The rain had started an hour ago, a soft, apologetic drizzle that now beat against the world with a furious, cleansing rhythm. It matched the tempest in my chest, the one that had been raging since I’d closed the back cover of Hannah’s journal.
My fingers were numb, clenched around the worn leather as if it were the only solid thing in a world that had tilted on its axis.
I didn’t know where else to go.
My motel room felt like a cage, the woods felt like Nash’s territory, and my old home felt like a museum of lies. So I had come here, to the one place that had always represented safety.
To Ben.
I was huddled on the top step of his covered porch, knees drawn to my chest, the journal a lead weight in my lap. The wind whipped cold, damp air under the eaves, plastering a strand of hair to my cheek.
I watched the headlights of his truck slice through the downpour as he pulled into the gravel drive, the engine cutting out with a familiar rumble that vibrated through the floorboards and up into my bones.
He saw me immediately.
The driver’s side door opened and he was out in a fluid motion, his sheriff’s uniform dark with rain by the time he took the three steps to the porch. His face was a mask of professional concern, his eyes scanning me for injury.
“Callie? What the hell happened? Are you hurt?” His voice was the official, no-nonsense tone of Sheriff Carter.
I shook my head, unable to form words past the knot of grief and betrayal lodged in my throat. I just looked up at him, my own personal storm breaking in my eyes.
His gaze dropped to the journal in my lap.
Recognition flickered, then a deep, knowing sorrow that cracked his professional veneer. The tension drained from his shoulders.
He let out a long, slow breath, the sound swallowed by the drumming of the rain on the tin roof.
“Oh, Cal,” he murmured. The name was a key, unlocking a part of him I hadn’t seen in years.
He wasn’t the sheriff anymore. He was just Ben.
He didn’t press me for details. He just unlocked the front door and gently guided me inside, his hand a warm, steady pressure on the small of my back.
The house smelled the same as I remembered—of old wood, clean laundry, and coffee.
It was the scent of stability. The scent of home.
Ben steered me to the worn leather sofa, then went about the quiet business of shutting out the world. He closed the curtains against the flashing lightning, his movements economical and sure.
He disappeared for a moment and came back with a thick quilt, draping it over my shivering shoulders. Then he stood in front of the fireplace, his back to me.
I heard the scrape of a match, saw the flicker of orange light dance across the walls as the kindling caught.
Finally, he turned to face me. He’d taken off his duty belt, laying it carefully on the entryway table, the clink of metal a final, symbolic shedding of his authority.
He was just in his uniform shirt and pants now, his sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He looked tired. He looked like the boy who had once kissed me under these very rafters.
“You found it,” he said, his voice soft. It wasn’t a question.
I could only nod, clutching the quilt tighter. “She… she was in love with him, Ben.” The words came out as a choked whisper. “With Nash.”
He sat down on the coffee table in front of me, his knees almost touching mine. His eyes, the color of a calm sea, held nothing but compassion. “I know.”
The confession hung in the air between us, a quiet devastation. “You knew? All this time, you knew and you didn’t tell me?”
“It wasn’t my secret to tell, Cal,” he said gently.
“Hannah… she was complicated. She asked me to keep it quiet.” He reached out, his hand hovering over the journal before he rested it on my knee, a simple, grounding touch.
“What else did you read?”
“Everything.” The dam broke. A sob tore from my throat, raw and ragged.
“The Devereauxs. The smuggling. She was investigating them. She thought… she thought they were connected to something bigger. A cover-up.” My voice hitched. “She was scared. And she was all alone.”
“She wasn’t alone,” Ben said, his voice thick with an emotion I couldn’t place. “She had him.”
The mention of Nash was like a physical blow. The violence of our encounter, the brutal passion, the way he’d used my body as both a weapon and a confession—it all came rushing back, a sickening counterpoint to the gentle safety of Ben’s living room.
“He’s not safe,” I cried, the tears coming in earnest now, hot and unstoppable. “He’s dangerous. The way he looks at me, the way he touches me… it’s like he wants to break me.”
Ben’s expression hardened for a split second before softening again. He moved from the coffee table to the sofa, sitting beside me, his solid warmth a comfort against my side.
And then he did what I hadn’t even realized I desperately needed. He pulled me into his arms.
I collapsed against him, burying my face in the rain-damp fabric of his shirt, and I wept.
I cried for my sister, for the secrets she carried and the life she lost. I cried for the girl I used to be, who believed in simple truths and happy endings.
I cried for the woman I was now, caught between a man who felt like a consuming fire and another who felt like a harbor in a storm.
Ben just held me. He didn’t offer platitudes or empty promises. He just held me, one hand stroking my hair, the other spread wide and firm across my back, a human shield against the chaos.
His scent filled my senses—rain and soap and something that was just intrinsically Ben. Solid. Dependable. Real.
