Chapter 15 - Carson
FIFTEEN
CARSON
“Yeah, I’ll let you know what’s going on when I have more information,” I tell Jesse before hanging up the phone call with him.
“Is he okay with you not going to the ranch for a while today?” Lennon asks, her heart in her eyes.
“He’s fine with it,” I tell her as I walk over and pull her into my arms. “And if he wasn’t fine with it, he could fuck off.”
And I realize that I mean all of it. Even though he’s been the one who has kept our family together since we lost our parents, I’m learning that I’m building my own family.
Although it’s just Lennon and me right now, I know that what we’re building here is going to be what the rest of my life looks like as long as I’m lucky.
“Thank you for doing that. I know you’ve been pulled into this.” She sighs heavily. “I know that this isn’t what you signed up for.”
“Hey.” I reach forward, cupping her chin in the palm of my hand. “I signed up for whatever involves you, and if someone is ready to threaten you, then they’re going to have to deal with me, babe.” It’s the first time I’ve ever called her by a pet name, and I like the way it sounds.
She beams up at me. “Thank you.”
Leaning in, I kiss her lips hard and hungry. When I pull away, both of us are breathing heavier. “No need to thank me. You’ve shown me what my life might look like, and I’m not ready to let it go.”
“Neither am I,” she whispers, putting her forehead to mine.
We stand like that for a long moment, foreheads pressed together, her hands fisted in my shirt like she’s afraid I might float away if she loosens her grip. I don’t tell her that the thought hasn’t even crossed my mind. I figure she’ll figure that out on her own soon enough.
A knock at the door breaks the quiet between us.
I press one more kiss to her forehead before I let her go and cross the room to answer it.
Shawn is standing on the other side, his laptop bag slung over one shoulder and a thick accordion file tucked under his arm.
He looks like he hasn’t slept in a couple of days, which honestly tracks with everything going on.
“Morning,” he says, stepping inside when I move back to give him room. His eyes go straight to Lennon. “You doing okay?”
“I’ve been better,” she admits. “But I’m functioning.”
He sets everything down on the kitchen table and unzips the laptop bag, pulling out his computer and a notepad that’s already covered in handwriting.
Whatever he’s been working on, it looks like it’s been keeping him busy.
“I’ve got some things to go over with you. There’s been movement on a few fronts.”
Lennon wraps both hands around her coffee mug and leans against the counter.
“Before you get into all of that, there’s something you need to know.
” She takes a breath. “Sheriff Reagan is getting ready to come after us. I don’t know exactly when or how, but I know it’s coming.
Someone reached out to me this morning and made it pretty clear. ”
Shawn goes still. He’s quiet for a moment, his jaw working like he’s chewing over what she just said.
Then he lets out a slow exhale and nods.
“I figured it was only a matter of time.” He looks up at her, and his expression is steady but careful.
“Lennon, I want to say something, and I need you to hear it without taking it the wrong way.”
She nods.
“If you want to step back from this case, that door is open. Right now, today. I mean it. Nobody is going to think less of you, and your name stays clean no matter what you decide.” He holds her gaze. “But if you stay in, it’s going to get harder before it gets easier.”
I watch her face while he talks. I watch the way her chin lifts just slightly, the way her fingers tighten around that mug. I already know what she’s going to say before she says it, and I find myself thinking that I’ve never admired anyone quite the way I admire her in this moment.
“She can stay in,” I say, and both of them look at me. “As long as that’s what she wants, she stays in. And I’ll make sure she’s safe. That’s not up for debate.”
Shawn studies me for a second. Whatever he sees seems to satisfy him, because he gives a short nod and turns back to his notes.
Lennon sets her mug down and crosses her arms over her chest. “I want to stay,” she says quietly, but there’s nothing quiet about the conviction behind it. “I’ve come too far with this, and I’ve seen too much of what’s been done to people in the system to walk away now. I’m not going anywhere.”
“All right, then.” Shawn flips open the accordion file and spreads a few pages across the table. “Then we work.”
He looks between the two of us, then out the window toward the gray morning sky. “Actually, I want to suggest something. I think we’d be smarter working from the ranch today. That way we can talk freely and not worry about anyone eavesdropping.” He glances at me. “That work for you?”
“Already thinking the same thing,” I tell him. “I’ll call Jesse and let him know I won’t be at Grizzly River today.”
Lennon nods, already moving toward her bag in the corner of the room.
“I need to grab my notes anyway, and I need to tell you both something else.” She pulls out a small notebook and sets it on the table beside Shawn’s papers.
“I’ve been emailing people. Over the last few days, I went through the social media posts—the ones where people were talking publicly about the treatment they received in the county jail.
There were more of them than I expected.
” She pauses. “I reached out to a handful of them. A few have already written me back.”
Shawn looks up sharply. “What did they say?”
“Enough,” she says, eyebrows raised. It’s one word, but it’s heavy as hell.
While the two of them get into it, trading information and building out what sounds like the beginning of a case that might be dangerous for all of us, I take my coffee and drift toward the window.
The look of the sky is doing something that puts a knot in my gut and has nothing to do with sheriffs or case files.
I know there was supposed to be weather coming in, but the sky and the clouds?
They’re making me nervous. The sky looks like it weighs a ton.
That flat, pewter kind of heavy that I’ve known my whole life, that particular shade of gray that settles over the mountains and doesn’t move for days.
I pull out my phone and open the weather app, and sure enough, there it is in bold text at the top of the screen.
Blizzard Watch. Effective for the next 48-72 hours.
I read through the details twice to make sure I got it.
It’s listed in short sentences to probably convey the directness and seriousness of the situation.
Significant accumulation. Wind gusts. Hazardous travel conditions.
This is the kind of storm that doesn’t care what you had planned, like cows that are pregnant and women you care about doing big things.
I set my coffee down and pull up the Notes app because my brain is already running inventory before I’ve consciously decided to start.
Fuel for the generators. I need to check both of them, make sure they’ll kick on when we need them to.
Firewood, which we have, but I want to know the exact count.
More than likely, we’ll all be at Grizzly River in case the cows start dropping babies, but it’s still good to make sure both places are prepared. Making a list calms my nerves.
And then, under all of that, I start a separate list. One for this new woman in my life.
Lennon.
She doesn’t know about being out here in a blizzard.
Her whole life, she’s lived in town. She doesn’t know how fast the roads can go from passable to dangerous, or how a storm that looks manageable behind a windowpane can turn into something that cuts you off from the rest of the world for days.
She’s tough—I know that now without question—but tough doesn’t keep you warm, and it doesn’t keep you safe if the power goes out and you’re not used to it.
She’s going to be at one of the ranches when the storm hits, and I want to make sure she’s got what all she needs to be safe.
And I find that I’m not entirely unhappy about that, even as the responsible part of my brain is cataloging everything I need to do to make sure she has nothing to worry about.
I’m going to keep her safe. Not because she can’t take care of herself—she’s proven that more than once already—but because she’s mine to look after now, even if neither of us has said that out loud yet.
I close my Notes app and look back across the kitchen to where she’s leaning over the table with Shawn, her finger tracing a line on one of his printed documents, asking him a question I’m too far away to hear. He answers her, and she nods, already writing something down.
She’s not going anywhere. She said so herself.
And I decide right then that neither am I.