Chapter 39
Sarah had stopped watching the clock.
She always knew the time. It was the first thing she checked when she woke and the last thing she tracked before sleep. In between, her days ran on fifteen-minute increments. Dispatch. Patrols. Shift changes.
Tonight she hadn’t looked at her watch once.
Across the table, Hudson was telling her about one of the retired dogs stealing a bag of tennis balls from the sanctuary gift shop. She’d missed half the story because she’d been watching him.
The quiet precision never really left him, even when he was relaxed.
His strong hands, scarred across the knuckles, sketched the story for him and she’d stopped hearing the words somewhere around the second gesture.
It turned out competence was distracting enough.
Competence wearing a rolled-up shirt and smiling at his own story was downright unfair.
She smiled.
Hudson stopped mid-sentence. “What?”
“I think I was supposed to be listening.”
“You weren’t?”
She laughed softly. “I got distracted.”
His eyebrows rose. “By what?”
She met his eyes across the candlelight and, for once in her life, didn’t reach for a joke or a way out. “You.”
Almost imperceptibly, his mouth lifted. His gaze dropped to his bourbon before finding hers again. The tips of his ears turned pink.
Sarah bit the inside of her cheek. A Navy SEAL. Deputy U.S. Marshal. And she’d just made him blush. She picked up her glass and hid her smile behind it.
He cleared his throat and met her gaze. “You look different tonight.”
She glanced down at herself. “I’m not wearing my uniform.”
His mouth twitched. “I noticed.”
She waited for the compliment about the dress. The earrings. Her hair. Something easy to laugh off. Instead, he studied her for a quiet moment, his gaze resting on her face with the same careful attention he’d given everything else this evening.
“You look lighter,” he said at last.
She frowned. “Lighter?”
“You’ve smiled more tonight than I’ve seen you smile since I got here. You’ve laughed more, too.”
Heat flushed up the back of her neck, and she looked down, pretending to inspect the bourbon.
“I think...” She shook her head, gathering her words. “I think that might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a very long time.”
“Then people haven’t been paying attention.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. A log in the fire popped somewhere in the background, the murmur of other conversations cocooning them.
Sarah looked across the table at the man she’d once thought she’d never see again. She smoothed the wool over her thigh, needing something to do.
He took another sip of bourbon, as though buying himself a second. “So,” he said, a little too casually. “Do you ever go down to the river anymore?”
She smiled. “The falls?”
“Yeah. The spot with the flat rocks. Do you remember Wyatt’s fish?”
“Wyatt’s enormous fish that he absolutely caught and definitely didn’t lose.” She shook her head with a snort.
“He talked about that fish for years.”
“He still talks about that fish.”
“That day stuck with me.” Hudson smiled into his glass, his expression turning thoughtful. “Do you remember we went behind the waterfall?”
His gaze drifted toward the snow beyond the window. “The light came through the water and threw rainbows across the rock, and Caleb was yelling himself hoarse for you to come swimming, and you never even heard him. You were watching the light.”
The memory came back with startling clarity. The cold spray on her skin, the thunder of the water so loud it became a version of silence, the colors shifting across the wet stone. She’d been twelve years old and completely mesmerized. “You remember that?”
He shook his head. “You stuck out your tongue because you said you wanted to taste the rainbow.” His eyes met hers. “I remember, Sarah.”
Something caught painfully in her chest. For years she’d believed she’d been the only one carrying memories.
She reached across the table and stole one of his fries.
He blinked. “Hey.”
“You weren’t eating it.” If she didn’t say something ordinary, her voice was going to betray her entirely.
“That’s theft.”
“I’ll write myself a warning.” She ate the fry. “Consider it a tax.”
“A tax?”
“For making me emotional.”
He stared at her for a second. Then a laugh rumbled out of him, and relief loosened her muscles.
The conversation wandered after that, finding easier ground. The food was good, the fries dangerously so, and at some point Hudson surrendered half of them without ever admitting she’d won.
She couldn’t remember the last time two hours had disappeared so quickly.
Or the last time she’d sat across from someone and felt her breathing slow.
She kept catching herself watching things that had nothing to do with the conversation—the glimpse of skin where his collar fell open at his throat, or how candlelight found the hollow at the base of it when he leaned back in his chair.
She looked away before he noticed, then looked back sooner than she should have.
Hudson wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I’ve been watching you this week.”
“That sounds slightly alarming.”
“It probably does.” He wasn’t smiling now. He was choosing his words. “People relax when you walk into a room,” he said. “At the station. With Petey.” A small shrug. “Even Walter.”
She laughed. “Walter never relaxes.”
“The closest Walter gets.”
That earned another smile, but she sensed the current beneath the words.
