Page 39 of Shadows Relived
“You saved them, you know,” she whispered after a while. “The kids. Me. Even after I told you to go to hell at the school.”
“I almost got us killed.”
“No.” She touched his face, brushing hair from his brow. “You didn’t.”
He caught her wrist before she could pull away and pressed a kiss to her palm. “This isn’t over, Meaghan. Whatever your father’s caught up in… it’s big. And I doubt we know the whole story. Even after talking to you, of you accusing him, he didn’t come out with everything, and you know it.”
“Of course we don’t know it,” she muttered. “Because it’s never simple. Not with him.”
Callen eased back, closing his eyes. “We’ll findout. But for now… we breathe. The others will be here in a few hours, and we’ll have some help.”
She nodded and rose from the bed. “I’ll just be glad to get these kids out of the way of danger.”
He expected her to walk away. Instead, she pulled back the covers and slid in beside him, careful of his side. Her hand found his beneath the sheets.
They lay in silence. A reprieve, however temporary.
Outside the Cypress Breeze Inn, a single streetlamp flickered. The night was still.
But Callen’s mind kept turning.
He had left her to give her the life she wanted, and she had it. Yet, danger still found her thanks to her father.
And this time… this time he knew he couldn’t walk away from her again.
CHAPTER 15
THE MOTEL WAS QUIET now.After a long day of chaos and fear, the kids had finally drifted off into sleep, tucked safely into the too-thin sheets of the roadside room that smelled faintly of bleach and cigarette smoke. The rust-orange glow of the parking lot lights bled in through the blinds, painting stripes across the bedspread. Callen had left the bed and slept in the chair once more, even with his injury, always the valiant gentleman.
But still Meaghan couldn’t sleep. The hum of the air conditioning unit was too loud. Her mind wouldn’t settle. Her body still ached from the tension of the last twenty-four hours, and the band of worry wrapped around her ribs refused to loosen.
The lamp cast a soft glow across the room, gold shadows dancing over the cheap paintings and pale curtains. But all she could see was him, slumped in that uncomfortable sofa like a soldier who refused to fall, even in sleep.
The bandage at his side was still pink in places, and theway he’d grimaced when lowering himself into the seat hadn’t gone unnoticed. His jaw was tight even now, as if his body couldn’t remember how to relax. One hand lay over his abdomen protectively, the other dangling loosely by his side, fingers twitching with some distant dream.
He’d fought for them. Bled for them.
For her.
She thought back to the woods, to the split-second decision he’d made to throw Sophie into her arms and take the lead himself, even after he’d been shot. No hesitation. No question. Just action, grit, and that maddening, noble streak that made her heart twist.
She hadn’t asked him for any of this. Not the rescue. Not the protection. Not the aching awareness that grew every time their eyes locked across the room.
And yet… here he was.
Through it all, he’d been the one constant. The one who didn’t flinch, didn’t run, didn’t crumble under the weight of what they’d been dragged into. Even now, in this dingy motel with its peeling wallpaper and paper-thin walls, he refused to take the bed, just like he did at the cabin. Refused to stop being her shield.
She blinked against the sting behind her eyes.
She didn’t know when it had started, this shift inside her. The trust. The pull. The slow erosion of every barrier she’d built over the years. Maybe it was the moment she saw him walking toward him at the school. Maybe it was the way he listened to her bitch about her father, or share the struggles of the three five-year-olds with them. Or maybe it had been there all along, buried under a decade of silence and grief.
She reached for the motel blanket at her side and gently unfolded it, rising quietly from the bed. Her bare feet padded across the worn carpet as she moved closer to him, careful not to wake him.
Callen stirred just slightly, a faint wince flashing across his brow.
She draped the blanket over his chest and leaned down, letting her fingertips brush against his forearm in a whisper of contact. His skin was warm, rough, familiar in a way that made her breath catch.
“Thank you,” she murmured, barely audible. “For everything.”
