21. Eric
ERIC
Ishut the door to my office a little harder than I’d intended, walked over to my desk, and sat. The phone was ringing, but I didn’t pick it up. It could ring for another thirty seconds. The town probably wasn’t going to collapse because I let voicemail do its job for once.
Hartwell.
I let out a deep breath. She was killing me here. Which was impressive considering she’d only been the town’s event planner for approximately seventy-two hours. Most people took weeks before they complicated my life. Hartwell had decided to speed-run the process.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed both hands over my face.
The office suddenly felt a whole lot smaller than it usually did.
My desk sat exactly where it always had.
The filing cabinet. The framed certificate on the wall.
The coffee mug someone had given me five Christmases ago that read WORLD’S OKAYEST SHERIFF.
Somehow, today, it felt less like a joke and more like a performance review.
The mug had always made me laugh before.
Now it seemed to be asking whether “okayest” included arresting women you’d kissed less than twelve hours earlier.
What the hell had just happened? Yesterday I’d been explaining road closures to a chaotic event planner. Today I’d processed her through booking.
No. I knew exactly what had happened. She’d stolen a truck. With livestock. Then led me on what was probably the slowest law enforcement chase in Maplewood Falls history. I was fairly certain one cyclist had actually passed us.
Forty-eight miles an hour tops.
I almost laughed. Almost.
Instead, I thought about the look on her face when I’d told her to turn around. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t defiance. It was something much worse. The kind of look that made you question whether doing the right thing always felt this lousy.
The surprise. Then confusion. Then hurt.
Like she hadn’t expected me to arrest her. Like some part of her had believed the man she’d kissed last night would somehow magically override the sheriff wearing the badge this morning. It wasn’t fair that she’d looked at me that way. It also wasn’t fair that I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
What had she expected? That I’d smile, hand back the truck keys, and congratulate her on an emotionally motivated felony? “Excellent work, Hartwell. Next time perhaps steal two trucks.” The town would’ve loved that.
I frowned at my desk. The grain in the wood suddenly became fascinating. Mostly because it couldn’t look disappointed in me.
She broke the law. It wasn’t complicated. It couldn’t be complicated. I’d spent years making sure complicated never entered the equation. Facts. Evidence. Procedure. Those things kept everybody honest, including me.
I wore a badge.
She stole a truck.
That was the beginning and the end of it. At least, that’s what I kept telling myself. The problem was my brain kept inserting several inconvenient chapters in the middle.
Except, it wasn’t.
Because she hadn’t stolen the truck for herself. There hadn’t been greed in her eyes. Or panic about getting caught. Just determination. Pure, reckless determination that somehow made perfect sense to her.
She hadn’t been trying to make money or hurt anyone.
She’d done it because she’d believed those animals were in danger.
Because somewhere along the way she’d decided that one little festival petting zoo wasn’t just another attraction anymore.
It had become personal. Leave it to Hartwell to emotionally adopt an entire trailer full of livestock in under three days.
Because she’d looked at one little goat and somehow decided he was worth risking everything for.
It was reckless. Impulsive. Completely insane.
I let my head fall back against the chair. The ceiling suddenly seemed much easier to look at than the paperwork on my desk. Paperwork had a way of making everything official.
She’d looked so damned shocked when the handcuffs clicked around her wrists. Like I’d reached over and switched off something she’d believed was still there between us.
That image refused to leave me alone. It replayed with irritating clarity every time I blinked, as though my memory had decided this was the highlight reel worth preserving.
Her turning around and looking back over her shoulder.
“This feels excessive.” She’d even managed to sound more confused than offended. Only Hartwell could make being arrested sound like someone had accidentally overcooked her toast.
I closed my eyes. Maybe if I stopped replaying it, it’d finally leave me alone. It didn’t.
It hadn’t felt excessive. It had felt awful.
But I’d still done it. Because I had to.
What choice did I have? I’d asked myself that question at least twenty times since leaving the vet clinic, and the answer hadn’t changed once. None. Absolutely none. I just wished it didn’t feel so much like I’d lost something anyway.
