Page 8 of Freeing Savannah

Her hand went to the end of one wavy strand, like she could hide the years in the length of it. “Guess some things are harder to let go of.”

His eyes dropped, just for a second. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Some things stick.”

Her fingers tightened in her pants pocket. Around the pendant. With a familiar motion, she rubbed her thumb across the worn initials, a ritual repeated so often that the carved initials were nearly erased, leaving only the faintest suggestion of its former presence in the aged wood.

“Do you remember . . .” she began, voice catching, “when I cried the night before we left? You held me and told me we’d see each other again.”

“I remember everything,” he said. No hesitation. Just fact. “Guess I was right.”

She swallowed hard.

“I thought maybe you forgot. That it didn’t matter as much to you as it did to me. That I was just . . . a neighbor kid you once knew.”

“You were my best friend, Savi.”

She hadn’t heard that name in so long it nearly broke her.

“You’re the reason I started playing the piano,” she said, smiling now, a little sad. “You said my hands were too small to reach the keys and play well, so I tried to prove you wrong.”

His mouth twitched. “You did.”

“Barely.”

He shook his head. “You were always meant to be something special, Savi. Gifted.”

That hit her straight in the chest.

They fell quiet again.

Savannah looked at him closely then, really looked spotting the edges of exhaustion around his eyes, the scar at his throat that made her stomach twist, the slight restlessness in the way he stood, like he hadn’t learned how to be still in years.

“You’ve seen things,” she said quietly.

He didn’t answer.

“You’re not the same,” she added.

“No,” he agreed. “Neither are you.”

“I thought I lost you,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

But his eyes—God, his eyes saideverything.

He opened his mouth, eyes darkening with something heavy, something real?—

“Savannah.”

The name cracked like a whip.

Savannah’s spine snapped straight. She turned before she could stop herself, instinct kicking in before logic.

Senator Harlan McNabney made a beeline across the waiting area toward her. His own personal security fanned out around the room.

Crisp navy suit. Aviators. Tension in every line of his body like he’d stepped off a battlefield instead of out of an SUV. His presence filled the space, always watching every move from the people around him, always judging. Especially when it came to her.

He carried a confidence she could only dream of. Despite her years spent performing on stages all across the country, she remained, at heart, the same quiet and introverted little girl she had been when her mother married him.

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