Hudson examined his glass for a moment before meeting her eyes again. “People breathe easier when you’re there, Sarah. You walk in and something changes. I’ve seen it happen a dozen times over the last few days.”
She’d been called capable. Reliable. Tough. Difficult, more than once. Nobody had ever told her people breathed easier because she was there.
She swallowed against the swelling in her throat. “Thank you.”
He nodded as though he’d confirmed something she’d somehow missed about herself, and let the silence carry it.
The waitress appeared beside the table with her notebook, and the small interruption felt almost kind, a chance to breathe and come back to the surface.
“Dessert?”
Sarah didn’t hesitate. “The chocolate torte.”
Hudson glanced at the menu for barely a second. “Peach cobbler. And coffee for two.”
The waitress scribbled their order and disappeared. Sarah folded her menu closed and studied him across the table.
“You like chocolate,” she said.
“I do.”
“So you ordered peach cobbler.” She narrowed her eyes.
He held her gaze with an expression that was trying to be innocent and failing.
“You were hoping we’d share.”
His mouth curved. “The thought crossed my mind.”
She shook her head slowly, but the smile pulled at her mouth, impossible to stop.
Five minutes later, the waitress brought the desserts.
Before she’d reached the table, Hudson had already moved his water glass, folded his menu, and cleared a space.
The waitress smiled her thanks as she set the plates down.
He slid the cobbler into the space between them.
Sarah pushed the chocolate torte to meet it and reached for her spoon at exactly the same moment he reached for his.
Their spoons bumped.
She laughed. “So much for the plan.”
His eyes creased. “The plan was flawless. Your timing was the problem.”
“My timing is impeccable.”
“Your timing,” he said, stealing a corner of the torte, “is why I ordered a decoy dessert.”
They finished their desserts and soon her coffee cup was empty.
The bar had grown quieter around them. Someone had dimmed the overheads behind the bar. A couple near the fire paid their check and left, and the room seemed to contract around their table.
Snow still fell beyond the glass, thicker now, the flakes fat and lazy. The town had disappeared beneath it.
She looked across the table at Hudson, his face half in candlelight and half in shadow. The evening was ending.
She wasn’t ready. For years she’d wanted one more conversation with him. Tonight she’d reached the end of one and discovered she wanted another.
And another after that.
“Can I get you anything else?”
Hudson looked at Sarah before he answered the waitress. She recognized the question in his eyes because she’d been asking herself the same thing for the last twenty minutes. Neither of them wanted the evening to end.
“Just the check,” he said.
Low light caught the strong lines of his face, his sleeves pushed back over his forearms, the scar she’d traced an hour ago pale against his skin.
She wrenched her gaze away.
The wanting had been there all evening. Quiet and persistent, running beneath the laughter, the shared dessert, and every accidental brush of their hands. It frightened her. Not because she doubted him, but because she knew exactly what losing him had felt like once already.
She’d survived Hudson Kane leaving once.
She wasn’t sure she had another one in her.
The words rose in her. “I spent years imagining what I’d say if you ever came back.”
Hudson stilled as he tucked his wallet inside his jacket.
She gave a small shrug. “I don’t seem to have any of those speeches anymore.”
“And?”
She’d spent too many nights talking to imagined versions of Hudson Kane. Not one of them had been as good as the man sitting across from her.
“I think I missed this more than I knew,” she said. “With you.”
He didn’t answer, just turned his hand over on the table, palm up.
She placed her hand in his. His fingers closed around hers, warm and sure, and neither of them said another word. His thumb brushed slowly across her knuckles. For the first time in longer than she cared to count, she let herself believe there could be a next.
The bartender appeared beside their table with a gentle clearing of his throat. “I’m sorry, we’re closing up.”
Sarah looked around. The chairs were stacked on the far tables. The fire was ashes. She hadn’t noticed any of it.
“Of course,” Hudson said, already on his feet. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”
He helped her into her coat. His fingers skimmed the nape of her neck as he lifted her hair free of the collar, careful not to catch a single strand. The touch was brief, but it traveled the full length of her spine.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said.
After hours of firelight, the night air had bite, the snow falling thick and muffling everything beyond the reach of the hotel’s porch light. Every hard edge was softened, every sound muted.
He offered his arm, and she took it as they walked slowly across the parking lot without speaking. Their boots compacted the fresh snow. His arm was solid and warm against hers. She didn’t want the quiet miracle of this evening to end.
Not yet.
Wyatt’s car was ahead, snow piled on the windshield, the interior dark. She stopped walking and Hudson stopped beside her. His expression held nothing back and asked for nothing in return.
“Hudson. I don’t want to go home yet.”
“My room’s upstairs,” he said. Then, softer: “You don’t have to.”
She turned to face him. “My choice.”
His gaze held hers. “I know.”