap.”
Fallon’s lips curved to a smile that didn’t quite make it to her eyes. “Oh, it’s freaking hilarious. It’s better than watching Silas and old man Peters play chess while waving guns at each other.”
“That is something,” he said, holding her gaze. “I wanted to see you.”
She blinked, that slow kind of blink that tried to hide too many thoughts. “You could’ve texted.”
“That would be communicating through words. I wanted to see you with my eyes while I had a conversation with you. Not the same thing.”
“Semantics.” She opened the door wider. “Come in.”
The house smelled faintly of cider and cinnamon. Her boots sat by the door, next to a half-unpacked crate marked TESSA PROJECT—SUPPLIES. He followed her into the kitchen, where she reached for two glasses and a dusty whiskey bottle with a peeling label.
“You look like you need this more than I do,” she said, pouring generously.
“Probably true.” He took the glass when she handed it over. Their fingers brushed. Warm. Comfortable. Familiar. And yet, utterly frightening.
They drank in silence for a while, the kind of silence that had shape—thick with things neither wanted to say first.
She set down her glass with a soft clink. “Trent could’ve died today—for me.”
“But he didn’t.”
“He didn’t have to do anything but call it in,” she said.
“What he did was just plain crazy and his mother was in tears when they brought him in. I was waiting for her famous lecture about being reckless, but then she turned to me and told me how grateful she’d been that he’d been there.
That he’d done the right thing, just like his father would’ve done if he’d still been alive. What a mind fuck.”
“Fallon—”
She held up her hand. “I keep thinking what if he hadn’t been there. What if Harley hadn’t been there? What if I hadn’t seen that oil slick? It's just luck. Dumb, stupid luck that any of us made it out. Change one thing and we're having a completely different conversation .”
“You can what-if yourself until the cows come home, but one thing will still stay the same. You could’ve died out there today.”
Her mouth curved into a, humorless. “You ever try telling your brain that when you’ve been shot at, and someone you care about takes the bullet for you?”
“More than once,” he said. “It doesn’t listen, but eventually, it settles. It has to.”
Her gaze flicked up, sharp and searching. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
He couldn’t deny it. He wouldn’t. That would make him a bigger dick than he already was. “I have.”
“Why?”
He rubbed a hand across his jaw, the rasp of his stubble grounding him. “Because you scare the hell out of me.”
“I don’t know how to take that.”
Buddy poured another two fingers and sipped, letting it burn. “You’re thirty. You’ve got this whole life stretched out ahead of you. I’ve already lived mine. Or at least the part that mattered.”
“That’s crap,” she said with the kind of sharpness that cut a little too deep.
“It’s truth.” He leaned back against the counter, glass hanging from his fingers. “You ever tell someone you’d give them everything, and then realize you already gave it all away to a job that didn’t give a damn if you lived or died?”
She frowned. “Careers aren’t people. They don’t have feelings. They’re what you do, not who you are.” She lifted her tumbler to her lips
She had him there. He stared at the whiskey. “I’m talking about my marriage.”
Fallon coughed on her drink. “You mentioned that once in passing, but you’ve never talked about it.”
“Not many people know I was ever married, especially in this town. Hell, I never told Chloe, though she probably knows since she and I met shortly after Callie and I divorced.”
“That’s a shocker. She’s a close friend. I’m surprised it was never discussed.”
He shrugged.
“You brought it up, so I take it you want to tell me about it.”
That was insightful. And true. “We met right out of Quantico. She wanted kids. I wanted to save the world.” He chuckled.
“She got tired of sleeping alone, tired of me chasing monsters while I became one. One morning, she told me she was leaving. Said she didn’t love me anymore.
Said she was pregnant with another man’s child. ”
Fallon’s expression didn’t change. Her eyes did. Softer. Sad. But there wasn’t an ounce of pity. Nor was there resentment or anger. Emotions he’d gotten used to the few times he’d told the story.
“I didn’t even fight her,” he continued. “Because she was right. I’d already left. I just hadn’t had the decency to pack a bag.”
He polished off his drink and set it aside. “I fell apart. Got sloppy. Almost got fired. Almost got killed—more than once. It took over a year to crawl out of it, and I swore I’d never do that again.”
“You mean fall apart,” Fallon stated rather than questioned.
“No. I mean the whole love, commitment, marriage thing. It gutted me and not in the way you think. It’s not that I didn’t know what I had until I walked out the door, because I did.
Callie was—is—an amazing woman. But I was the job.
Needed the job more than I needed her, and that’s why I fell apart. ”
“I don’t believe that,” Fallon said. “A man doesn’t dive into a stupor for that long for nothing. You were mourning.”
“Maybe, but I was also accepting something about myself. That I wasn’t cut out to be a family man.
I never had it in me, and I nearly stole that from her.
” He’d told himself that for so many years that he believed it, besides parts of it were true.
He could’ve given up his job if he tried.
But he never really tried to be a good husband.
That was the part he could never say out loud.
“You want to know the messed-up part?” he asked.
“You’re the same age Callie was when she walked out.
Same damn age. And I’m standing here wanting something I shouldn’t.
I don’t have anything to give you that isn’t temporary. You deserve more than that.”
Fallon’s hand tightened around her glass. Her eyes didn’t leave his. “That’s not your decision to make.”
He opened his mouth, but she cut him off—quiet, steady.
“You tell yourself it’s noble. That you’re protecting me or saving me from heartbreak, but it’s fear. You’re scared of losing again, so you left before I could even decide if I wanted to stay. Before we knew if one kiss meant anything at all.”
That hit him harder than he would have expected.
She took a slow step closer. “You don’t get to make that choice for me. That’s not noble. That’s unfucking fair. Not to mention selfish.”
He stared at her—words locked somewhere behind the ache in his chest.
For a second, he thought about saying it—about admitting that she wasn’t just someone who’d gotten under his skin, that he’d started to believe maybe he could have something again.
That she’d been part of the reason he pushed so fucking hard to open the south office in Calusa Cove.
Not the entire reason, but his attraction—feelings—had factored into that want—that need.
But the truth sat like gravel in his throat.
He couldn’t promise her anything. So he didn’t. “I’m sorry.”
Fallon’s jaw clenched. “Then you should go.”
That landed like a gut punch.
He nodded once, slow, and stepped toward the door. He opened it and paused on the threshold, half expecting her to say something—to stop him. She didn’t.
The screen door clicked shut behind him, soft as breath.
The night hit like a fist of humidity and regret. Crickets sang, frogs croaked, and his heart felt too loud in the stillness.
For a long moment, Buddy just stood there on the porch, staring out across the cabins toward the shimmer of the Glades. He could almost hear his ex-wife’s voice, all those years ago. You’re going to end up utterly alone and broken.
Maybe she’d been right.
He made it to the steps before something inside him cracked. He turned. Went back.