Deputies were standing there. Clinic staff. Half a dozen witnesses. Enough people to fill a jury before lunch. Every one of them watched to see what the sheriff of Maplewood Falls was going to do next.
If I’d simply let her walk away because we’d kissed the night before…
If I’d looked the other way because she smiled at me or because I’d wanted to kiss her again…
then what exactly was the badge worth? It couldn’t only matter when the decisions were easy.
Anybody could enforce the law when it was convenient.
Every decision I’d ever made wearing this badge would’ve meant nothing.
Every late night. Every difficult conversation.
Every person I’d treated fairly even when they hated me for it.
I’d spent years earning the county’s trust one decision at a time.
I wasn’t about to throw all of that away because Hartwell had somehow managed to become the most complicated woman I’d ever met in less than a week.
People trusted me because they believed I’d treat everyone the same.
They waved at me on Main Road. They called when something went wrong.
They handed me the keys to their homes when they went on vacation.
That kind of trust wasn’t built on charm.
It was built on consistency. Sometimes painfully boring consistency.
The sheriff couldn’t have favorites. The second he did, he stopped being the sheriff and started being just another guy making exceptions for people he liked. That wasn’t the job. It had never been the job, no matter how much I wished life occasionally came with an asterisk.
I pushed away from the desk and stood. Sitting wasn’t helping. Neither was thinking. Unfortunately, I seemed committed to doing both anyway.
I was restless, the kind that settled somewhere between my shoulders and refused to leave. Like my own conscience had decided to pace around inside my ribcage for a while.
I walked over to the window overlooking Main Road.
People wandered in and out of the shops, going about their daily routines.
A delivery truck rolled slowly past. Two teenagers laughed as they crossed the street without paying nearly enough attention to traffic.
It was an ordinary morning, the kind Maplewood Falls had seen thousands of times.
Funny how the whole town could keep moving while your own brain insisted on replaying the same five minutes on an endless loop.
I rubbed the back of my neck. A tension headache was assembling itself behind my eyes. Terrific. As if today hadn’t already been sufficiently memorable.
My job wasn’t just enforcing the law. That was the easy answer people gave when they didn’t understand what the badge actually meant. The harder part was making sure every decision could withstand people questioning it later.
It was making sure people believed I enforced it fairly, even when they didn’t like the outcome. Especially then. Fairness wasn’t measured by how happy people were afterward. If it was, nobody in law enforcement would’ve survived their first month.
The second they thought I made exceptions, everything became harder.
One small crack at a time until the whole foundation started shifting beneath you.
Every traffic ticket. Suddenly everyone knew someone who’d gotten a warning instead.
Every dispute, every arrest. Every person asked why their circumstances weren’t unique enough.
Every difficult decision. They all became arguments instead of answers.
The badge stopped speaking for itself and started defending every choice that came before it.
Fairness only worked if people believed in it. That belief was fragile. It took years to build and about five minutes to lose. I’d seen it happen to others, and I had no interest in becoming one of them.
Hartwell hadn’t just stolen a truck. She’d somehow managed to drive straight into the exact intersection where my personal life and professional life were least compatible.
If she’d planned it, I would’ve almost been impressed.
Fortunately, planning had never seemed to be one of her stronger hobbies.
She’d accidentally put me in an impossible position.
If I’d arrested her, I looked heartless—the sheriff who handcuffed the woman trying to save a goat. That headline practically wrote itself. I could already hear Dottie defending her to every customer in town for the next decade.
If I hadn’t, I looked corrupt—the sheriff who let the woman he kissed steal a truck because feelings outranked the criminal code. Somehow that headline seemed even worse.
There hadn’t been a good option. I’d searched for one all the way from the vet clinic to the station. It hadn’t magically appeared.
Only the least bad one. Sometimes that was the job, choosing the option nobody liked because it was still the right one.
And I’d chosen it. The badge had made the decision before the man ever got the chance. Maybe that was what wearing it really meant, even knowing she’d probably hate me afterward.