After a long time, my sobs subsided into shuddering breaths. The storm outside raged on, but the one inside me had quieted to a low rumble.
I was exhausted, hollowed out.
I tilted my head back, still nestled in the crook of his arm, and looked up at him. His face was inches from mine, his expression unreadable but for the tenderness in his eyes. Raindrops clung to his eyelashes.
“Better?” he asked, his voice a low vibration against my ear.
I nodded, my cheek rubbing against the soft cotton of his shirt.
He brushed a stray tear from my cheek with his thumb, but his hand lingered, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw with a feather-light touch. The air in the room shifted.
The quiet comfort that had enveloped us began to hum with a different kind of energy, a low, simmering current of memory and want.
My breath hitched. His eyes dropped to my mouth.
This was a line we hadn’t crossed in a decade. But the rules had all been rewritten tonight.
“Cal,” he whispered, a question and a plea all in one.
I didn’t answer with words. I leaned in, closing the small distance between us, and pressed my lips to his.
The kiss was everything his embrace had been: gentle, sure, and profoundly comforting.
There was no bruising force, no battle for control. It was soft and searching, a rediscovery.
His lips were cool from the rain, and they tasted of it, clean and fresh. He responded instantly, his arm tightening around me, his other hand coming up to cup my face, his calloused thumb a gentle anchor against my skin.
This wasn’t a firestorm; it was a hearth. It was warmth and light and a slow, spreading heat that thawed the ice around my heart.
With Nash, it was a collision.
With Ben, it was a homecoming.
He deepened the kiss, his tongue tracing my lips before seeking entrance, a polite request I gladly granted. It was a slow, languid exploration, a dance of memory and new longing.
He knew me.
He remembered how to tilt his head just so, how to slide his hand from my jaw into my hair, his fingers threading through the damp strands to cradle the back of my head.
I moaned softly, a sound of pure surrender, and my hands, which had been clutching the quilt, came up to fist in the front of his shirt. I pulled him closer, needing to erase any space between us, wanting to absorb his steadiness into my very being.
He broke the kiss, resting his forehead against mine, our breaths mingling in the quiet room. The only sounds were the fire crackling and the rain lashing against the windows.
“I’ve missed you,” he breathed, his voice rough with emotion. “Every single day.”
The simple, honest confession did what no amount of force could. It unraveled me completely.
“Take me to bed, Ben,” I whispered, the words both a request and a statement of need. “Please.”
He looked at me for a long moment, his sea-blue eyes searching mine, ensuring this was what I wanted, what I needed. I gave him a small, certain nod.
He lifted me into his arms as if I weighed nothing, the quilt pooling at our feet. I wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my face in the curve of his shoulder as he carried me down the familiar hallway to his bedroom.
He laid me gently on the bed, the comforter soft beneath me. The room was dark, but for the flickering firelight that reached in from the hall, casting dancing shadows on the walls.
His movements were slow, deliberate, as he undressed me. There was a reverence to his touch, as if he were handling something precious.
He unzipped my jeans, his knuckles brushing my skin, and slid them off. He peeled away my soaked t-shirt, his eyes never leaving mine.
His gaze was a tangible thing, warm and adoring, and I felt not exposed, but seen. Truly seen, for the first time in a long time.
He undressed himself with the same unhurried grace, his uniform shirt falling to the floor, followed by the rest. In the dim light, his body was familiar and strong, a landscape I had once known by heart.
When he came to me on the bed, skin to skin, it was with a sigh of relief, as if he’d been holding his breath for ten years. He kissed me again, deeply, while his hands rediscovered my body—not with the grasping possession of Nash, but with a slow, tender worship.
He traced the curve of my waist, the swell of my hip, the line of my collarbone. Every touch was a question, and my shivering response was the answer.
This was an act of healing. It was gentle and slow, a balm on the raw wounds of the past few days.
When he finally entered me, it was with an exhale, a perfect, seamless joining that felt less like a beginning and more like a continuation.
He moved within me with a steady, patient rhythm that matched the rain outside, his eyes locked on mine, telling me without words that I was safe, that I was cherished, that I was home.
And as I arched against him, my release a quiet, splintering wave of sensation and emotion, I clung to him, clinging to that feeling of safety.
Later, lying tangled in the sheets, his arm a heavy, comforting weight across my waist and the storm still raging outside, I should have felt at peace.
I was sheltered. I was with Ben.
It was everything I thought I wanted.
But as the firelight danced on the ceiling, another face flickered in the shadows. Nash’s.
The memory of his touch—hard, demanding, electric—was a ghost of heat on my skin. The danger he represented, the brutal, undeniable chemistry that sparked between us, felt like a splinter of ice next to the warm comfort of Ben’s embrace.
I had run from the fire and found shelter in the harbor. But a devastating new question began to smolder in the quiet aftermath: what if I was the kind of woman who was meant to burn?