Page 32 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

She huffed a breath, but he waited until she moved before following.

They rode on and Hudson cleared his throat once.

She glanced over. Nothing in his face. He was watching the trail the same as before, hands easy on the reins, posture unbothered. But his breathing had gone careful. An easy ride shouldn't have changed it. She tucked it away as a mental note. The sheriff in her insisted that was all she was doing. It didn’t have to mean anything.

“Wyatt swears Bon Jovi’s the smartest horse he’s ever owned,” she said, once the grade leveled and talking didn’t cost either of them as much.

“Wyatt thinks that about everyone who agrees with him.”

That got an actual laugh out of her—short, surprised, gone almost as fast as it arrived. “That’s disturbingly accurate.”

“I’ve had years to think about Wyatt’s personality from a distance. Gives you clarity.”

“Did you think about it a lot? From a distance?”

“More than I expected to.”

She didn’t push on that, even though some part of her wanted to. “Tell me something about him I don’t know. Something from when you two were off being idiots and I wasn’t there to supervise.”

Hudson was quiet for a second, as if he was deciding how much of the file to declassify.

“BUD/S,” he said finally. “Second week. We’re both half-dead from the cold, sleep-deprived, the instructors doing everything they can think of to make us quit.” A small breath that might have been the start of a laugh. “And somehow Wyatt decides the appropriate response to total physical collapse is to start singing.”

“No.”

“Livin’ on a Prayer. Full volume. While we’re doing flutter kicks in surf that wanted to kill us.”

“He did not.”

“He absolutely did. Got the whole class doing it, eventually. Even the instructors couldn’t yell over it properly, they were too busy looking confused.” Hudson shook his head slightly, eyes on the trail, the corner of his mouth doing something that wasn’t quite a smile but close. “Funny, the things you remember. Grown men, hypothermic, half-convinced they’re going to die, screaming Bon Jovi into the Pacific because Wyatt Meyer refused to suffer quietly.”

Sarah laughed, loud enough that Captain’s ears flicked back at her.

“That’s the most Wyatt thing I’ve ever heard, and I grew up with him.”

“I’m guessing that’s how the horse got his name.”

“Obviously.” She didn’t even have to think about it. “Mom banned Bon Jovi from family road trips in 2008.”

They rode another stretch in something that had gone easy between them without her quite tracking when it had happened—Hudson telling another piece of some story she’d never have gotten otherwise, her laughing again, smaller this time but real. The cold, the case, and everything waiting at the end of this trail somehow wasn’t as loud as it had been an hour ago.

She’d been relaxed around him for twenty minutes straight.

This was comfortable. And comfortable was so much more dangerous than wanting, because wanting she knew how to survive. She’d done it for fifteen years on a diet of nothing.

Captain’s hoof skidded briefly on hidden ice. Hudson’s head came around before the horse had fully recovered. “You okay?”

“I’m on a horse, not falling off a cliff.”

His gaze stayed on her for another second. “Sure.”

She straightened in the saddle. Pulled her voice back into something more level. “How much further to the turn?”

Hudson glanced at her, and whatever he saw in her face, he let it go without comment.

“Quarter mile, if Nora’s directions hold.”

“Good.”