Chapter 32
The smell woke Sarah before anything else.
Garlic. Tomatoes. Coffee.
Why did her house smell like someone actually lived here?
Hudson.
The noise of a cupboard door shutting, a knife against the cutting board, the quiet clink of a spoon against a saucepan. Was Hudson cooking in her kitchen? She couldn’t remember the last time another person had done that. Her mouth watered.
She lay listening. Her house had changed around the smell, as if it wasn’t used to holding warmth this ordinary.
The kettle boiling. Drawers opening and closing. Everyday sounds. She’d spent years building a life that asked nothing of anyone. Today Hudson had been quietly taking care of her while she slept.
Finally, she pulled on her oversized green hoodie and padded into the kitchen.
“Hudson? What are you doing?”
“Cooking.” He glanced at her, one of her dish towels on his shoulder.
“I gathered that. Wyatt left?”
“After I got back. He’s on call.”
“Okay.” There were apples in her fruit bowl. She pulled open the fridge. Enough food to feed a small army. She closed the fridge, spotted flowers in a tall glass.
Flowers.
Nobody bought her flowers. She reached out and touched one petal. Her house no longer felt like somewhere she recovered between shifts. It felt looked after.
She swallowed against a rise in her throat.
His sleeves were rolled up, exposing his forearms. How had she forgotten those? Awareness moved through her, low and immediate, drawing her body tight and stealing the next clean breath from her.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“No.”
“You’ll eat anyway.”
“You always this bossy?”
“Only when your refrigerator requires an incident report.”
She made a sound that wasn’t a laugh, but it was closer than anything she’d managed since the hospital.
He shooed her back to the living room, then served pasta in two bowls. He carried hers to the couch and set it on the coffee table with a fork, water, and the hospital meds she was pretending not to look at. She stared at the bowl.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“It smells delicious. I didn’t know you could cook.”
Hudson’s head dipped before she saw too much on his face. “Eat.”
He took the chair opposite. Enough distance that she wouldn’t feel crowded, but she wished he’d chosen the couch beside her.
They ate in silence with the coffee table between them and the case sitting in every space where conversation should have been. Sarah lasted three bites before hunger arrived all at once.
He’d been right.
Again.
She ate everything, then wiped her bowl with a wedge of the crusty bread he’d bought.
Afterward, he made coffee. She closed her eyes when she sipped. “Sugar. You remembered.”
“Some things.”
Her gaze lifted to his. For a second, everything in the room held still.
“I bought six different coffees.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what brand you drink.”
Sarah took another sip, lifted one shoulder. “This one works.”
Today Hudson had filled her fridge, cooked for her, bought her flowers and somehow managed to make none of it feel like pity. She wasn’t sure what to do with that.
She wrapped both hands around the mug, letting the warmth seep into fingers that still hadn’t quite decided whether they belonged to her again. “Tell me what you haven’t told me.”
Hudson looked up from his coffee. “You should be resting.”
“I am resting.” She relaxed further into the couch. “I’m sitting down.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is today.” Something in her voice must have reached him because he didn’t argue again.
Someone had tried to kill her. Her truck had been towed to the garage and was waiting for the insurance company. She was done pretending this wasn’t her case.
“Someone ran me off the road,” she said. “So stop protecting me with half-truths.”
Outside, the wind rattled lightly through the trees.
Hudson stared into his mug for so long she wondered if he’d answer at all. “I served with Cord.”
She waited.
“We were running an op in the South China Sea. We had solid intel on a weapons network moving military-grade hardware through the islands. Missiles. Explosives. Enough firepower to make a lot of people nervous.” He turned his mug on the table, not drinking from it.
“Cord was on my team. Good operator. One of the best I’d worked with. ”
“Was.”
“Was.” He blinked. “We were tracing the supply chain and locating the weapons cache.”
“And Cord?”
“Our comms lead. He knew the op schedule. Knew where we’d be and when we’d be gone.”
Sarah didn’t speak, giving him room to think.
“He’d buried himself in gambling debts. Started selling information to the same network we were there to take apart to pay off the debts. Routes. Patrol windows. Information he believed was safe to sell.” His mouth hardened. “At least, that’s what he told himself.”
“What did he give them?”
“Our location.”
Sarah went still.
“A temporary position. We were scheduled to clear it at zero-two-hundred. Cord knew that.” Hudson looked toward the window. “We took fire on the way out. Local militia pinned us down. Cost us forty-three minutes. The arms dealers moved faster than Cord expected. He thought we’d be long gone.”
Sarah was quiet for a moment. “So when they arrived?—”
“We were still there. They knew our extraction route. There was one channel out to open water. Narrow. Rock walls on both sides.” He paused. “They’d rigged the channel with demolition charges.”
