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Chloe hopped into the passenger side of Jack’s truck, Tiger in her grasp. The minute she was settled, the cat immediately escaped and made a beeline for Jack’s lap.

He looked rough. Oh, he hid it well. The stoic expression. The way, somehow, even though he likely hadn’t slept at all, he looked as alert and in control as he always did.

But she saw the little things. The way his hand gripped the steering wheel. The impossibly tense clench of his jaw.

She wanted to reach across and rub her palm against it until he relaxed. But she didn’t. Not yet. She wasn’t quite sure what this was yet. Truth be told, she was always waiting for him to drop the hammer. End this. Just because he hadn’t yet didn’t mean he never would.

But he had a lot more than her on his mind right now, and she doubted he had the mental capacity to finally come to his senses when it came to whatever they were doing.

“So, where we driving to?” She didn’t explain Ry was staying at her cabin. If he hadn’t already known it, he would have come up to her door.

“I... I’m not sure,” he said.

Worry slithered through her. She wondered if she’d ever once heard Jack say those three words. She tried to sound cheerful and unbothered, though. An anchor to how lost he seemed. “How about up around the scenic viewpoint?”

He nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good.” He started driving, never once looking over at her. He drove with one hand on the wheel and one hand on Tiger, down the highway toward the turnoff that would lead up and around one of the smaller peaks, with pretty views out over the larger mountain range as a whole.

But not long after they’d passed the main entrance to the Hudson Ranch, he took a sharp and unexpected turn off the highway. Chloe had to grab on to the dash to keep from slamming into the door.

“Uh, where are we going?”

“Just a different place I know.” His expression was grim, and even though he was making her a little nervous, she didn’t say anything or ask any more questions. She just sat back and tried to figure it out herself.

It was a side road, but she was pretty sure they were on Hudson property. Confirmed when they drove past Palmer’s new house that he and Louisa had finished about the time they’d gotten married.

Then the road changed from gravel to dirt and started going...up. Chloe’s grip on whatever she could find tightened. She looked over at Tiger, whose eyes were half-closed as if it was naptime.

Meanwhile, Chloe’s throat constricted, and her entire body tensed as it began to feel like they were driving straight up. Up the mountain. Chloe didn’t consider herself squeamish about much, but narrow mountain roads weren’t her favorite. That was why she’d suggested the overlook—the road up to it was paved and well maintained.

When he came to a stop and shoved his truck into Park, at such an angle gravity had her practically pressed to her door, she realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out shakily, and Jack looked over at her.

For the first time today, she saw that grave, expression in his eyes turn to humor, which made her entire being flutter .

“Sorry. Forgot you get panicky about heights.”

“Not panicky. Just not keen on tumbling to my death in a truck.”

“Yeah, that’s not panicky at all. Come on.” He got out of the truck, Tiger in his arms like it was normal to carry a cat around. But for some reason, that cat looked content as could be wrapped up in Jack’s arms.

Yeah, you know the feeling, don’t you?

He grabbed a blanket from the back of his truck, tucked it under his free arm and then began marching toward some unknown point. He never said a word. She scurried after his long strides. She didn’t mind heights when she was on her own two feet—or at least, that’s what she tried to tell herself. Especially when Jack kept walking right up to the edge of what looked a hell of a lot like a cliff.

Chloe stepped very carefully behind him, but once she looked up from her feet, she stopped short.

“Jack,” she breathed.

She’d seen a lot of pretty views. Sunrise and Bent County were full of them. She’d spent summers enjoying everything the Tetons and Yellowstone had to offer. She’d even gone up to Glacier with a friend from the police academy one summer. All those places had been awe-inspiring, gorgeous. It was amazing what the natural world could be.

But this was... She couldn’t explain it. Not just the natural beauty of mountain and sky and land stretched out as far as the eye could see. There was something like a peaceful settling inside her. Like all her life, she’d been looking for this exact view, and now she’d finally found it.

The sun was sinking in the sky, but it wasn’t sunset just yet. The world had taken on a softer, pinker hue, though. And Jack Hudson stood there, at the edge of this little outcropping, holding her cat , and she knew she’d just...never get over him. Not in a million years.

One-handed, he spread out the blanket until she crouched to help him. Then they both sat down on it. The cat stayed curled in Jack’s lap, definitely not about to give up comfort for the wild world around them.

This time she didn’t resist the urge. She smoothed her hand down his jaw. He didn’t relax, but he did turn to her. And when she wrapped her arms around him, all comfort, he accepted.

And finally, some of that tension left him.

Maybe when all was said and done, it wasn’t the fantastic sex; it wasn’t that he was so handsome or so good. It was this.

She seemed to be the only one who could comfort Jack Hudson. To ease that tension, to release some of those burdens he’d been perfecting carrying for so long. She had that power, and for all the ways this relationship was messed up and messy, she couldn’t walk away from that.

When she pulled away, she didn’t pull far. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and he rested his head atop hers while they both looked out at the sun’s slow descent.

