Page 65 of Monk

That mattered more than anything else—more than pride, more than anger, more than the pull I still felt toward a man who had never been simple for me. Tatum came before all of it. Before longing. Before grief. Before the reckless part of me that wanted to forget how dangerous the world could be for just one more hour.

He tilted his head slightly, studying me in a way that made my skin prickle. Not threatening exactly—just too perceptive.Too certain that there was more underneath my answer than I wanted to admit.

The silence stretched, and with every second it did, my nerves pulled tighter. My hands tightened around the briefcase until the edges pressed into my palms hard enough to hurt. I welcomed the sting. It gave me something small and physical to focus on instead of the ugly feeling crawling up my spine—the sense that this conversation wasn’t really about what he was asking, but about what he already knew.

“What is your problem?” I demanded. My voice rose despite my efforts to keep it level. “I told you—I’m going home to Tatum. I’m not running. I’m not disappearing. I’m just...”

I trailed off because I didn’t even know how to finish that sentence. Every ending felt too honest. Too exposed. Because if I kept talking, I might have to admit that I wasn’t only leaving a place. I was trying to put distance between myself and the version of me that still wanted John, still softened for him, still hadn’t figured out how to separate seven years of hurt from one night that had cracked me open all over again.

Leaving?

Protecting myself?

Trying to remember where the line is between what I want and what I can actually afford to want?

His mouth curved into a grin that told me he’d heard all the things I hadn’t said aloud. Then he turned and walked away without another word, disappearing back toward the hall as suddenly as he’d appeared.

Just like that, he was gone.

I stood there for a second, breathing too fast, my heart still beating hard enough to make me angry. Angry at him for startling me. Angry at myself for being rattled. Angry at the whole night for leaving me this raw.

What the hell was that?

But I didn’t have time to untangle it. I pulled the door open and stepped outside into the cool pre-dawn air, grateful for the sharpness of it against my face. The gravel crunched beneath my heels as I headed toward my car, scanning the quiet lot without meaning to, as if I needed proof that I could still read the world around me clearly. A few bikes sat parked near the clubhouse, their metal catching the weak light, but otherwise the place was still.

Empty.

I threw my briefcase onto the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel. My hands were shaking as I started the engine, and I hated that they were. Hated how little sleep, too much emotion, and one pointed question had been enough to leave me feeling unsteady. I was not a woman who rattled easily. I built my life on control, on composure, on knowing how to hold the line even when everything inside me was chaos. But that morning, it felt like too many parts of my life were colliding at once—John, Tatum, the club, the past I had sworn I was done bleeding for—and I could feel the cracks starting to form around the edges.

By the time I pulled away, the clubhouse shrinking in my rearview mirror, only one thought mattered.

Get home to Tatum.

The drive to the farm should have been calming. The Oklahoma countryside stretched out on either side of the road, fields and trees bathed in the soft gray light of early morning, the world quiet in that fragile way it only was before the day fully woke. Usually that kind of stillness settled me. Usually, the familiar roads home were enough to pull me back into myself. But my mind wouldn’t stop racing. Every thought seemed to trip over the next one—John’s face, Blackjack’s voice, the warmth of that bed, the cold slap of guilt that followed it, the image of Tatum waking up and reaching for me if I wasn’t there in time.By the time I turned onto the county road, I felt scraped raw by my own thoughts.

I shook my head and forced myself to focus on the road. The turnoff to the farm was just ahead, the familiar wooden sign my grandfather had carved decades ago coming into view through the pale wash of morning light.

Wilcox Horse Farm.

Home.

The word should have brought relief. It should have loosened the tight knot in my chest, should have quieted the panic that had been pacing inside me since I left the clubhouse. Home was where things made sense. Home was fences to mend, horses to feed, coffee in my father’s kitchen, Tatum’s laughter drifting through the halls. Home was the place where I knew who I was.

But the second I turned onto the long gravel driveway, that feeling vanished.

A car was parked at the entrance.

Black. Unmarked. Sleek in a way that looked wrong against the weathered fence posts and open Oklahoma land. It blocked the driveway completely, sitting there like it belonged, like it had every right to wait for me at the edge of my family’s property.

My foot hit the brakes as gravel crunched beneath my tires and the car jolted into a stop, my pulse kicking hard against my ribs.What the hell?The question flashed through me, but underneath it came something faster and colder than surprise. Fear. Immediate and absolute. Not for me—not first. For the house behind that car. For the little girl inside it. For the awful possibility that whatever I had tried to keep separate from my real life had arrived at my gate before I did.

For a moment, I just sat there with both hands locked on the steering wheel, staring through the windshield. My mind tried to make it ordinary and failed. A delivery driver. Someone lost. A neighbor with car trouble.

No.

Nothing about it felt ordinary.

It didn’t belong here. It didn’t belong near my home, near my daughter, near anything I loved enough to fear losing.