Page 37 of Murder in Calusa Cove
But no one had ever been this close to becoming a father before. Not like this. Not while still sitting beside him, part of the team.
Ken had been a dad, sure—but that had been different. Ken had distanced himself. Stepped back.
This? This felt like watching a door close while he stood on the other side of it.
The tether that had bound him to these men for years—his lifeline, the family he’d chosen—suddenly felt...frayed. As if at any moment, he’d be the one left behind. Outside looking in.
Sweat gathered at his hairline. His chest tightened again.
“Excuse me,” he muttered, pushing to his feet and holding up his phone like it had buzzed. “I need to take this.”
He slipped into the house and tossed the phone onto the kitchen table. It didn’t ring. It hadn’t buzzed. He just needed out.
Gripping the edge of the counter, he sucked in a breath. Then another. Each one came with effort, shallow and thin, like breathing through a straw.
His mind split in two—one half desperate to get back outside, to return to the laughter and light and love of the only people who had ever truly seen him. The other half wanted to run. To bolt. To climb into his truck and drive until the road ran out and the noise in his head finally quieted.
He’d fought so hard to build something real—with the team, with Chloe. She softened his edges. Made him feel like maybe he wasn’t broken beyond repair.
But now, all he could feel was the cold grip of fear and the past pressing down on him. He couldn’t move forward—not when he still carried the guilt, the grief, and the unrelenting belief that he wasn’t made for the kind of love and commitment these men had found.
He pressed a palm to the counter, head down, breath steadying by degrees.
He wanted to be that man. For Chloe. For himself.
But wanting it didn’t make it real.
And right now, it felt a thousand miles away.
Chloe set her bag on the kitchen counter and grabbed a water from the fridge. The cool bottle did nothing to calm the low thrum of unease in her chest.
Nick had always said she jumped into confrontation too fast. That she didn’t give people enough space, didn’t let things breathe. That not everything needed to be solved the second it surfaced.
But this wasn’t about impatience. This was about instinct.
She turned, watching Hayes drop his keys on the table and hang up his jean jacket like his movements were rehearsed and automatic. As if he were on autopilot. It wasn’t like him. While he could often be quiet, he never behaved like an emotionless robot.
“You’ve barely said five words since we left Fletcher’s,” she said. “And you’ve been off most of the night. Are you okay?”
“I told you—I’m just tired.” His voice was calm. Even. Too even. Like someone reading off a script instead of speaking from someplace real.
It was the kind of flat response that made Chloe pause. He wasn’t looking at her. Wasn’t offering even a shadow of the man she knew—the man who usually met tension with wit, not distance.
She studied him for a beat, then said, “Sure...tired.” She let the word hang there. Gave it space. “But you didn’t check out emotionally the last time you were sleep-deprived and running on fumes. Something else is going on.”
He walked to the sink and washed his hands, scrubbing not like someone cleaning up after a long day, but like a man trying to wash off something he couldn’t name. His shoulders were tense, his movements mechanical, focused, but disconnected.
Chloe watched him in silence, feeling the gap between them widen with each passing second. This wasn’t just post-shift exhaustion or the come-down after a long day. This was avoidance. She’d seen it before—in suspects, in victims’ families, in the mirror, and she hated it.
She took a step closer. “Hayes, talk to me.” God, why did her voice sound so unsure?
She wasn’t needy. She didn’t beg for attention or push for feelings before they were ready to surface. But this wasn’t nothing. This wasn’t just a rough night. She could feel it in her chest, in her gut. He was unraveling—quietly, maybe even subconsciously—but it was happening, and she was close enough to see the threads start to pull.
It made her heart twist because he was the one who had asked for more. He was the one who’d kissed her like he’d meant it and told her they should try again, even if the future was blurry. He was the one who’d looked her in the eye and said, I’m not going anywhere.
So why did it suddenly feel like he already had?
Chloe held her breath, waiting for a crack in the silence, a flicker of honesty—anything real.
