Chapter 23
The December air bites at my cheeks as I step out onto Madison’s porch, the screen door falling shut behind me with a finality that echoes in my chest. I pull my coat tighter and start down the steps, gravel crunching beneath my boots.
Halfway across the driveway, I stop.
The cottage sits dark and quiet fifty yards ahead, but I can’t make my feet move toward it. Instead, I turn back toward the house I just left, the warm glow of light spilling from the windows. Madison’s in there, carrying news that would level most people, and I just walked away.
Should I have stayed?
The question gnaws at me. I told her I’d be right next door, that she had space to think, to make her calls. But standing here in the cold, the distance between us feels like miles. She’s about to call her ex—the father of her child—and I’m retreating to a rental cottage like a coward.
I rub a hand over my face, breath fogging in the mid-morning air.
It’s not my place. That’s the truth I keep circling back to.
We’re not together—not really. We’ve shared a few moments, a few kisses, but I’m a guest in her life.
A temporary blip on the radar. Offering to stay through that phone call would be overstepping.
She’d have asked me to stay if she wanted me there.
Wouldn’t she?
My phone vibrates in my pocket, the buzz startling enough to make me flinch. I pull it out and the screen illuminates with Ian’s name.
Ian
Call me as soon as you can.
I stare at the words, the timing feeling almost orchestrated by some cosmic force determined to keep me from second-guessing myself.
With Ian waiting for the details I promised him yesterday, I have direction.
Purpose. An excuse not to stand in this driveway all day wrestling with instincts I don’t trust.
The text I sent Ian last night was deliberately vague—just that my location might be compromised due to a riding accident, that I’d call with more details tomorrow.
I hadn’t wanted to explain everything through text, hadn’t wanted to deal with all the questions.
But tomorrow’s arrived, and Ian’s patience has clearly expired.
The cottage is cold when I step inside, the wood stove long since burned to embers. I don’t bother building it back up. Instead I drop onto the couch and dial Ian’s number before I can find another reason to delay.
He answers on the first ring. “Start talking.”
No greeting. No how are you? Just the clipped, efficient tone of a man who’s been managing crises longer than I’ve been famous.
“Ian—”
“Details, Beckett. Now.” I can picture him in his New York office, probably in the suit he hates wearing, but does anyway because he knows people take him more seriously, an expression carved from granite. “I’ve got a situation brewing here and I need to know if I need to get the team mobilized.”
I force myself to organize the facts and give them to Ian like he asked. “Madison took a fall yesterday—a bad one. I rode with her in the ambulance to the hospital in Gettysburg.”
“And you were seen.”
It isn’t a question, but I answer all the same. “I wasn’t exactly thinking about discretion when she was unconscious on the ground from an accident I was partly at fault for.”
Ian exhales, the sound sharp through the line. “How many people? Paramedics? Hospital staff? Other patients?”
“I don’t know. I was in the waiting room for a few minutes before they let me back to be with her. It was a crowded waiting room.” I lean forward, elbows on knees, staring at the dark wood floor. “I tried to keep my head down, but I know I was recognized. No one said anything, but they knew.”
“Great.” Paper shuffles on Ian’s end, but he doesn’t say anything else.
“Ian, I—”
“I’ve got news.” His voice drops, that particular quality that means he’s about to deliver news I won’t like. “We got another delivery from your stalker. They’ve reverted back to your PO box.”
My stomach tightens. “What kind of delivery?”
“A letter. And Beckett?” Ian pauses and I hear him take a breath, the first crack in his operator-mode facade. “The tone’s shifted. Significantly.”
I grip the phone harder. “What do you mean?”
“I mean your stalker has moved from lovesick poetry to something far angrier. They’re frustrated you left, that you’re ignoring them. The language is…” He trails off, choosing his words carefully. “Concerning.”
“I need to see it.”
“We need to figure out if your location’s blown.” Ian’s voice hardens back to business. “Do you know if you were photographed? Are you positive you were recognized?”
