Page 37 of After All

Scott couldn’t help the warmth that spread through his chest hearing that. “What’s this about Reed Walker?” he asked, thinking back to what Derek had said.

“She marched into Dottie’s this morning and chewed his ass for not having the gun locked up, and then lost it when she heard that Reed has only talked to his kid about it.”

Scott was torn between feeling damned good that she’d come to his defense and worried about what she’d said to Reed. Walker was a good guy, and Scott knew he had to feel like shit. “Did you see all of this?” he asked his friends.

“We were with you, remember?” Derek asked. “But I heard all about it when Mitch and I stopped in at the hardware store.”

Kyle nodded. “My front desk staff was talking about it when I got the clinic and I heard it from two patients.”

“So, the point is,” Derek said, pointing a French fry at Scott. “You’ve already got the girl. Why can’t you just be happy with how things are? Don’t get so hung up on what you’re calling it or whatever.”

“I agree,” Kyle said. “Peyton’s not really the caregiver type, you know? Her being there for you means something, I think.”

“It definitely means something,” Derek agreed. “But I’m not so sure she’s not the caregiver type.”

Scott looked over at his friend. Derek was definitely the more laid-back of Scott’s friends. Kyle was the perfectionist, the always-had-his-shit-together guy who had blown through high school and college, charged right into medical school, and then moved back to Sapphire Falls immediately. That had always been his plan. He’d put that plan on paper when he was about fifteen and had never veered from the course. Except for the fact that he was supposed to meet his high school love, Hannah, here to build their practice together, put their dream house on the land Kyle still owned outside of town, and make two or three beautiful, perfect babies. Hannah had screwed all of that up. But Kyle was still here, practicing, hell-bent on making everyone better and dying a very old, happy man in his beloved hometown.

“I mean, she’s not warm and fuzzy about it maybe,” Derek went on. “But if you mess with someone she loves, you’re going to have to deal with her.”

Derek, on the other hand, didn’t really have any plans beyond the next few hours. He was a whatever-feels-good-at-the-moment guy. He did a bunch of odd jobs around town—bartender, groundskeeper for the city, volunteer firefighter, EMT, and whatever else the town needed. His love for Sapphire Falls was as deep as Kyle’s, and he too would die a happy old man right here, but he found that happiness differently. And there were no great loves in his past. Derek had plenty of love, just not the forever—or even more than a couple of weekends—kind.

Scott scratched his neck, feeling a little befuddled. Not about what Derek was saying. He was right on about all of it. But Scott was surprised thatDerekwas saying it.

“And I know all about her messed-up home life,” Derek said. “But seems to me that if she didn’t worry about her parents, at least a little, and love this town and the people here, it sure would have been a lot easier to just get the hell out, you know? But she’s stuck around in spite of it all.”

Scott felt a tightness wrapping around his chest. Damn, Derek was good.

That was all true. Peyton was a tough girl on the outside, but when she loved, she loved big and hard and loud. And that was exactly what he wanted from her—all of her passion, her energy, her inability to hold back, directed at him. Not just him—he appreciated her love for her friends and the town. But definitely at himtoo.

“That’s what I love,” Scott said. Hell, if he couldn’t say this to these guys, who could he say it to? “In spite of how rough things were growing up and how easy it would be to just say ‘fuck it all’ and be cynical and hard and bitchy, she’s…so full of life. She loves to have fun,makesother people have fun. She just lives so big, you know? It’s like her go-to way of dealing with the shit is to be happy.”

Kyle and Derek looked at one another and then back at Scott. Okay, so maybe he just shouldn’t say that stuff to anyone. He frowned at them both. “What?”

Kyle shrugged. “It’s just that all ofthatis why you shouldn’t be so worried about sleeping with her.”

Scott felt his scowl deepen. “What does that mean? I’m not worried about it.”

Derek laughed and Kyle shook his head.

“Yeah, you are,” Kyle said. “She’s got a messed-up home life and that makes you all protective and makes you think of her as vulnerable, and because of the shit you did in Omaha, that gets to you.”

Kyle and Derek were the only people in Sapphire Falls who really knew all about Scott’s time with the sex trafficking task force. He didn’t really want people to know. He’d prefer to keep everyone he knew in the dark about…the darkness. The disturbing, horrible stuff that went on in other places. At the same time, he needed to talk about it sometimes. Especially after he’d been out on an assignment. He was grateful to have friends who would listen and supported the work. In fact, there were times when Scott had been sure that Kyle and Derek would have absolutely joined him on the job if they could have.

In fact, they’d been on his ass about getting back to it. He’d taken a much-needed break. But it had been nearly eight months now since he’d helped with an operation and both Kyle and Derek thought he needed to get back to that work. They understood why he needed Sapphire Falls too, but they knew that he needed to fight a bigger fight once in a while, to celebrate what he had here by trying to make the rest of the world a little better.

“But you gotta remember,” Derek continued, “Peyton isn’t one of those girls you’ve saved. Or,” he said, his voice gentling slightly and his gaze becoming more direct, “the girls youhaven’tsaved.”

Scott felt his chest tighten again. Yeah, okay, these guys knew him well. He thought about the girls he’d helped save. But he had nightmares about the ones he hadn’t.

“Peyton takes care of herselfandother people,” Derek said. “She’d tell you, in no uncertain terms, if you did something to piss her off or scare her, and she’d kick your ass if you didn’t listen.”

And with that, Scott was 100% positive that his friends had discussed this—without him and possibly at length—before.

But they were right. Very right. He’d seen a lot of very vulnerable girls who had been victimized and taken advantage of. They didn’t all have bad home lives, of course, but that was not an uncommon denominator. And that didn’t even matter. The girls had been used, plain and simple. No matter where they came from, they’d been hurt—physically, emotionally, and mentally—in ways that would stick with them for the rest of their lives. He’d helped get them out, doing things that turned his stomach in some cases to do it, but he couldn’t totally help and heal them.

Which was definitely one of the reasons he was drawn to Peyton Wells. She’d been hurt emotionally, but she not only still found joy and fun in life, she spread it around like feel-good-party-girl confetti. And she knew herself. She knew what she wanted, what she needed, and she would ask for it. Physically, sexually, he didn’t have to worry about crossing any lines or pushing her too far. She’d let him know if that happened, and she’d enjoy the hell out of everything up to that point. He needed to be with someone like that, someone who owned her sexuality, and had no trouble telling him exactly where he stood.

He just worried about her emotional state sometimes. That was a little more vulnerable than she liked to let on.

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