Chapter 9
LUKE
I end the call, and the silence that follows punches the air out of my lungs. I sit frozen, everything inside me locking up at once. My half-eaten sandwich slips from my hand and lands on my boot, jolting me out of the trance.
Isla left the bar with Gabe. My pulse spikes fast enough that my vision tightens at the edges.
I drag a hand over my face, trying to steady the thrum under my skin, but it’s useless. My body is already moving before my mind catches up. Fear, jealousy, and instinct all collide in my chest at once.
I grab my keys and head out into the night.
First stop: the inn. I ask Betty, the gray-haired woman at the front desk, if Isla’s come back in. Her gentle, shaking head tells me everything I already know.
My next stop is The Rusty Nail. The parking lot is a ghost town.
From there, I drive to Gabe’s apartment building. That’s when I see it: a lone white Mini Cooper parked at the curb, California plates stamped with the Golden Gate Bridge.
At least she’s safe, I tell myself. That’s all that matters. If only I could believe it.
I drive home on autopilot and end up on my porch with a bottle of bourbon and a head full of noise.
As the hours drag on, the tightness in my chest refuses to ease. By 3 AM, a prickling sensation creeps through my limbs. I stare at the ceiling, convinced I’m on the brink of a heart attack—at twenty-nine, no less. Fantastic.
The night becomes a slow-motion loop of worst-case scenarios. Every time I close my eyes, her name rises in my throat.
Isla.
It slips out, again and again, until my dignity feels like something I left at the bar along with my good sense.
Isla is in trouble, and instinct should tell her to come to me. I’m the sheriff. But I didn’t greet her with warmth when she came back; I met her with walls. And now she’s on the other side of them.
Just like I asked for.
The amber liquid catches the moonlight as I try to drown the gnawing frustration I’ve lived with since Isla reappeared in town.
I swirl the glass until the ice ticks against the sides like a clock timing nothing.
The bourbon warms my throat, but it can’t thaw the place in my chest she’s managed to unlock.
The anxiety comes roaring back once the bourbon wears off, and by the time the sun rises, a lingering headache settles behind my eyes.
I’m doing my best to keep my mind occupied until I hear from Gabe, but my body feels like a live wire desperate for grounding.
I’m not the first man to have his heart shattered by his first love. A decade should be enough time to let go of something you can’t change. And yet, here I am.
Seeing her, touching her, has ripped open wounds I thought were long since scarred over. My mind is a runaway train, tearing through questions and arriving at none of the answers. I’m not the kind of man who can live under the weight of mystery anymore.
The need to move hits hard and fast. I push up from the chair, bare feet on the porch boards that still smell faintly of pine. Within minutes, I’m dressed and grabbing my keys, ready to drive to the gym.
It’s a modest setup; a converted warehouse with exposed beams and a faint smell of iron and rubber, run by a burly guy named Jim, ironically.
At this hour, only a handful of regulars are scattered across the space. I nod at them as I walk in, the quiet, unspoken camaraderie settling over us.
I hit the treadmill hard, not to run but to outrun the pressure building in my chest. The music in my headphones is loud enough to hurt—exactly what I need.
Each footfall slams the frustration deeper into the floor until it starts to splinter into something I can breathe through.
When that’s not enough, I move to the weights. Heavy ones. The kind that forces silence in my mind. Metal meets skin, muscles burning and trembling with the effort. Pain makes sense. Pain I can control.
I lift until my arms shake, until the noise in my head finally dulls to something manageable. Only then do I feel steady enough to exist again.
It doesn’t last long.
On the drive home, I call my father, which is the last thing I want to do, but he left his cell phone at Dalton’s the other night. He was obviously too distracted by acting like a dick to remember it.
I grabbed it, planning to drop it by his office yesterday before everything went sideways.
His voice comes through clipped and impatient. “Luke.”
“Hey, Dad. You left your cell phone at D’s. I grabbed it for you.”
“I’ve been looking for that,” he grumbles.
I pick the phone up from the console and turn it over in my hand. “Since when did you get another phone?”
“It’s a business phone I use for contacts who don’t need my personal number.”
“Makes sense, I guess. I can drop it off later this morning.”
“I’m not in the office this morning. I’ll come by the station in about an hour. I have something I want to talk to you about anyway.”
Terrific.
I’ve just pushed open the frosted glass door of my office when my administrative assistant, Helen, appears with a precarious stack of forms teetering in her arms.
“Morning, Luke,” she says, offering a bright smile that reaches the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
Helen has been a fixture in my life as long as I can remember. She used to babysit my siblings and me. Chase says she needs to retire so I can hire “someone young and hot,” but his priorities rarely match my own.
Helen is irreplaceable. Sure, she spends half her day looking for her misplaced glasses, battles every software update, and her red lipstick spends more time on her teeth than her lips—but she’s loyal, kind, and has a better memory than our entire filing system.
“Good morning, Helen,” I reply, eyeing the tower of papers. “What’s all that?”
She sets the stack on my desk with a soft thud. “Just some documents needing the boss’s signature.”
I can’t help but notice the donut crumbs clinging to her navy sweater, but I suppress my grin. “There’s a supply acquisition form on top and a few things Mayor Reynolds wants you to review.”
“Thanks. I’ll look at it after our morning briefing.”
Turns out it was a quiet night in Wildhaven.
For everyone except me.
It’s usually pretty tame around here. Every now and then, we get someone who’s had too much to drink at The Rusty Nail and gets a little too rowdy, or some kid who gets caught up in something stupid—but even that’s rare.
The last “exciting” thing that happened was when a bear got into the cab of Old Man Cormack’s truck and ate his lunch. And most of his upholstery.
