CHAPTER 19
Selene
The days after the timber docks pass in a strange, disorienting blur of paperwork, interviews, and a growing, cautious understanding that the danger I've carried like a second skin for two years has finally, genuinely lifted.
I sit in Patricia Reyes's temporary office at the county courthouse three days after the confrontation, watching her lay out the mounting case against Richard with the brisk efficiency of a woman who knows exactly how thoroughly this particular battle has already been won.
"Federal prosecutors are involved now," she tells me, sliding a folder across the desk.
"The conspiracy charges alone — funding a criminal organization, kidnapping, attempted murder in front of a dozen witnesses including law enforcement — we're not looking at a fight anymore, Selene.
We're looking at negotiating how many decades he spends in prison, not whether he spends any time there at all. "
"And the custody case?"
"Withdrawn, obviously, given the circumstances.
" Patricia allows herself a small, satisfied smile.
"You'll have my office file for full, unchallenged custody of Mia by end of week.
No more emergency hearings, no more manufactured allegations.
Richard Vance is not going to be in a position to threaten your custody of your daughter ever again. "
The words land with a weight I don't fully process at first, two years of low-grade, constant terror finally, actually lifting, and I find myself sitting very still in the chair across from her desk, tears rising unexpectedly.
"I don't know how to thank you," I manage.
"Thank the mechanic," Patricia says, gathering her files with brisk efficiency.
"He called in every favor he had to get me here on four hours' notice, and I've handled enough of these cases to know most women in your position don't have anybody willing to fight this hard on their behalf.
You should hold onto that, whatever else happens. "
I think about that comment the whole drive back to the compound, snow melting slowly off the roads now that the storm's finally passed, the whole county settling back into its ordinary winter rhythm as if the events of three nights ago hadn't happened at all — except, of course, they did happen, and Oakhaven knows it.
The town's response, when I finally make it back into the diner for my first shift since the confrontation, catches me completely off guard.
Clara's got the place decorated with a hand-lettered sign that reads WELCOME HOME in bright, uneven letters that I recognize as Mia's handwriting, clearly assisted, and the moment I walk through the door the whole lunch crowd — regulars I've served coffee to for two years, faces I know without ever having known their stories — breaks into applause that has heat rushing to my face.
"Town hero," one of the timber crew calls out, grinning, raising his coffee mug in a mock toast. "Heard the Vipers took down a whole rival club to keep our girl safe. About time somebody stood up to that kind of money and won."
"Wasn't just the club," Clara says pointedly from behind the counter, giving me a look that carries real affection underneath its usual sharpness. "This one stood up plenty on her own. Don't you forget that, any of you."
I feel my throat tighten, overwhelmed by a wave of communal warmth I never expected from a town I chose specifically because it seemed anonymous, forgettable, a place to hide rather than a place to belong.
Somewhere in two years of double shifts and careful vigilance, without my fully realizing it, Oakhaven became something else entirely — became home, in the truest sense of the word, a place full of people who'd apparently been quietly rooting for me the entire time.
By the end of my shift, half a dozen regulars have stopped by my section specifically to offer some version of quiet solidarity — an extra tip, a kind word, one older woman who runs the hardware store pressing my hand and telling me, simply, "Good for you, honey. Good for you and that sweet girl."
Damon picks me up after close, waiting in his truck outside the diner with the engine running against the cold, and the moment I climb in he pulls me into a kiss that tastes like relief and something warmer underneath it, something that feels a great deal like the beginning of an actual future.
"Whole town's talking about you," he says, pulling back with a small, proud smile. "Heard it from three separate people at the garage today. Selene Vance, the woman who stared down her ex-husband's hired guns and walked away standing."
"I didn't do it alone."
"No," he agrees, "but you did it. Standing there, telling him exactly what you told him, refusing to be afraid even with a gun in his hand — that was all you, Selene. I just made sure you didn't have to do it without backup."
I lean my head against his shoulder, watching the familiar lights of Oakhaven's main street slide past the window, snow banked clean and white along the curbs, the whole town settling into its ordinary winter evening rhythm around us.
"I keep waiting for it to not be real," I admit quietly. "Two years of looking over my shoulder, and now it's just — over. I don't know how to trust that yet."
"You don't have to trust it all at once.
" Damon's hand finds mine, steady, certain.
"Give it time. The fear doesn't disappear overnight just because the threat's gone.
But you don't have to carry the waiting alone anymore either, same as you didn't carry the fight alone.
Whatever adjustment period you need, I've got you through all of it. "
We drive the rest of the way to my cottage in comfortable silence, and when he walks me to the door, he pauses on the porch the way he did that very first week, broad shoulders filling the frame, except this time there's no tension in it, no old wound between us waiting to be reopened. Just quiet, settled certainty.
"I have one last fix to show you," he says, and there's something in his voice — careful, deliberate, almost nervous in a way I've rarely heard from him — that has me studying his face more closely.
"What kind of fix?"
He pulls a manila folder from inside his jacket, holding it out to me with hands that are, I notice with quiet surprise, not entirely steady.
"Not tonight," he says, tucking it back away before I can fully register what's inside it, a small, private smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Tomorrow. I want you rested, and I want Mia there too. This one's for both of you."
I study him a long moment, curiosity and warmth tangling together in my chest, and though every instinct tells me to push for an answer right now, something in his expression — steady, certain, carrying the particular weight of a man about to do something significant — tells me this is worth the wait.
"Okay," I say softly. "Tomorrow."
He kisses me once more, slow and thorough, snow falling soft around us in the porch light, and I watch him walk back to his truck with something warm and hopeful settling into my chest, two years of careful, guarded survival finally, quietly, giving way to something that feels a great deal like the start of an actual life.