Page 39 of Ranger's Wildflower
His hand slid carefully against my back.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I do.”
And just like that—
the walls finally shattered.
I cried against him so hard it hurt.
Years of grief.
Guilt.
Loneliness.
All of it pouring out at once while he held me steady in the middle of the wreckage.
And for the first time in six years—
someone stayed.
12
Ace
The clock on the office wall read 2:43 a.m.
I hadn’t even blinked at it in the last hour.
The Ranger office sat dark except for the desk lamp glowing over the files spread across the table in front of me. Empty coffee cups littered the corner beside my laptop.
Tessa’s face wouldn’t leave my head.
The tears.
The disbelief.
The way she whispered I didn’t do it like she was afraid the words themselves might hurt her.
“I know you didn’t,” I muttered.
Now I just had to prove it.
I reopened the case file and started over from the beginning.
Not the headlines.
Not the public reports.
Everything.
Dispatch logs.
Evidence records.
Scene photos.
Time stamps.