I’m about to tackle the mountain of paperwork when loud laughter echoes down the hallway. A second later, Greg appears in my doorway.
“Guess what happened yesterday?” he says, grinning like he’s about to tell the best story I’ve ever heard.
I lean back in my chair, crossing my arms, the leather creaking softly. He’s not leaving until I play along. “What happened?”
“I changed a flat tire out on Highway 46,” he announces, puffing out his chest a little, like he just single-handedly saved the town.
“Cool story, Greg, but I have work to do.” I gesture toward my desk, cluttered with forms and a blinking cursor on my computer screen.
“Don’t you wanna know whose car it was?” he presses.
I exhale. “Whose car was it, Greg?”
“Isla Tanner, dude.”
My body goes ramrod straight, her name hitting me like a live wire. “Was everything okay with her car?”
He waves a hand dismissively. “Yeah, it’s fine. Just a flat from some metal debris.”
My jaw tightens, and my muscles coil.
“She looks good,” he adds casually.
The comment lands like a punch. “I’ve got things to do, Greg. If you’re done, I need to get back to them.”
He scratches the back of his neck, a sheepish grin spreading across his face. “Actually, I was wondering something…”
“What’s that?”
“Are you cool if I take a run at her?”
I’m on my feet before I realize it, my chair rolling back with a squeak. “What did you just say?”
“I mean, she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring,” he stammers, “and she was pretty clear she’s not here for you, so I just thought…”
He trails off as the air shifts.
I round the desk slowly, each step deliberate. “You just thought you could come in here and ask permission to fuck my ex-girlfriend?”
He shrugs, color rising in his neck. “Well, I mean…yeah.”
“Greg, I’m going to make this very clear, so even you can’t screw it up.” My voice drops. “Stay away from Isla Tanner. Do you understand me?”
His eyes widen as he lifts both hands in surrender. “Yeah, I understand.”
I close the distance until we’re nearly nose to nose. “That means today. Tomorrow. Next year. Or ten years from now.”
He takes another step back, rattled by my loss of control. “No worries, Sheriff. I hear you loud and clear.”
He spins on his heel and bolts out the front door before I can fully process what just happened.
I slam my office door shut, the sound reverberating through the room. I lean back against it, exhaling hard.
What the hell was that?
I don’t have time to unpack it before my father’s voice booms through the station, greeting Helen. I hear her tell him I’m busy, and she’ll let me know he’s here.
As usual, he ignores what he doesn’t want to hear and strides straight into my office.
I pull his phone from my drawer, stand, and hand it to him. He slips it into his suit pocket and unbuttons his jacket before taking a seat.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” I ask, sitting across from him. The desk between us feels like a physical version of everything else that divides us.
“Chase isn’t ready to take on some of the projects I have in mind.” His lips press into a thin line. “He needs help and guidance.”
“Well, it’s a good thing he has you and Nik, then.”
Nikolai is my father’s attorney and right-hand man. He’s been with Wild Industries for nearly twenty years and is a big part of why the company’s grown so much.
“I don’t pay him to babysit my children,” my father snaps.
I lean back. “You don’t pay me to do it either, so I’m not sure what your point is.”
“How satisfying can this work be, Luke?” he asks, the condescension there in the small, practiced crease of his brow. “You should be working for me, making a real difference. Living in a big home in a nice neighborhood instead of a cabin in the woods.”
I lean forward, meeting his gaze head-on. “I do make a difference, Dad. I love what I do. I help people.”
He scoffs.
“I love my cabin,” I add, “and the fact that it’s not some big, cold museum built just to impress people.”
He tilts his head and studies me like I’m a puzzle he’s decided not to solve. “I don’t understand you.”
“We can agree on that,” I say.
He stands, buttoning his jacket with practiced efficiency. “You’ll regret your decision someday, you know.”
I stand too, using every inch of my three-inch height advantage. He hates that.
“Then it’ll be my regret to bear,” I say calmly. “And I won’t burden you with it.”
He turns to go, then pauses in the doorway for one last swing. “Your mother worries about you.”
“She knows I’m happy,” I reply. “That’s all she cares about.”
“Since you have it all figured out,” he says, opening the door wide, “I’ll just show myself out.”
His shoes click sharply against the tile as he strides away, leaving the door half open.
I close my eyes as tension knots at my temples and exhale through my teeth. My cell phone rings.
My voice comes out tight, frustration bleeding through the single word. “Wild.”
“Whoa. Who pissed in your Cheerios?” Gabe’s voice is light, a chuckle crackling through the line.
“I’ll give you two guesses,” I mutter.
“I don’t even need one,” he says smoothly. “I’ve got some information on your girl.”
“She’s not my girl,” I snap automatically.
“Ex-girl. Whatever. Come by my place, and we’ll talk.”
I glance out the window at the jagged mountain peaks cutting into the sky. “Why can’t we talk now?”
The rhythmic tapping of his keyboard filters through the line, followed by his answer. “It needs to be in person.”
“Is she okay?” I ask.
“She’s fine now,” he says. “But she was pretty shaken up last night.”
I let out a slow breath.
“You need to talk to her,” he adds.
I don’t even hesitate. “She’s had years to reach out to me, Gabe.”
“I don’t think it’s what it seems.”
The tightness in my chest ratchets up again. “Why are you talking in riddles? Just tell me what’s going on.”
“You two need to have a conversation,” he replies. “It’s time to make peace.”
“Peace,” I echo, tugging at the collar of my shirt. “I have so much damn peace it’s pouring out of me.”
“I stand corrected,” he deadpans. “You’re basically Gandhi…with a gun.”
“Exactly.”
His tone shifts, the humor dropping out. “Seriously, Luke. You two need to talk.”
A beat.
“It could be a matter of life and death.”