J ACK DIDN ’ T REALLY know what he was doing. In so many different ways. He couldn’t keep getting more and more mixed up with Chloe when he couldn’t offer her anything except complications He didn’t have time to just be sitting here, enjoying the feel of her head on his shoulder. There were things to do—ranch things, sheriff things, family things.

And still he sat, soaking in this moment in one of his favorite places on the ranch. The terms of his parents’ will had been that he inherited the main house. The other kids had their pick of equal parcels of land once they reached eighteen, and Palmer had already staked out his. Grant was looking at one closer to the main road since Dahlia worked in town as the librarian. Mary and Anna seemed content to stay put in the main house and have their portions of land dedicated to the ranch, and Jack hoped they would always. Cash was still deciding what to do next after his cabin had been destroyed.

Jack had been in the main-floor bedroom since his parents had disappeared, and part of him figured he’d stay there till he croaked.

But he’d always secretly wanted to build a little house right here and wake up to that view every morning.

He shouldn’t have brought Chloe here. She’d be part of that fantasy now too. And it was a fantasy neither of them could really afford.

Speaking of fantasies. “They’re not going to listen to me, are they?”

She was quiet for a long while, and he wondered if he’d have to explain. He didn’t want to. He already wished he hadn’t said anything.

“I think you’d be surprised how much they’d listen to you if you were honest with them.”

It made him think of Mary’s little speech about love and protection. He didn’t fully agree with her, but he understood a certain level of detachment in trying to hold everyone together, in trying to raise his siblings, had led to them thinking he was something of a benevolent dictator.

He didn’t mind that. Maybe he even relished it a little bit since it made things easier. But it meant he’d lost the ability to know how to explain to them this was important. That his protection did come from love, no matter what Mary said.

“Then again, once they think about it, they’ll probably figure out what you’re actually doing.”

“What’s that?”

“Protecting them. It’s what you’re always doing. Everyone knows it. Sometimes you just irritate them enough with it, they can’t see the forest through the trees.”

“And what’s the forest?”

“Love, Jack.”

The word landed hard, right there at the center of his chest. He even tensed against it, and wished he hadn’t because she’d no doubt feel it. But she didn’t lift her head or scoot away. They sat there together. That silence wrapping around him like a cocoon, like a soft place to land.

Like the one place he could let his guard down enough to speak the truth. “I didn’t realize that I still had this ridiculous hope they were still alive.”

She rubbed a hand up and down his back, and he thought maybe he’d survive all this crushing weight if she kept doing that.

“Hope is the human condition,” she said, a little too philosophically for his taste. But she shrugged and kept going. “No matter how many times he proves me wrong, I hope this time will be the time Ry gets clean, gets his life together. Sometimes I have this awful daydream that my mother comes back and wants to bake Christmas cookies together.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Life’s kind of an ouch.”

“That’s why I keep trying to turn into a robot.”

Which made her laugh. A rare thing. Oh, she laughed with Mary, with Anna, with just about everyone. But not as much with him as he would’ve liked.

She lifted her head from his shoulder, stretched forward and squinted out at the sunset. Then she turned back and met his gaze.

“You’re not much of an avoider, Jack. So why’d you come out here?” She didn’t ask the other question that hung in the air: Why’d you come get me?

Which he didn’t have an answer for. Not one that did them any good anyway. So he answered the one she’d voiced. “It’s like all those years I did my best to clean the ghosts out of that house, and now they’re all back.”

“Maybe they aren’t so much ghosts as...legacy.”

“Is that different?”

“Sort of. You loved your parents. They loved you. You guys had— have —a great family because they built it on a legacy of love. That was always going to hurt when a piece of it was lost, but it’s also like this...really cool thing. Because you’ve got Izzy and Caroline—and whatever Mary’s going to name the baby, which she refuses to tell me even though I know they’ve decided. They’re all getting raised in that same legacy even though they’ll never get to meet the people who started it. Not everyone gets that, Jack. Which doesn’t mean it’s not sad or doesn’t hurt, especially losing them the way you did, especially having to relive it now. It just means...sad isn’t all bad. Sometimes ghosts can be a comfort instead of something to run from.”

He knew a lot of people saw him as brave, strong. That whole saint thing again. No one seemed to understand he always felt like he was running from something.

Except Chloe.

He wanted her. To come home with him, to share his bed. Not just because of sexual chemistry but also because of this. The moments where it felt like she was the only one he could lean on when he’d spent so many years refusing to lean on anyone.

She managed to find just the right access point to crack him open. He’d never understand how or why; he just knew that she did. And when he leaned on her, he didn’t feel guilty or ashamed. She never let him.

Somehow it figured it’d be one of the few women in his life who was completely off-limits.

“We should get back.”

She nodded, and that was that. She collected Tiger, against the cat’s protests. Jack shook out the blanket, and then they walked back to his truck and drove all the way to Chloe’s cabin without saying a single word.

He pulled into the drive this time, idling. She let Tiger out of the vehicle and then got out herself, but she leaned in.

“You don’t have to wait for me to get in the door, Jack. I’m a big girl.”

He nodded.

But he waited all the same.