He’d turned off his police radio and phone and just sat there in the darkness—waiting—with his gaze on Vaughn Davis’s car. The anger hadn’t subsided. It’d grown into something raging and untamable instead. The longer he sat there, the more he thought about his and Tabitha’s lives and what this asshole had stolen from them. He thought of his girl alone in New York. He thought of her fear and terror over suffering through what she had after Wyatt had abandoned her that night.
The self-loathing was the worst, hazing his vision and making his chest tight.
He’d probably end up having a heart attack one of these days from the burden of it. He wouldn’t be the first sheriff to drop from one. It had turned into a family tradition. He ate better than his father and grandfather had. He took the fucking blood pressure pills the doctor forced on him. He exercised and did all the things a man was supposed to do to stay healthy. He shouldn’t need them, but he did because no amount of exercise and protein bars could eliminate the stress of knowing his wife had been out there somewhere—alone—while he was stuck in Garnet with a breakup letter.
She hadn’t wanted to be found. That had been very obvious, and the hurt of knowing she’d rather be alone stopped him in his tracks every single time.
He’d been taking those damn pills since he was twenty-nine, keeping them hidden in his bottom drawer because Jules would have come unhinged if she knew he was suffering from the same issues their father had. He kept aspirin everywhere—in his glove compartment, in all the drawers of his house—because he’d been in the sheriff’s office the day his father dropped. He’d done chest compressions on him until the ambulance arrived, but it hadn’t done a damn bit of good.
He watched his father die. Then he had to call his sister and tell her he wasn’t able to save him. Until right now, he thought Jules’s screams that day had been the worst thing he’d ever hear in his life. Then Tabitha confessed in her sleep that her brother had sold her to Vaughn Davis.
And it was Wyatt who had driven away that night, abandoning her four days after they had gotten married.
It all felt like too much to bear. He had big shoulders, but it was starting to be more than even he could take. If he was going to die from a heart attack like his father had, he was gonna make sure he took Vaughn Davis with him before he went.
He was sitting there, with that light-headed, adrenaline-pumped feeling throbbing at his temples that told him Doc Philips would’ve upped his prescription if he’d taken a reading when a knock at his window made him jump.
For a moment he thought his heart had stopped beating, because he couldn’t remember the last time someone sneaked up on him like that. Then he found himself looking into the night at Clay’s scowling face.
Unbelievable.
Wyatt pushed the button to roll down his window, because he knew Clay would stand there forever. The asshole didn’t even have a jacket on. “What?” he snapped, knowing Clay could hear every ounce of rage in that one question.
“Unlock the door,” Clay said in a low, furious voice.
Wyatt pushed the button to his window instead, arching an eyebrow at Clay when it started going up. Clay reached in before Wyatt could block him out. His large hand wrapped around Wyatt’s throat, squeezing tight enough to block his air supply.
“Open the fucking door!”
Wyatt pushed at the button again, trapping Clay’s arm; then he reached up, squeezing at the pressure point between Clay’s thumb and forefinger. It was one of those hard pressure points that would make most anyone’s grip loosen, but Clay wasn’t just anyone.
“I will choke you to death before I let you do this to Tabitha!” Clay growled, sounding serious. “I swear to God, Wyatt. Open the door!”
Wyatt could have broken out of his grasp, but he unlocked the door instead. Clay was just the sort of stubborn asshole to stand there in the cold beating on the window until he broke the police glass.
Clay let him go and slipped his hand out of the car. Then he stomped around to the other side of the car and got in. He reached down to move the passenger seat back, making it clear he planned to stay awhile.
“How’d you find me?” Wyatt asked curiously.
“Everyone knows you hide here, asshole. Jake’s been bitching ’bout it for months. You’re bad for business.”
Wyatt raised his eyebrows at that. He needed a new hiding place.
“Why are you here?”
Clay turned his head, giving Wyatt a sharp look. “You know why I’m here. Tab called.”
“Clay—”
“No.” Clay cut him off. “You’re gonna sit there and listen to me.”
Wyatt snorted. “The fuck I am.”
“I ain’t giving you a choice ’bout it,” Clay went on as his eyes narrowed. “Look, I ain’t gonna say I don’t understand this. I nearly killed Melody’s ex-husband, and I’d do it again if the prick wasn’t serving forty years.”
“Do you know what Davis did to her?” Wyatt asked with a growl.
“I know.” Clay nodded as he swallowed hard and pain showed on his face. “But Wyatt—”
“Can you stop and imagine what that had to have been like for her?” Wyatt went on as his voice cracked with agony. “I’d just left her in the middle of the road. I’d just told her that she was no better than her mother. That she was gonna turn out just like her. Then she goes home, and that motherfucker”—Wyatt leaned into Clay and screamed—“raped her!”
Clay shoved him back against the seat. “It was thirteen years ago!”
“That makes it worse!” Wyatt pushed Clay’s arm off his chest and then leaned over and punched him in the shoulder because he needed something to hit. “She’s been alone all that time! I was alone!”
“And if you do this, then you will make everything she’s gone through pointless!” Clay shouted back. “You owe this to her. Make the sacrifice worth it.”
“Oh, I’m gonna make it worth something,” Wyatt assured him with a mirthless laugh.
Clay fell back against the seat and ran both his hands through his hair as he stared ahead. “We got to figure something else out. You can’t just show up and kill that fucker. There has to be another way to make this right without ruining both y’all’s lives.”
“Our lives have been ruined for a long time now.”
“Yeah, but you have a second chance now,” Clay reminded him. “You honestly want to fuck that up? Doing this is worse than leaving Tabitha in the road that night. What do you think will happen to her if you end up doing something that gets you arrested?”
“Who the fuck is gonna arrest me?” Wyatt raised his eyebrows. “This is my town.”
“A sheriff can still be arrested while he’s in office, can’t he?”
“I guess,” Wyatt had to reluctantly admit. “The coroner can do it if he has to, but it would be a really bizarre situation. I ain’t even sure how they’d go about getting the paperwork pushed through unless it was a federal crime. You’re talking ’bout my sheriff’s office and my deputies. Who’s gonna help him get it done?”
“That’s it?” Clay raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Aren’t we in the twenty-first century? There’s nothing else in place to keep you from breaking a law?”
“Not really.” Wyatt snorted. “The fine voters of Garnet Country just gotta trust me. I’d have to go out of my way to get arrested. Like actually walking into that sheriff’s office and slapping the cuffs on my own damn wrists.”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing, Wyatt,” Clay said slowly. “That’s exactly what you’d do, because you’re stupid like that, and it would kill Tabitha. I can’t let you do that to her, even if it lets Vaughn get away with what he did. I owe it to her to make sure she’s got a husband to grow old with. She deserves that.”