His breath left him unevenly. “They hit us before we reached it. Firefight was short. Maybe ninety seconds. Felt longer. We lost Ben Taggart. Our lead swimmer. He was twenty-three. Could hold his breath for almost five minutes, which was a full minute longer than any of the rest of us, and he never let us forget it.” A sound escaped him that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“He died in four feet of water because he never saw the round that hit him.”
The words landed flat. As if they’d been carried so long the sharp edges had worn smooth. A muscle jumped in his jaw.
“Cord got caught eventually. Gave up the arms dealers he’d been working with in exchange for a deal.
A new name, a new life, the whole machine that exists to disappear people who cooperate.
” His mouth twisted, something bitter in it.
“I hated it. Hated that he got to walk away and build something while—” He stopped himself.
“While Ben didn’t come home?”
“Yeah.” Something in his face gave way for the space of a heartbeat.
“And now you think Cord’s active again?”
“I know he is. Fresh evidence started surfacing about a year ago. Small inconsistencies. Missing files. Weapons turning up in places that didn’t fit the established routes.
” His hands closed into loose fists on his knees.
“I think Cord’s moving hardware again, using quiet coastal access points where cargo can come ashore unseen.
But I haven’t proved it. And someone with real access has been cleaning up behind him. ”
His eyes had gone somewhere else, seeing files she couldn’t, dead ends piling one on top of another.
“Every time I got close to something solid, it went cold. Witnesses stopped talking. I still don’t know who’s protecting him.”
“That’s why you came here quietly.”
“Yes. He got away with it once, Sarah. Walked away from what he did to my team and built himself a second life out of it.”
“And you’re not going to let him do it twice.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Do you trust me?”
His head came up immediately. “Sarah, that’s the one thing this isn’t.” He held her gaze. “It’s me trying to keep you out of something I don’t fully understand yet.”
A tired laugh escaped her. “Little late for that.”
His eyes closed briefly. “I know.”
“No.” She shook her head carefully. “I don’t think you do.”
She touched the bruise beneath her collarbone without thinking. “Someone decided I was useful because of you.”
His face tightened with something that looked almost like pain.
She shook her head. “Let me decide what I can handle.”
Silence stretched between them.
When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter. “I’ll tell you everything I can confirm.”
“And when you can’t?”
“I’ll tell you that too.”
She studied him for another long moment. It wasn’t everything. But it wasn’t nothing either. It was probably the most he’d trusted anyone in years.
“Thank you,” she said.
He frowned. “For what?”
“The pasta. And for telling me.”
His eyes searched hers as though waiting for the verdict.
She didn’t have one. She only knew she understood him a little better than she had an hour ago.
And for the first time since he’d walked back into Aurora Cove, she wasn’t trying to work out whether Hudson Kane was hiding something from her.
She was trying to understand how long he’d been carrying it alone.
The silence had grown too heavy to leave untouched. Her gaze drifted past him to the photographs. “Do you remember that day?”
Hudson turned to look.
The framed photo had yellowed at the edges. Wyatt, Ryder, and Caleb in a row, all elbows and grins.
“Ryder got stuck up the tree, and Caleb went up after him.”
“And fell out.” Her mouth curved.
He looked back at her. “You climbed up eventually.”
“Someone had to. Ryder was only eight.” She closed her eyes, the mug still held between both hands, her body finally giving up the fight now that there was no immediate threat trying to kill her.
“Sarah.”
“Mm.”
“You’re done.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’re asleep.”
“I’m resting my eyes.”
“Right.” He took the mug from her grip, and his fingers brushed hers. Heat moved through her in a clean, disproportionate line.
When she opened her eyes, he was kneeling in front of her. “Bed.”
She narrowed her gaze. “Bossy. I can walk.”
“I know.”
She should have insisted on walking, but fatigue had stripped her clean. “If you drop me, I’m arresting you.”
His arm slipped behind her shoulders, the other beneath her knees. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Then the floor disappeared. She didn’t stop him. Her hand landed against his shoulder, fingers curling into his shirt. It should have made her uncomfortable, but it felt like safety.
She’d spent fifteen years proving she didn’t need anyone. Tonight, she let him carry her.
He took her down the hall carefully, keeping his steps even, her head supported where it rested near his chest. His heartbeat was steady beneath her cheek.
She hadn’t meant to rest her head against him. But she’d done it anyway and didn’t move it away. In her bedroom, he lowered her onto the mattress and drew the quilt over her with care.
She shifted, eyes barely opening. “Hudson?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re still here?”
Her eyes closed again. Once, a long time ago, he’d left without looking back, and some frightened part of her still expected him to.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m still here.”
She believed him.
And for tonight, that was enough.