Chapter 6 #2
For the first time since she’d opened her eyes, the weight in her chest eased. Beneath all the guilt and frustration, something else flickered between them—understanding, fragile but steady. The kind that only came from nearly losing someone and realizing you’d never been ready to let them go.
Vivian exhaled slowly, letting her head rest against the pillow. “You’re not sending me back,” she murmured, more a statement than a question.
He hesitated, then nodded once. “We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”
“Translation: no.”
“Translation,” he said, leaning closer, “if you’re going to be stubborn about staying, then you’re following orders. My orders.”
She arched a brow. “That’s adorable.”
He huffed out a laugh, shaking his head. “You’re impossible.”
“Compliment accepted.”
The monitor kept its rhythm. Somewhere down the hall, a nurse’s cart squeaked past, but inside the room, the world had shrunk to just them—their silence, their scars, their shared breath.
Blake straightened, the shift in his shoulders signaling the conversation wasn’t over, just paused. “Get some rest. Tomorrow, we figure out who tried to kill you.”
Vivian watched him move toward the door, his silhouette framed by the thin slice of hallway light. “Blake?”
He turned, his hand on the doorframe.
“If it was Maddox, then we’re in deeper than we thought.”
His eyes met hers, dark and steady. “Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.”
Blake hesitated at the door and looked at her, as if seeing that she was really okay for the first time.
“What?” Vivian asked, leaning back against the pillows until pain stole her breath. She swallowed it down, refusing to give him another reason to send her away.
He shrugged. “Never thought you’d choose the mission over a promotion.”
“Shows that after all this time, you still don’t know me,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt.
That crooked, boyish grin surfaced — the one that always disarmed her at the worst possible moments. “Careful telling me you’ve got my six. I might start thinking you stayed with me instead of blowing the op because you care about me.”
“Again,” she shot back, “goes to show how little you know me.”
His grin faded, replaced by something quieter, sharper. “Maybe,” he said softly, eyes locked on hers. “Or maybe you’re more like your father than you think.”
The hospital at night had a sound you felt more than heard—air pushing through vents, rubber soles whispering on linoleum, the patient monitor’s small, stubborn metronome of a life still here. Blake sat with his elbows on his knees and watched Vivian sleep.
Her face was softer in the low light, hair pushed off her forehead where the bandage ended, lashes clumped from dried saline.
She’d never looked more beautiful. The woman could wear any look and get his attention.
He’d tried to deny it all these years, but the minute his lips touched her soft skin, he knew he wanted more.
So much more.
More than he deserved or could ever have with Vivian Durand.
Beneath the blanket, her chest rose and fell, shallow but steady.
Every few breaths, she twitched—those quick, defensive flinches she’d never admit she had even off duty.
His fault, all of it. The lighthouse. The fall.
The empty spot on the floor where the casing should have been. His choices, his pace, his blinders.
“Lucky told me I’d do anything to get my guy,” Blake whispered, each word scraped raw from somewhere deep inside. He stared at Vivian, her face pale against the pillow, the faint tremor of the IV line like an accusation. “You warned me, too.”
The truth hit him harder than any bullet ever could. He had. He’d risked it all before—and nearly broken everything that mattered.
Christmas Cove came back to him in fractured flashes—the salt sting, the explosion of glass, the screaming that wouldn’t stop.
He saw the civilian, bleeding on the floor, saw the look in his old friend’s eyes when Blake had risked him and the woman he loved.
The mission had gone to hell in under a minute, and afterward, Lucky had said it plain, no hesitation, no mercy: “You’ll risk anything to get your man, won’t you? ”
And he had. God help him, he had.
He thought he’d learned after that night, thought the guilt would keep him cautious.
But standing over Vivian’s bed now, seeing what his drive had cost, he knew better.
He’d let her go into danger—sent her, really—because he couldn’t bear to lose the trail again.
He’d told himself she could handle it, that they didn’t have time to wait, that Dan was the person reporting their moves and if Blake kept him from following Vivian then she’d be safe.
But underneath all those excuses was the truth: he wanted the win more than he wanted to listen.
And Vivian deserved better.
