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“Thank you,” I told her and hugged her again.
We separated when the front door opened and closed. Cassius stepped off the porch, his face shadowed under a cowboy hat.
“Ready?”
Rachel hugged me tightly again.
“I love you,” I told her, hanging on to her fingers until the last moment.
“I love you, too.”
“Call me when you land,” I added as she approached Cassius’s truck.
She looked over her shoulder. “Call the hospital.”
I smiled and waved, watching them until the truck disappeared on the drive before reaching for my phone.
She was right. I’d known I didn’t belong in Phoenix the moment I’d set foot back in the mountains.
“Calder?”
My entire body hummed after the voicemail I’d just left for Dr. Morgan. I didn’t know why it had taken me so long. To just admit I didn’t want to go back. Maybe I thought it would be easier if they were the ones to terminate my contract. Maybe I felt like I owed them something after what had happened with Ian.
But I wasn’t the guilty one. I’d done my job. I’d tried to save him, and he’d almost killed me. And as soon as I’d said the wordsformal resignation, I realized what haunted me deeply about that day in the ER.
It wasn’t that Ian had died, though there was natural guilt with that. It was that I could have. He came for me. He hurt me. He could’ve killed me, and I would’ve died without living. Without loving.
“Everything okay?” Calder stepped out of the Airstream, shirtless and devastating, and I almost forgot my plan. Almost.
“I have another case for you,” I said, pinning some worry to my voice.
“What?” He came toward me.
“Another case.” I fought hard not to laugh at the blank confusion on his face. “There’s a doctor who’s gone missing from a hospital in Phoenix. Red hair. Short.” I smiled as recognition started to dawn. “They said she called and quit her job today, left a message that she was never coming back to Arizona, and they think she’s now lost in the mountains in Wyoming.”
He stopped in front of me, the warmth of his eyes tracking every inch of my face. “Really?” he rumbled, and I heard the hope—the ache—in his voice.
Biting my lip, I nodded slowly. “Really.”
With a big shudder, his hands framed my waist and hauled me against him. “What’s my reward for finding her?” His mouth lowered, but I pulled back enough to look him in the eyes and smile.
“You get to keep her.”
Epilogue
Lara
One month later
“Did Creed have another case?”
“Huh?” Calder looked up in the middle of unfolding the crossword he’d brought to our picnic.
“He was packing up his truck when we left the camper, but I thought he’d finished the case on the reservation last week.”
“He has . . . something.”
I arched my brows. “Is everything okay?”
