Chapter 25 Carson
TWENTY-FIVE
CARSON
We’re out in the barn for most of the morning and into the afternoon. By the time we’re done and head back outside, the snow has stopped.
“Well,” Jesse says, glancing around at everything that’s glaringly white around us. “I’ll call in the rest of the hands, and we’ll start clean up here, and then get them to head over to Dark Skies.”
All of us nod, happy to know there won’t be a long period of being snowed in. Once they get started, it should move pretty quickly.
Truett is already pulling out his cell phone. “I’ll see if I can get somebody out here to plow the county road too. You know it’ll be the last one the county actually gets to. If we want to make it to town in the next week, it’ll need to be done.”
I’m barely listening because I’m tired, and these aren’t decisions that normally affect me. I might be one of the people who help run this ranch, but I’m the lowest man on the top totem pole. There are no decisions I need to make, and for that I’m thankful.
Heading inside, I let out a deep breath when I feel the heat wrap around me.
It’s fucking cold out there, I’m tired, and I want nothing more than to spend the afternoon with Lennon, preferably in my bed.
Truett and Jesse already said they’d take the evening shift as long as Devlin and I take tomorrow morning.
As soon as I’ve gotten myself out of my outer layer and my shoes off, I’m in search of Lennon.
“She’s in the office,” Atlee says as soon as she sees me. “She made a big discovery about Reagan. She’s probably on the phone.”
Rushing back to the office, I slow when I hear her voice. She’s talking to someone, and it sounds serious.
“Shawn, as soon as you open everything I sent you, you’ll see. We have a slam dunk. I’m not sure how you want to go about presenting it. We can’t go through the sheriff’s office, but probably the state attorney?”
I go inside, and her light eyes brighten when she sees me. She holds up a finger to indicate she needs a minute.
“All right, just let me know what to do. I’m coming down off this adrenaline high, so I’m probably going to take a nap.”
Which is exactly what I wanted to hear from her.
“Yeah, no problem. Tomorrow morning? I think I’ll have enough service that we can do a Zoom if you want.”
I take a seat in the chair she was obviously sitting in before me and pull her into my lap. She tilts her head to the side when I rest my cheek on her shoulder. The invitation is right there, and I turn my face into her neck, letting my lips drop to her flesh.
She shivers, and I feel it everywhere.
“Okay.” Her voice has gone a little breathy, and I smile against her skin. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Shawn. Bye.”
The phone drops to the desk, and then her hand is in my hair, and I have all the permission I need.
“Hi,” she murmurs.
“Hi yourself.” I press another kiss to the curve of her neck, right below her ear. “I missed you.”
She laughs softly, and the sound of it tightens my chest. I’m still getting used to that reaction, but I like it more than I can say. “You were gone for like six hours.”
“Too long.”
She turns in my lap so she’s facing me, straddling me, her hands framing my face.
She looks at me for a second, like she’s trying to memorize everything about me, and then she leans in and kisses me, slow and sexy.
It warms my body up so much that I forget I just spent the better part of the day in below-freezing temperatures.
I get my hands in her hair, and she makes a sound against my mouth that short-circuits every rational thought I have left.
We take our time. I’m not a man who does anything at half speed, but with Lennon I find myself wanting to draw everything out. Wanting to stay in every moment just a little longer than I normally would.
By the time I pull back and look at her, her cheeks are flushed, and her hair is a mess from my hands. She is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
“Upstairs?” I question.
She raises an eyebrow. “You sure you have the energy for that, cowboy? You look tired.”
“I’m never that tired.”
She laughs again, and I stand up with her still wrapped around me, her legs locking at my back on instinct. She grabs for the doorframe as I carry her out of the office, and I hear her laughing all the way down the hall and up the stairs.
After, the room is quiet and warm, and she’s curled into my side with her head on my chest, one of her hands resting flat over my heart like she’s checking to make sure it’s still going. Mine is. Harder than usual, probably.
I run my hand up and down her spine without thinking about it, just because she’s there, and it feels right. Outside, I can hear the distant sound of the start of the cleanup, the low rumble of equipment somewhere on the ranch. In here, none of that exists.
We sleep.