“The paramedics and the hospital staff definitely knew who I was. I signed in with my real name—I wasn’t thinking about cover stories when I didn’t know what was going on with Madison.”
The silence stretches between us, heavy with everything I’m not saying.
Ian was only here for a few days and that was before anything happened with Madison, but he’s my head of security for a reason.
He didn’t need more than a few minutes in Madison’s presence to know there was something between us, even if we refused to acknowledge it at the time.
“Beckett.” Ian’s voice changes, it’s softer now which somehow feels worse. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
I open my mouth to deny it, to keep everything about the last twenty-four hours compartmentalized into manageable pieces.
But the words catch. There is something else.
Something huge. Something that has nothing to do with stalkers or security protocols and everything to do with why I can’t seem to catch my breath when I think about Madison alone in that kitchen.
But it’s not mine to tell. Not the baby. Not Madison. Absolutely none of it, so I keep my mouth shut.
Ian’s quiet a moment longer, but when I don’t answer him he speaks, his voice careful, measured. “How involved are you with Madison?”
“I don’t know.” The honesty of it scrapes me raw. “I thought we were…I don’t know what we were. Friends with potential? Now everything’s different, and I’m still here. Still wanting to be here. What does that make it?”
“Complicated,” Ian says dryly. “But you’ve left me with lots of gaps and most of them can’t be my concern. My concern is whether staying in town puts you or anyone else in danger.”
“Does it?” The question comes out smaller than I intended. “Putting anyone, especially Madison, in danger by staying isn’t an option.”
Ian sighs, and I hear him settling back in his chair with the creak of leather.
“I don’t think so. If someone had leaked your location, we’d know.
The media’s been speculating nonstop since you ‘disappeared’ two weeks ago.
Every entertainment outlet from here to Los Angeles has run theories about where Beckett Stone vanished to.
If anyone credible has information, it’d be everywhere by now. ”
“So I’m safe.”
“You’re as safe as you were yesterday.” Ian’s tone suggests that’s not particularly reassuring. “But the letter makes me nervous. The escalation in tone, the frustration…whoever this is, they’re not giving up. They’re just getting angrier that they can’t reach you.”
“I need to see it, Ian. The letter.”
“I’ll scan it. Send it encrypted.” He pauses. “Beckett, if this person tracks you down…if they show up in Stonebridge Hollow…”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re isolated in a small town with limited security, getting personally involved with a woman who seems to have complications of her own, and your stalker is only getting worse.”
I stand up, too restless to sit anymore, and pace to the window. Madison’s house is visible through the bare branches of the oak trees, lights still burning from the front windows. “What do you want me to do? Come back to New York? Find somewhere else to stay?”
“I want you to be aware of the risk and have an exit plan. And I want you to consider whether your feelings for Madison are clouding your judgment about safety.”
I don’t have an answer for any of that. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m so desperate for connection, for something real in this suspended life I’ve been living that I’m ignoring warning signs I should be heeding.
“I’ll be careful,” I say finally.
“I know you will.” Ian’s voice softens slightly. “Call me if anything feels off. I don’t care how small you think it is or what time.”
“I will.”
We hang up, and the cottage feels emptier than before. I stare at my phone, wanting to call Ryan, needing to hear a familiar voice and unload everything—the stalker, the pregnancy, the confusion about where I fit in Madison’s life now. But when I dial it goes straight to voicemail.
I still don’t know what’s going on with him, except things are still complicated and all over the place. It’s not surprising he doesn’t answer, but I know he’ll call as soon as he can.
I set the phone down and look around the cottage.
My guitar sits in its stand by the window, the fiddle propped against the wall.
Music has always been my refuge, the place I go when the world gets too loud, and over the last two weeks it’s been everything it used to be.
I pick up the guitar, settle onto the couch and strum a few chords.
Nothing.
I try another progression, fingers moving automatically through familiar shapes, but no melody emerges. No words attach themselves to the notes. The music feels locked away, inaccessible behind a wall I can’t scale. Just like it was before I got to Stonebridge Hollow.
