Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
38
AUBREY
The air is warm and heavy with the scent of jasmine as I sit on my apartment balcony in Sacramento, case files spread across the small table before me. My resignation letter, printed and signed this morning, sits on top. The sight of it still sends a flutter of uncertainty through my stomach—a sensation I’ve become intimately familiar with over the past four months.
Four months since we escaped the mountains. Four months since I’d found my sister and lost her again. Four months of nightmares and healing, of trying to find my way back to some version of normal that no longer exists.
My phone buzzes with a text from Jensen.
How’d it go?
Three simple words. He knows today was the day I planned to hand in my resignation. I stare at the screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard. I haven’t done it yet. The letter sits in my bag, waiting. Part of me still can’t believe I’m walking away from the career that defined me for so long.
It’s getting there, I text back.
I set the phone down and lean back in my chair, closing my eyes against the afternoon sun. Every day for the past four months, we’ve talked. Sometimes brief texts checking in, sometimes hours-long phone calls that stretch deep into the night, sometimes sex over Zoom when talking won’t do. Once a month I’ve driven up to Lost Trail Ranch, spending weekends in his bedroom, helping out at the ranch.
We haven’t put a name to what’s happening between us. Haven’t made promises or plans. But something has shifted, settled. The ghosts that haunted him—Lainey, Marcus, his own guilt—have begun to fade. And my own demons—the ones I drowned for so long—no longer scream quite so loudly.
The nightmares are coming to an end.
I pick up the resignation letter again, tracing my signature with my fingertip. Carlos wasn’t surprised when I requested the meeting today. I think he’s been expecting it since I returned with a story about avalanches and criminal enterprises that carefully omitted anything supernatural. I needed to do what I could to protect Jensen and get him out from Marcus Thorne’s thumb. Without Cole or Red in the picture anymore, Jensen would be at high risk.
So the Bureau arranged Jensen’s immunity deal in exchange for his testimony against Marcus—a deal that’s currently keeping Jensen safe from prosecution but under intense scrutiny. At least it’s keeping Marcus and his cronies behind bars.
My phone buzzes again.
Duke misses you.
I smile despite myself. The gelding who carried me through hell has become an unexpected attachment. During my last visit, I spent hours with him in the round pen, working through the exercises a local equine therapist in Truckee showed me. Jensen had watched from the fence, quiet and thoughtful, as I explained my idea for rehabilitation programs for trauma survivors.
People like my sister.
And I guess people like me. Even if I don’t see my trauma in the same way, it’s still there, waiting to be dealt with.
“You’re good with horses,” Jensen had said later that night, his body warm against mine in the darkness of his bedroom. “Better than most people who’ve been riding their whole lives.”
I hadn’t told him then that I was considering making it my new career. Hadn’t been sure enough myself to speak it aloud.
A knock at my door pulls me from my thoughts. I’m not expecting anyone.
The knocking comes again, more insistent this time, enough to make my stomach churn with nerves.
I move to the door, checking the peephole before unlocking it. My heart stutters when I see who’s on the other side.
Jensen stands in my hallway, looking strangely out of place in his worn jeans and button-down shirt, boots slightly dusty as if he’s come straight from the corral. His hair is shorter than the last time I saw him two weeks ago, freshly cut, his beard down to stubble. He looks good. Solid. Real.
I open the door, surprise rendering me momentarily speechless.
“Hey, Blondie,” he says, a tentative smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Hey yourself, cowboy,” I step back to let him in, painfully aware of my messy apartment, of the case files scattered across every surface. “You didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“Wanted to congratulate you in person after you became a civilian again.” He steps inside, surveying the chaos with a raised eyebrow. “But now I realize I probably should have waited.”
“It’s my fault,” I tell him. “I should have done it by now. I’ve been dragging my feet.”
Jensen moves further into the apartment, his presence seeming to fill the small space. He picks up a framed photo from my bookshelf—me and Lainey, years ago during a jaunt to San Francisco.
“Doesn’t quite feel real sometimes, does it?” he asks quietly, setting the photo down.
“Some days feel more real than others.” It’s the truth, bare and simple. “At least the nightmares are less frequent.”