Page 51 of The SEAL and the Sheriff

For the first time in fifteen years, it existed in the space between them.

21

Busy people didn’t brood.

She’d decided that somewhere around five this morning, staring at the cracks in her bedroom ceiling. So she’d left the house before she changed her mind.

Coffee from Benji’s and out working before Walter finished his first cup.

Henderson's fence dispute. Mrs. Denver’s welfare check. If Sarah kept moving, maybe her brain would eventually get tired and leave her alone.

Anything that stopped her thinking about yesterday. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel. Fence first. Hudson later.

You’d stopped being Wyatt’s little sister.

For God’s sake.

She gave herself a mental shake and turned into the Hendersons’ driveway. She parked beside two pickups already positioned like declarations of war and climbed out. Walter pulled in a minute later, exactly as he’d promised he would. She didn’t need backup for a fence dispute, but nobody in the department was pretending the last few days hadn’t happened.

Daryl Henderson met her before she’d reached the gate. “I’m telling you, Sheriff, he moved the line six feet overnight.”

“Nonsense,” called his neighbor from the other side of the fence.

“See?” Daryl threw his hands up in disgust.

Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose. “One at a time.”

Daryl launched into a detailed history of survey pegs, boundary markers, and a fence post that had apparently offended three generations of Hendersons.

She listened. Or at least she looked as if she was listening.

I’d been trying not to kiss you for months.

The sentence arrived whole.

Sarah blinked.

“... and that’s why the survey’s wrong.” Daryl looked at her expectantly.

Her stupid brain was blank. “I’m sorry?”

Daryl’s heavy brows knotted. “I asked if you wanted to see the photographs.”

She blew out a breath. “Daryl, just show me where the original marker was.”

He glanced at Walter and then back to her before pointing. “I just did.”

Heat crept up her neck. “Right.”

She studied the boundary marker as though it might rescue her. It didn’t. By the time she got back in the truck, her hands weren’t entirely steady on the wheel.

I saw you cry.

That one stopped her completely, parked outside the Hendersons’ gate with the engine running and her forehead almost resting against the wheel before she caught herself and sat up straight. The sheriff of Aurora Cove didn’t sit in her truck falling apart over something that happened when she was eighteen.

Except, she did. Right now, today, fifteen years late.

She’d spent so long believing she’d done something wrong. That she’d somehow not been enough. It had hurt, but at least it had been an explanation. She’d carried that story so long it had stopped feeling like a memory. It had become load-bearing, part of who she thought she was.