“Thank you.” I started crying again.

His stared into my eyes and lifted a hand to my cheek. “I love you, Rose. And I always will.”

While I knew he meant it, I couldn’t trust him to stay. Hilary had sunk her claws in too deeply years before we ever met. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t do this now. Especially after everything I’d shared with Mason. “Joe. Don’t.”

Sirens blared in the distance.

“I have to.” His hand slipped into my hair, pulling my face closer to his until only a foot separated us. “I’m going to figure out a way to prove my father’s evidence is falsified, and I’m going to quit the senate race. You mean more to me than anything in my entire life ever has.”

“Joe.” I shook my head sadly. “We’re done.”

“No!” He became more insistent. “We’re not. We only broke up because of my father. If I fix this, then he won’t be an issue. Everything will be fixed.”

“No, it won’t. