CHAPTER 22: UNCOMFORTABLE REUNION

SHERIFF VALOUR

There wasn't a pleasant kind of silence in Knox's home.

It was the kind that pressed heavy on your ears until you started to think of ghosts whispering in it.

I had been pacing up and down for ten minutes, boots sinking into rugs so fancy I shouldn't actually be walking on them in boots in the first place, when I saw her.

Sin.

She was reclining on the low couch in the side lounge, ankles crossed, black silk wrap draped over her shoulders, phone face down on the coffee table like she personally didn't even like it.

Her hair was mussed from whatever shoot she'd just been on before Steel got struck, and her eyes—God save me—those piercing eyes were keen.

Not keen like they'd been crying. Keen, like she'd already practiced her defense.

I came to a stop at the end of the rug.

She didn't get up. Didn't gesture for me to sit. Just raise her chin an inch or so, the sort of motion people do when they've already concluded you're going to be trouble.

"Sheriff," she said. Smooth, controlled, like we were at a political fundraiser, not standing in a guarded millionaire's house with my kid unconscious upstairs.

"Sin," I replied. I entered the room. "We need to talk.

Her lips pressed together for half a beat, then she signaled to the empty armchair across from her. "Sit. Talk."

I stayed where I was. "Steel's in an upstairs bed because someone reached him while he once again desperately tried reaching out to you."

She flinched—so quickly you could have blinked and not caught it—but her voice didn't waver. "He was in his car, Sheriff Valour. I was at work, working. It came on out of the blue. Nobody saw it coming."

"Your excuse, is that it?" I slanted forward slightly. "You didn't see it coming? You've been on the job long enough to know you're supposed to expect danger before it shows up in your rearview."

Her jaw came down hard. "And you think I wanted this? You think I—" She stopped, her head shaking. "Steel's life is more important to me than you'll ever know."

I let out a laughless noise. "Oh, I see. I see you've got a husband with more political clout than half the state, and here you are lingering about my boy like gravity can't hold you down."

That caught her. The carefully constructed mask cracked open just enough for me to catch a glimpse of the glint in her eyes. "Don't you dare minimize what Steel and I have to some… some fling. We've been friends for years. You don't know what we've been through."

"Oh, I have an idea." My voice had been brusquer than I'd meant to make it, but I didn't clip it back. "I've stood by the damn sidelines watching you play house with your politician husband and come back to Steel whenever it's convenient. You left without any kind of communication, yet years later you two are playing house?"

She was standing, closing the gap between us. "That's not what this is. I never lost love for him."

The words tumbled out, too sure. I looked at her face.

"Love?" I echoed, soft. "Love doesn't place a man in the crosshairs because you can't leave him alone."

Her fists were clenched at her sides. "You think it happened because of me? That truck wasn't meant for—"

"Don't you know that." I cut her off. "You don't know that. But you do have enemies, Sin. High-profile individuals do, so he does, and if they see Steel hanging out near you, they attack him."

She blinked furiously but spoke in a steady voice. "He's not a child. He makes his own choices. If he didn't want me hanging around, he'd tell me so."

"Maybe he doesn't grasp the danger as much as I do," I said. "Or maybe he does, and he's too damn stubborn to acknowledge it. Either one, I'm telling you—" I leaned in close, my voice low, "--you ride with your husband. Whatever act you and your husband are giving in public? Keep it real. Because the more you go back and forth in and out of Steel's life, the more you paint a bull's-eye on his back and yours."

She stared at me like she might reduce me to ashes.

Then her lips curled up—not smiling, but twisted. "So that's it? That's your master plan? You think I'm going to just walk away and let him recover in peace without me?"

"Yes," I said, vacantly. "If you love him more than you love yourself, you'll walk away."

Her breath snagged, but she did not retreat. "You think you get to determine what's best for him because you raised him? I fought in the trenches with him. You don't know him the way I do. You don't see him the way I do. You haven't been present when he—"

"I've been here longer than you," I snapped. "And I've seen what happens to individuals who get close to him for the wrong motives."

Her eyes narrowed. "And you think I'm one of those people?"

I didn't blink. "I think you're a threat to him. And right now, a threat is the last thing he can handle."

Neither of us breathed for a second. The space between us was hot, acrid, and heavy with words neither of us was going to speak.

And then, from the doorway—

"Is everything okay in there?"

We both shifted.

Jasson, spitting images of his brother and father, leaned against the beam with one shoulder. He looked back and forth between us, lingering on me long enough to make his point that he'd seen the tension.

And for goodness' sake, didn't look at me with the same intensity, sizing-me-up look Steel uses on people.

I straightened up. "We're good," I told him, but my tone still caught the roughness of the fight.

Sin regarded Jasson, an unreadable look flashing across her face. Then she stepped back, creating a calculated distance between us.

But I witnessed it—the quivering of her fingers once they were not in fist.

And I knew this was not finished.