I don’t know how long—long enough that the light coming through the window has shifted low when I wake up.
It’s getting darker, and it must be close to sundown by now.
Lennon is still against me, but I can tell by the change in her breathing that she’s awake.
She has been for a little while, probably.
“Hey,” I say.
She tips her head up to look at me. “Hey.”
I look at her face, the way she’s watching me, and my gut tightens. “What’s wrong?”
She’s quiet for a beat. Then she sits up, pulling the sheet with her, and turns so she’s facing me with her back against the headboard. She pulls her knees up to her chest, and I know before she opens her mouth that whatever she found today is bigger than I realized.
“I need to tell you what I actually dug up,” she says. “All of it.”
“Okay.”
She takes a breath. “Sheriff Reagan isn’t who he says he is.
His real name is Ethan Fury.” She watches my face when she says it, like she’s gauging my reaction.
“He was arrested in Montana in the 2010s on domestic violence charges and never showed up to court. His apartment was ransacked, there was blood, and he was presumed dead.” She pauses, licking her lips.
“He wasn’t dead. He took the name of a child who died the same week he disappeared, built a new identity, and eventually ended up here with a badge. ”
I stare at her, gaping, because I can’t believe that this shit is real. It’s been happening under the noses of everyone in town.
She keeps going, because she’s Lennon, and when she gets something like this rolling, she sees it all the way through.
“Atlee is the one who made me think about the fingerprints, but it turns out the jail that originally booked him had a flood that wiped out their physical records, and their digital records were fried. So nothing was in the system when he applied for the job. There was nothing to flag.” She swallows.
“I called the jail, gave my paralegal credentials, and they found a partial physical file that survived. When they emailed it…” She stops.
“Carson, it’s him. The face is younger, and the quality isn’t great, but it’s him. I’d know those eyes anywhere.”
The word that comes to mind first isn’t a polite one. I don’t say it out loud, but I think it’s probably all over my face.
“I’ve already sent everything to Shawn. He agrees we need to move forward with this.
We can’t go through the local sheriff’s office for obvious reasons, so it’ll go to the state attorney.
” She’s saying all of this calmly, in that steady voice she uses when she’s keeping herself together through sheer force of will.
“It’s a good case, and hopefully his wife will be able to split for good with their son. ”
“But,” I say, because there’s clearly a but.
She meets my eyes. “But when it does—when this comes out and they move to arrest him—if they don’t get to him fast enough, he’s going to know it was me.
” She says it plainly, without flinching, and somehow that makes it worse.
“A man who was willing to fake his own death and live a lie for all these years isn’t going to go quietly.
And he knows I’ve been asking questions. ”
The calm that I’d been holding onto for her sake gets thrown away, and what’s underneath it isn’t anything close to calm.
I sit up, close the space between us, and take her face in both my hands. She lets me, looking at me with those eyes that I’d walk through fire for, and tries to give me a small, reassuring smile, and it breaks something open in me.
“Listen to me,” I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I mean for it to.
“I don’t care what he knows, or what he thinks he’s going to do about it.
You are not going to be alone. Not for a single second of this, do you understand me?
I will put myself between you and whatever comes through that door. Every single time.”
Her smile fades, and her expression shifts into one I’ll never be able to forget. Her eyes go bright. It isn’t quite tears, but it’s close.
“I mean it, Lennon.” My thumbs brush her cheekbones. “I will protect you with my life. That’s not up for discussion.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. So quiet I can hear my own heartbeat.
Then, barely above a whisper, like she’s handing me a fragile truth that she’s been holding for a long time and isn’t sure she trusts me with yet, I hear it.
“I love you.”
Three syllables and my whole world shifts, in a great way.
I don’t say anything right away. I just pull her in, wrap my arms all the way around her, and hold her as close as I can get her. I feel her exhale against my chest, feel the tension ease out of her like she’s been bracing for impact and finally realized it’s not coming.
“I know,” I murmur into her hair. “I know you do.”
She makes a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and something much more tired than that, and her arms come around my waist and hold on.
Outside, the last of the daylight is gone. The ranch has become quiet, and whatever is coming, it isn’t here yet.
And I meant every word I said to her. Every single one.