Things We Hide from the Light

The federal agents in his office were lucky. First, Nash Morgan's left hook wasn't what it had been before the shooting. Second, he hadn't been able to work his way up into feeling anything, let alone anger. The void had rolled over him that night on the side of the road, and what was left was just pretending. He put on his uniform as chief of police for the town of Knockemout, but the man inside was gone. He couldn't even remember the face of the man who'd put two bullets in him, Duncan Hugo. “The greater good always comes with a price tag,” the steely woman from the Bureau told him, warning him to stay out of their investigation into Hugo's crime boss father. She didn't know his dirty little secret: there was nothing left inside him, not even the desire for revenge.

Then, a disruption. A woman's voice echoed from the stairwell of his apartment building - “Son of a damn bitch!” - just as a designer backpack tumbled down the stairs. He looked up to find long, lean legs in moss-colored leggings, a cropped sweater offering a peek of taut, tan skin, and a face that demanded attention. It was Angelina Solavita, his brother's ex from a lifetime ago, and she was moving in next door. “Moving in?” he called up, his voice strained. She jogged down to meet him, a sexy little smile playing on her lips. “Yeah. What's for dinner?” He watched her, felt the first flicker of something warm stir in the cold nothingness. She leaned in close, her scent clean and fresh. “I really love bad ideas. Don't you?”

He tried to fight it, but she was the only thing that made him feel. When he found himself reliving the shooting at the very spot it happened, a panic attack seizing him on the roadside, she was the one who found him. She'd been out for a run, and her concern was a startling warmth. Together, they rescued a shivering, matted dog from a drainage pipe, a clumsy, intimate affair that ended with him on his knees behind her, hips flush against her backside. He was both horrified and relieved to find his body responding with a stone-hard erection. “I thought you were dead in a ditch!” she yelled. He gritted his teeth. “I get that a lot.” Later, as they gave the little dog a bath in his trashed apartment, the tension between them was a live wire. He was a wreck, and she was a puzzle - an “insurance investigator” with eyes that missed nothing and a past she refused to talk about.

The push and pull became a dangerous dance. In the hallway of the municipal building, he found her with a U.S. Marshal, an old fling of hers named Nolan Graham. A possessiveness Nash had no right to claim flared hot and sharp. “Angel and I are close,” he drawled, staking a claim he hadn't earned. “We share a wall.” Lina had shot back, but he'd doubled down. “Shared a bath too yesterday.” The confrontation escalated later at his brother's house, ending with him pinning her to a dining room wall, her hands fisted in his shirt, refusing to let go. “You want me to stop touching you, Angel?” he'd breathed, praying she'd say no. Her whispered answer was a surrender and a promise. That night, another panic attack left him shattered at the foot of their stairs. She found him, held him, and told him, “You have enough air.” He begged her to stay the night, just to have her close, and she did.

It was inevitable. After days of circling each other, of sharing secrets in the dark - his panic attacks, her near-death experience from a heart defect as a teen - it finally happened. A fight at a town festival, a simmering dance floor confrontation, and then the explosion. He cornered her in the library break room, the anger and need between them finally combusting. “I'm gonna turn you around, Angel,” he rasped against her ear. “And when I do, you're gonna stop running and I'm gonna stop fighting this.” He kissed her like a man starved, and she met him with equal hunger. It was desperate and punishing, a claiming. He took her on the counter, against the wall, their bodies finally saying everything their words couldn't. It wasn't just sex; it was an exorcism, burning away the cold and the dark, leaving him raw and terrifyingly alive.

The plan was simple: leak to the press that his memory of the shooting had returned. The news would act as bait, drawing Duncan Hugo out of hiding to silence the only witness who could definitively place him at the scene. But the article ran early, sending a ripple of urgency through their fragile new world. At the same time, a stray comment from his niece, Waylay, about a specific brand of candy Hugo favored led Lina to a shocking realization. The man who'd been helping Hugo stay hidden, the mysterious “Burner Phone Guy,” was someone she'd met - a man from the cereal aisle at the grocery store. Just as she called Nash with the news, she was abducted from that very store.

Trapped in the trunk of a car, Lina knew she had one advantage: her kidnapper didn't know how many people would be coming for her. She was taken to an abandoned horse farm, a place where Nash had recently wrangled a runaway stallion. There, she discovered the true mastermind wasn't Duncan Hugo, but the disgraced cop Tate Dilton, the man who had actually pulled the trigger that night. As Hugo and Dilton argued, Lina found her chance. Using Hugo's gamer headset, she contacted Waylay online. “Tell Nash I love him,” she whispered, just before smashing the headset and charging her captor.

The rescue was a blur of chaos and gunfire. Nash, his brother Knox, and Nolan stormed the farm. In the hay-dusted riding arena, Lina stabbed Hugo with a pitchfork just as Nash burst in. As bullets flew, Nash dragged her behind a tractor. “Marry me, Angelina,” he demanded between shots. She laughed, incredulous and breathless. “Ugh, fine. Yes!” The fight ended with Dilton dead and Hugo in custody, a strange sense of justice settling over the property as dawn broke. Leaning against her stolen vintage Porsche, finally recovered, Lina looked like a beautiful, bruised warrior. He strode toward her, the world narrowing to just the two of them. “It's after,” he said, pulling her into his arms. She smiled, her eyes full of love and promises. “Yeah, and you're still buying me a ring.”

He took her home to his childhood bedroom after the wedding. His brother was finally married, their family finally safe. As he unbuckled his belt, he knew this was it, the grand gesture, the final surrender. He turned around and dropped his pants, revealing the fresh tattoo on his ass. Lina gasped. It was a pair of angel wings. “It's not done yet,” he told her, his voice thick with emotion. “Someone had to get herself kidnapped in the middle of the inking.” He looked at her, the woman who had pulled him from the void and shown him the light. “It's missing our date. The happiest day of my life.” He knelt before her, finally understanding. “Make a life with me, Angelina. You can be as scared about it as you want, because I'm not. I'll be strong enough for the both of us.”