Page 28 of Cold Case Discovery

This was the weirdest time to tell someone they...

No, he was just trying to trick her. To get what he wanted. Which was protecting everyone and everything. And yeah, it wasn’t like hehatedher, but it was... It was...?

Why was her heart doing this terrible, hopeful dance in her chest? She knew better. She knew so much better. Chloe didn’t trust love. How could she?

“Jack...” She tried to say more, but her throat was so tight, she couldn’t seem to get words out. And he was standing in her yard, looking so good and strong and perfect.

God knew she wasn’t meant forthat.

“I think somewhere deep down, you have to know that. You know me, Chloe. Why else would I break any rule?”

She couldn’t come up with an answer for that, and she tried. She tried so hard.

“So yeah, I have some issues when it comes to protecting people. I wonder why,” he said, so dryly she might have laughed in another context.

But he’d said helovedher, and there was absolutely nothing funny about this horror show.

It had to be horror coursing through her. What else could it be?

“I’m overbearing. I think I’m right pretty much all the time.” He took a few steps forward, and she had no choice but to scramble back. Away. Until he stopped moving toward her.

He couldn’t touch her right now. She’d...she’d crumble.

“But I don’t cross lines,” he continued. “I don’t break rules. I don’t dogray area. Except when it comes to you. And if that was about fun or sex or whatever, I would have resisted. I would have put a stop to it. I would not have engaged in this whole thing for ayear.”

“Secretly,” Chloe whispered, because it was the only thing she had to hold on to right now. The last line of defense against whatever he was doing to her.

“Yes, secretly. Because no matter how or when this comes out, I know how it shakes down, Chloe. I know how people will treat you. How they’ll treat me. There will be whispers for sure, at a minimum.”

She couldn’t breathe. He’dthoughtabout an “after everyone found out”? He’d considered theconsequences? When all she’d ever done was...be sure he wouldn’t want them without thinking what they might be.

“I can take it. At worst, I suffer a few comments and lose a few votes during my next sheriff election, but I still win. I won’t be a party to having people question you, though. Your character or anything else. I know that most of our department won’t have a problem with this, but there’s a wider world, and I won’t listen to people at Bent County pretend to know who you are or what you stand for because of your relationship with me. No number of speeches or interventions orloving youcan change what people will say when I’m not there to stop it, and I never want you to have to deal with that.”

She could only stare at him. All this time... All thistime, and she’d been so sure she understood what they were doing. She’d known part of it was about work, about not breaking his precious rules, but she hadn’t thought about...

And he had. What it would really look like if people knew about them. He’d thought it through. And he cared, deeply, that it would affecther.

She wanted so badly to protect her heart. Everyone who’d ever had it had bashed it into a million pieces.

But Jack laid out the reality of their situation, and she could see it. He laid it out and sheknewhim.

Of coursethe secrecy was about protectingher.Of courseit wasn’t superficial, about her family reputation—poor Jack didn’t have an ounce of superficial in him.

Which only left one thing.

“Jack, I can’t...”

“You don’t have to do anything, Chloe. That’s not why I said it. I said it so you’d understand. So you’d stop fighting me on this because you think... I don’t know. That it doesn’t matter to me? I need you to be careful. I need you tocarethat something dangerous is going on, one way or another.”

This time when he moved for her, she let him. Let him take her hands in his. Let him look at her like...

Like he loved her. Because Jack Hudson, somehow and very inexplicably, was in love with her. And Jack didn’t lie, except maybe sometimes to himself. But this wasn’t that.

“I care that you are safe, Chloe. That you are...happyisn’t the right word, but that you’re okay. I have no feelings one way or another on your brother. I know you love him. I know how hard and complicated that is for you, and I respect it. And because I loveyou, I’m going to honor it. For as long as it takes, I need to protect you and Ry. And I need you to let me. That’s all I need from you right now.”

The fact that he was including Ry, that he understood just how complicated and frustrating her love for her brother was, made the tears she’d so desperately been battling all afternoon fall over.

I need you to let me. She’d give him so much—anything, really. He had to know it. “You’re not playing fair,” she managed to say, even as tears trailed down her cheeks.

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