He’d known the risks. He’d felt the tension in her voice, seen the unease in her eyes before she left for the lighthouse. And he’d still let her walk away, telling himself it was trust, when it was really desperation.
Everyone had been right about him.
Lucky. Vivian. Maddox.
He would risk anything to bring Laurel Tide down.
Because how could he not? How could he look at the faces of the people they’d hurt—the ones who vanished, the ones they’d found too late—and not do everything in his power to end it?
There were children still missing. Families still praying.
Innocent people facing unspeakable atrocities while he sat in a hospital room nursing guilt like a wound.
He had to stop them. He had to.
But as he looked at Vivian’s still form, the faint flicker of her pulse in her neck, he wondered what the cost would be when the mission finally ended. How many more people he’d destroy trying to protect the rest of the world. How much of himself would be left to save when it was over.
The thought gutted him. Because he already knew the answer.
He’d trade everything to stop Laurel Tide’s reign.
And tonight, that everything had almost been Viv.
He rubbed the heel of his palm over his brow, like he could press the memory out.
The image kept cutting through anyway—Vivian sideways on cold iron, eyes unfocused, blood smearing a line near her temple, his name coming out of her like paper tearing.
He’d put his jacket under her head, and her fingers had found his wrist and held on.
He hadn’t realized until then how long he’d been starving for someone to hold on to him.
Not someone… Vivian.
“Stupid,” he muttered at himself, barely a breath. “Sloppy.”
A nurse pushed the door open with her hip and slid a tray onto the rolling table, eyes flicking from the machines to the bed to him. “Vitals are stable,” she said, voice gentle to match the hour. “If she wakes, one sip of water at a time. We’ll re-check in ninety minutes or so.”
“Thanks,” he said.
She looked at him another second, like she was taking inventory of more than his answer. “Family?”
The word hit someplace he didn’t have a name for. “Wife,” he said, too easy, like it was real instead of cover.
She nodded like the distinction mattered less at this hour and eased the door closed again.
Blake stood because sitting let the thoughts breed.
The room was dim past the lamp by the bed.
The window held a square of moon-silvered night; condensation had ghosted along the corners.
He walked to the glass and looked down. The small-town hospital’s lot was half empty.
A few late-shift sedans, a county cruiser idling without a soul in it, tailpipe spilling a thin ribbon of white.
Streetlamps pooled light that didn’t quite make it to the far fence.
Beyond that, piles of old snow ate the world.
His phone buzzed once in his pocket. Not a call. The specific vibration he’d set for one thing. He pulled it out, thumb already moving.
DOCK CAM: MOTION 02:14:07
A grainy still loaded a second later—just static-salted darkness, a slice of rope, the smear of a shape moving past the edge of frame. The motion detector at the marina he’d wired from habit years ago. Far from the hospital. Unhelpful, except for the itch it gave him.
He checked the hallway. Clear. Checked the bathroom.
Clear. Checked again, because that was the rhythm that kept you alive: check, breathe, check, breathe.
He came back to the bed and rested two fingers over the blanket on Vivian’s forearm.
Warm. She slept through his touch, brows pulling, like her dreams were narrow hallways with too many doors.
He shouldn’t be here. He should be at the docks or Maddox’s office or the lighthouse again with a forensic kit and a flashlight. He should be anywhere that wasn’t a chair he couldn’t fix things from.
She mumbled something—a name maybe, or a curse.
He leaned closer but didn’t catch it. Her lips pressed together and then eased.
The monitor ticked off another few seconds.
He could stay until the nurse came back.
He could stay forever. Neither would change the fact that someone had stood in that lighthouse and watched Vivian fall and then had the audacity to scoop up the casing like a signature.
He turned back to the window.
A smudge of black moved beyond his reflection.
He stilled. Didn’t breathe. The shape disappeared.
He focused, but all he found was the reflection of the room—bed, IV pole, his own shape, and beyond that, only darkness.
He shifted an inch right. Something shifted in the outside world in sync, at the far edge of the lit lot.
Not a shadow thrown by wind, not a nurse on smoke break.
A person at the corner where light gave up. Standing too still.
He put two fingers on the blanket again—habit, anchor—and then slid them away. “Be right back,” he said to no one, barely more than a thought said out loud.