Page 54 of Murder in Calusa Cove
“I do.” Chloe leaned back against the wall again. “We’ll clear him.”
“Yeah,” Hayes said softly. “That could’ve been me, Dawson, Fletcher, or Keaton.”
She looked at him—really looked at him. The tight line of his jaw. The distant storm behind his eyes. The way his fingers twitched against his leg, like he was barely holding something back. She didn’t speak. Didn’t move. The silence swelled between them, thick and dense, like the charged stillness before a lightning strike.
He pressed his palm flat to his chest, just over his heart, and looked down. “We always knew we might not come home,” he said, voice low. “Every time we deployed, we accepted that. Death wasn’t just a possibility—it was a constant presence. Honestly, I think that’s what kept us sharp. Kept us alive.”
His eyes lifted, locking with hers.
“But that mission,” he whispered, swallowing hard. “That one was different. From the second we hit the ground, everything felt…wrong. We jumped from the helicopter into enemy territory, and every one of us knew. We didn’t say it out loud, but it was in the way we looked at each other. We felt it.” He sucked in a deep breath and let it out with sigh. “During that mission, I would dream about Max. I’d see him as an adult. It’s not hard to do, since we were identical twins. But it was damn weird. It was like he was calling me to him.”
She took a step closer.
But Hayes suddenly held his hands out, stopping her cold. Not harshly, but with a barrier that felt like it came from somewhere deep inside. Chloe froze, arms hugging her torso, gaze fixed on the man who stood in front of her—physically present, but mentally retreating.
“We were captured,” he said, voice tight. “Tortured. It’s a goddamn miracle four of us made it out alive.” He let out a long breath, shaky, almost ragged. “Ken didn’t, and each of us carries that guilt. Each of us believes it should’ve been us. We don’t say it out loud, but it’s there, right under the surface. It was during those torture sessions that I saw Max. I don’t know if I conjured him up to help me get through the insanity of it all…or if I was praying for death. I suppose it doesn’t matter.” He looked away, jaw clenched. “This is classified,” he added quietly. “I could get into serious trouble just telling you this.”
“I won’t say a word,” she said.
He nodded once, the barest motion. “They tried to break us. For three days, they electrocuted us. Burned us. Cut us. When that didn’t work, they took Ken and Fletcher into another room.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Only Fletcher came back.”
Chloe’s breath caught.
“They made him watch,” Hayes said, voice breaking. “They executed Ken right in front of him.” He covered his eyes with one hand, shoulders shuddering once, then again. “My connection to Max…the dreams he’d visit me in…stopped.”
Chloe closed the space between them. She wrapped her arms around him, pulled him close. He didn’t fight it. Didn’t flinch. His arms came around her slowly, and he pressed his face into the curve of her neck.
She said nothing. Because there was nothing to say. No apology, no words of comfort that could touch what he’d just shared. She only held on.
When he finally pulled back, he kissed her temple and ran his hands up her arms. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Didn’t mean to fall apart like that.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “You don’t have to hold it in.”
Hayes glanced toward the table, his gaze distant again. “Ken’s been on all our minds lately. The wedding, the secrets we’ve uncovered… It’s got all of us questioning how well we actually knew him, especially Fletcher. They were best friends since grade school.” He looked back at her. “Seeing Cole—being in the same room with him—it shook something loose. Dawson felt it, too. He won’t say it, but I saw it on his face. Cole’s not just a reminder of where we could’ve ended up—he’s a reminder that we didn’t all make it out the same.” He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his phone, and tapped the screen. “Keaton texted me while we were in the room with Cole. Said Fletcher’s off. Real off. He convinced Baily to go over to his place, just to keep an eye on him. Keaton’s got wedding prep to finish, but this is hitting all of us harder than we expected.” He looked down at the floor, then back at her. “I promised Cole I wouldn’t leave him alone tonight.”
Chloe stepped closer again. “Then we stay.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I know I don’t have to.” She nudged his arm. “But I’m not going anywhere.”
He looked at her then, something soft and grateful behind the fatigue. His mouth curved just slightly. Not quite a smile, but something close.
She let out a slow breath and reached for his hand.
They didn’t speak.
They didn’t need to.
Not now.
13
Hayes leaned back in the Adirondack chair, tie loosened, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and a cold beer sweating in his hand. The double wedding was behind them. Keaton and Dawson were officially off the market, and the energy had shifted—vows and emotion giving way to bourbon, low conversation, and the kind of porch talk only brothers shared.
He smiled quietly, heart full in a way that surprised him.
Dawson had earned this happiness. Despite a childhood filled with quiet grief—losing his parents young, raised by a grandmother who had passed not long after he’d joined the Navy—he’d never let the pain define him. Dawson had grown up fast and hard, and from the moment Hayes had met him, he’d stepped into the big-brother role Hayes had never had. Hayes and Max had been third and fourth in a pack of twelve. The two oldest had been girls.