I switch to the fiddle, rosining the bow with more force than necessary. The first notes screech across the strings, too sharp, too desperate. I try again, forcing my breathing to slow, searching for the zone where technique falls away and feeling takes over.
Silence answers me.
The walls seem to press closer, the clouds from outside the window suddenly oppressive. I told Madison I’d be right next door, that I was close if she needed me, but I can’t stay here—trapped in this cottage with my own thoughts, the silence screaming louder than any music I can make.
I need to move. To exhaust my body so my mind might quiet.
The gym. I’ve been there enough times that the staff have grown used to me. I grab my bag and keys, pausing at the 4Runner door to look toward Madison’s house. The light is still on and I wonder if she’s made the call yet. If Mark knows. What he said.
I’m not far, I promised her.
But I am. I’m running, just like I always do when things get hard. The difference is, this time I’m running toward something instead of away—toward the burn of muscles and the simplicity of physical effort, where the only thing that matters is the next rep, the next mile, the next breath.
And I’ll be back. I’m not running forever, just for a few hours.
The drive to town is quick. The gym is nearly empty when I step inside, and I wave at the college kid behind the counter, heading straight for the benches. I load the barbell with more weight than I should probably attempt alone, but I don’t care. I need the effort.
“That’s a lot for a Saturday morning.”
I look up to find Sam standing next to me, arms crossed over his broad chest. The tattoo shop owner.
We’ve run into each other here a few times, exchanged nods and brief conversations about music and his shop.
He’s got sleeves of ink disappearing under his T-shirt, a close-cropped beard, and eyes that miss nothing.
“Need the distraction,” I say.
Sam studies me for a moment and I feel the weight of that gaze, the assessment happening behind dark eyes.
He knows who I am—everyone in this town seems to—but he’s never made me feel like a museum exhibit or anything.
Never really mentioned my music or my past. He’s always treated me like another guy trying to work off stress.
“You need a spot?” he asks.
It’s not what I expected. Not you okay? or you want to talk about it? or any other questions people ask when they see you’re unraveling. Just a practical offer, no strings attached, no demand for explanation.
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I do.”
Sam moves to the head of the bench without comment, positioning himself to lift the bar if I fail.
I settle onto the bench, grip the cold metal, and push.
The weight rises, heavy and real, my muscles straining against gravity.
I lower it slowly, controlled, feeling the burn in my chest and shoulders.
“One,” Sam counts for me.
I push again. And again. The rhythm takes over, the simplicity of exertion crowding out everything else. Ian’s warning. The stalker’s letter. Madison’s pregnancy. The question of what happens next.
By the tenth rep, my arms are shaking. By the twelfth, I’m not sure I have another in me.
“One more,” Sam says, his voice steady. “You’ve got it.”
I dig deep, finding something I didn’t know I had and press the bar upward one final time. Sam guides it back to the rack, and I lie there for a moment, chest heaving, the rush of endorphins finally quieting the noise in my head.
“Thanks,” I manage.
Sam nods, stepping back. “Anytime.”
He still doesn’t ask. Doesn’t push. Just offers a small salute and heads toward the treadmills, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the lingering burn of muscles pushed to their limit.
I sit up, grabbing my water bottle, and stare at my reflection in the mirror across the room.
A man I barely recognize stares back—a beard where there should only be stubble, shadows under his eyes, hair unkempt.
But there’s something else there too. A stubbornness.
A refusal to walk away from something that matters, even when every instinct screams that he should.
Madison matters. Whatever this is between us, whatever it could become, it matters enough that I’m still here. Still trying. Still hoping that when the dust settles and the threat passes, there might be something worth building.
I pull out my phone and type a text before I can second-guess myself.
I don’t want to bother you, just want you to know I’m here if you need me. Really here.
I hit send and set the phone face down on the bench. Whatever her answer is, whatever comes next, I’ll deal with it. Not because I have to, but because I’ve finally found something I don’t want to run from.
And that might be the most terrifying thing of all.