Page 8 of Finding Gideon

That had gotten under my skin more than I wanted to admit.

I sighed and scrubbed a hand through my hair, feeling the old, familiar heaviness creep up. Not about Gideon. About me.

Back in San Francisco, sleep had been a luxury I couldn't afford. Long nights under the cold fluorescent lights of the emergency vet hospital, shifting from trauma case to trauma case without room to breathe. Hit-by-cars, rat bait poisonings, cats with urinary blockages crashing at two in the morning—one minute you were placing a central line in a dying dog, the next you were holding an owner's hand while they sobbed through a decision they never wanted to make.

No time to think. No time to feel.

Just keep moving, keep patching the holes, keep pretending you could save them all if you worked hard enough.

And then there was the marriage.

I willed the memories to fade, but they stayed, stubborn as old scars. Me coming home after back-to-back shifts to a woman who barely looked up from her wineglass. Conversations that felt more like crossing items off a list. Two strangers orbiting the same empty space, too tired—or maybe too numb—to fix what had cracked wide open between them.

In the end, it hadn’t been some explosive fight. No screaming, no slammed doors. Just a quiet, mutual shrug. Like neither of us cared enough to even pretend anymore.

Maybe that was worse.

I exhaled slowly through my nose, the sound loud in the quiet of the house.

Coming here was supposed to be a clean break. Start over somewhere small. Somewhere I could remember why I got into this job in the first place. Help a town that still needed help, even if it wasn't flashy. Even if the emergencies were more "my cow’s giving birth in a ditch" than "massive internal bleeding."

Simple.

Manageable.

Safe.

At least, it had been—until a man with too many shadows in his eyes showed up holding a trembling stray, his focus locked so fiercely on the animal it was… hard to look away.

I turned onto my side, punching the pillow once to reshape it.

One night. That's all it was. I'd done the decent thing. There was no reason to make it bigger than that.

Still, I didn't close my eyes.

And I didn’t stop listening for any sound from down the hall.

Chapter 3

Malcolm

The smell of coffee hit me first. Sharp, dark, grounding.

I blinked blearily at the sliver of morning light cutting across the floorboards and dragged a hand over my face. My body felt heavy, like I'd only slept half the night. Maybe because I had.

I heard a low thump, followed by the creak and groan of the kitchen door that led to the back yard.

For a moment, I lay there, disoriented. Then it clicked.

Gideon.

I sat up slowly, the muscles in my back protesting. In the quiet, the rhythmic squeak of hinges came again. He was working on the door—the one that had been sticking for weeks now, swelling with every change in the weather until it barely opened without a fight. I'd meant to fix it. Kept telling myself I would.

Somehow, hearing someone else tackle it, unasked and probably unbothered, settled something deep in my chest.

I shoved on joggers and an old sweatshirt and padded barefoot down the hall. The soft thud of my steps on the hardwood would’ve been enough to give me away if he’d been listening for them. I stopped where the hallway opened into the kitchen, staying out of sight behind the wall.

Gideon was crouched by the door, a screwdriver tucked behind one ear, focused intently on the warped frame. He wore the same jeans from last night—well-worn and clinging stubbornly to powerful thighs—and a clean gray T-shirt stretched across broad shoulders.