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A small crowd had gathered around us, and Cal turned to a person behind me I couldn’t see. “I need you to call 911. Ask for an ambulance and law enforcement.”

The person complied, and I heard them talking to thedispatcher only seconds later.

“Law enforcement?” I repeated with wide eyes.

Vaughn’s feet crunched back a few steps, but I couldn’t see him with Cal holding my head straight. Cal glanced at Vaughn again. Never had I seen such potent rage on Cal’s features before. It pulled his lips together tightly and slashed his brows into an unforgiving line. “You’re lucky my hands are busy. There’s probably no use in telling you not to run, but blackmail is a criminal offense.” A hard glint sharpened his glower. “Either they’ll catch you or I will.”

Vaughn’s feet turned and scuffled, retreating without another word. I heard the slam of a car door, and then the rev of an engine. All the while, I stared at Cal in undisguised confusion. “What—?”

Bright green eyes simmering with rage fell back to me. I almost flinched, but Cal had me in such a vice grip, I couldn’t even if I wanted to. “Do not. Move,” he repeated tersely.

I drew in a breath, wincing at the stab of pain it caused along my right side. “Why?”

“You jumped from a car,” Cal replied, his tone full of censure and incredulity. “You could have damaged… everything. Jesus, Ruth.”

His words scraped over my body like a pain highlighter. My knee throbbed, and the burning sensation along my right arm and side felt like a branding iron to my skin. I held his furious gaze and felt my eyebrows tip up. “Ow.”

Cal huffed, his shoulders sagging and his head falling afraction. “You scared me shitless, Ruth Coldwell. If I wasn’t immobilizing your spine right now, I’d shake you.”

“Is that what you’re doing?” I bounded a look between his arms. “It’s kind of hurting me.”

“Don’t care,” he replied immediately. “You can’t just jump from moving vehicles. It’s completely irrational.”

A small smile pricked at the corners of my mouth. “Yeah. It is.”

His sober expression wiped away my hesitant smile. His eyes searched mine, and then down my body, like he was looking for mortal wounds, before returning to my round-eyed stare. “I would have found you,” he said softly. His thumbs brushed my cheeks with a gentle caress. “No matter what, I would have found you. You didn’t need to risk your safety.”

“Found me?” I repeated. The phrase looped on repeat in my head. Found me. If he would have found me, then had he beenlookingfor me?

Like he’d heard my thoughts, Cal sighed. “I would have found you because you aremine,Ruth. I’m sorry I let what you said on Saturday make me hesitate even for a second. I know you better than that, and I should have seen the situation for what it was.”

I gaped at him. “What are you saying? You should be furious with me.”

“I am,” he confirmed, but the gentle curve to his lips softened the statement. “But not because you got all heroic and left with that dickface on Saturday. I’m angry because you didn’t trustthe people who love you.”

“Who?” I asked incredulously.

“Me, Shortstop. I love you.”

Maybe I did have a head injury. I could have sworn I’d just heard Callum Reed confess that he loved me, but that couldn’t be right. “You,” I repeated dumbly.

Thebloop, bloopof an ambulance siren cut through my stupor, and Cal looked up just as red and blue lights washed over his skin. He glanced back down to me. “As much as I want to double down on that right now, you’re about to have some insistent company.”

It dawned on me then that he wanted me to getinthe ambulance. “Hang on,” I protested, starting to get up.

Cal held me steady, his features falling into irritation. “Do that again and I’ll make sure they hold you overnight for being obstinate.”

“Can you do that?” I asked dubiously.

As the clatter of the ambulance doors sounded behind me, Cal gave me a darkly amused look. “You want to test it out?”

Not with that look on his face, I didn’t. The sound of a stretcher clattering over asphalt sounded, and then the EMS personnel were there. As they peppered Cal and me with questions, I floated in a calm ocean of disbelief.

I love you.

Part of me wanted to ask him to say it again, to make sure I had heard him right. But the larger, thankfully rational, part of my brain didn’t need him to. Because for once, my head and myheart were in sync. It wasn’t just that I knew I loved him, and that buoyed my sense of realism. It was that I knew for a surety that he did love me.

He’d told me.