Chapter 29
The beeping dragged Sarah up first.
The thin, steady sound of a monitor doing its job somewhere too close to her head, each pulse needling through the soft gray space behind her eyes until sleep released her.
Her mouth was dry and tasted metallic. Her head felt too large for her skull, pressure blooming behind her temples every time she tried to think too hard.
As she breathed in, her ribs announced themselves with a deep, ugly ache.
Hospital.
The smell gave it away. Antiseptic. Warm plastic. Laundered sheets. Coffee that had been burned, then abandoned to its fate.
Sarah opened her eyes.
Wan morning light filtered through the blinds. She waited until the room stopped moving, then turned her head.
Hudson was asleep beside her bed, folded badly into a chair designed by someone with a deep hostility toward human spines.
His head was tipped to one side, arms crossed over his chest, boots planted wide on the floor as if even unconscious he didn’t trust the room to stay where he’d left it.
His shirt was creased, and stubble shadowed his jaw.
The hard lines of his face had eased in sleep, loosened enough that the boy was visible beneath them for one dangerous breath.
He’d stayed.
The thought arrived quietly before she could brace against it.
All night.
She let it sink into her and refused to examine why. Then memory came back.
“Deputy Marshal Kane. Threw away his case file.”
Sarah pressed her head into the pillow and stared at the ceiling.
Her pulse tapped hard in her throat.
This was fine. It was so not fine.
The chair creaked.
Sarah closed her eyes, gathering herself. When she opened them again, Hudson was awake.
His eyes were on her, alert and clear, his body already moving before the last traces of sleep had left his face.
He stood too fast, the stiffness catching in his shoulders and back for a second before he smoothed it away.
He’d slept upright beside her bed all night and still looked like he was assessing her for damage.
“You stayed,” she said.
His gaze moved over her face, not lingering anywhere too long. “Yeah.” As if there’d never been another option.
She pushed up to sitting and immediately regretted it as the room pulsed in and out of focus. She took a breath. Her clothes were folded neatly on the spare chair next to her bed. Her jacket was missing. They’d cut it off her last night. She remembered that.
“I need to get home.” She tugged the sheets off her legs.
“I can drive you.”
“Thanks.” She met his eyes. “I can drive myself.”
“No.”
Something hot and immediate moved through her, irritation finding all the places pain had left exposed. “You realize I’m the sheriff.”
“I remember.”
“And you’re not in charge of me.”
“No.”
The answer was so even it took her a second to realize it was agreement, not surrender.
“I’m calling my mom,” she said.
He handed her phone over before she had to ask.
Sarah took it and tried not to notice the brief brush of his fingers against hers, or how heat moved up her arm from that tiny, stupid contact. Her nervous system had no loyalty whatsoever. She swiped the screen and called her mom.
Her mom answered on the first ring. “Sarah?”
“Hey, Mom.”
“How are you?”
“Fine. I’m heading home. I’ll rest.”
“You’ll actually rest?”
“Yes.”
“Is Hudson taking you?”
Sarah opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Hudson watching her. Then he left the room.
“Sure. Hudson’s taking me.”
“All right, good,” her mom said. “Call me when you’re home.”
“I will.”
“And Sarah?”
“What?”
“Let him help.”
Sarah looked through the glass wall toward the nurses’ station.
Hudson stood there with paperwork in one hand, speaking to a nurse. The nurse smiled up at him with the unmistakable expression of a woman temporarily deprived of good judgment.
Hudson either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
Before the nurse had even finished speaking, his attention had returned to Sarah, as if some internal line still connected him to her room no matter where he stood. She’d seen deputies stand watch over crime scenes with less attention.
She’d spent years looking after everyone else. She wasn’t entirely sure what to do with someone looking after her. “I have to go, Mom.”
Her mom’s voice softened. “I love you.”
Sarah’s throat closed up without warning. “Love you too.”
She ended the call before the words could turn into anything else.
Hudson came back into the room with the paperwork, a small white bag from the nurse, and a look that suggested he’d read every instruction and found most of them insufficient. “Ready?”