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Thea looked back at the phone. “She wants to know where I am.”

“Tell her you went back to Alabama.”

“It looks like I’ll be staying for a while. I need to talk to Ava about that.”

“I could go with you. To Alabama,” Brett said.

He didn’t have to hold his breath for her reaction. Her head whipped up.

“How? You have a job. You have a life. If you leave your job, then we go from one income between us to none.”

Brett paced in front of Kiwi who was starting to pick up on his and Thea’s anxiety. “You’re right. I have savings, but–”

“We can’t run away. When does it end?”

“When you get well. Then we could–”

Thenshecould go home. There was noweafter she healed.

She shook her head. “There’s no sense in talking about it now. I can barely walk across the barn without gasping for air and needing to elevate my leg.”

Brett squatted in front of her and looked up. Her brows were pinched together, and her eyes drifted closed. He slowly reached for the phone, and she let him take it from her. He put it on the bucket beside her foot and took her hands in his. The skin on the tops of her hands was soft, but callouses were spread over the palms–a sign she didn’t mind stepping up and working hard.

“They won’t win. Don’t give up.”

She bit her lips between her teeth and lowered her chin.

“Hey,” he whispered.

She lifted her gaze to him, but his encouragement had fallen on deaf ears. “We will win. You’ll be free. If I have to burn everything down, go to the ends of the earth, protect you with my life, I’ll do it.”

Her eyes squeezed closed, and the sobs came. She gasped for breath, and Brett pulled her to rest against his shoulder. Every cry hit him like a whip on his bare back as he brushed a hand over her hair.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?” she asked through tears and sniffles. “I left you.”

Good question. It would be really cool if he knew the answer. “I don’t know. Because I can’t do anything else. I can’t leave you. I can’t stand the thought of you hurting. I–”

He loved her. He’d known it since that first night in the hospital that the full force of that love had survived all these years. He just wasn’t sure if she was ready to accept it yet.

He’d held her like this while she cried before. It was the first time her dad hit her mom after he started dating Thea. It hadn’t been the first time, but Thea hadn’t been able to see her mom hurting without falling apart. She cried as if she’d been the one to take the punches. And there were times in the past when she had.

Young Brett had immediately offered to level the guy–thirty-year age gap or not. Any man who could lay a hand on a woman deserved to get picked on by someone his own size.

“I’m sorry.” Thea sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I may have developed a hay allergy.”

Brett laughed. “I think cracking jokes when feelings pop up is my job.”

“Well, you were just being sweet, and that makes me feel worse about barging into your life with all my problems.”

Brett cradled her face in his hands, rubbing the tears away with his thumbs. “It’s you and me against the world.”

Her bottom lip trembled before she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him close. “Thank you,” she whispered against his neck.

He rubbed a hand over her back, soothing her through the last of her tears. “I’d do anything for you.”

Chapter15

Thea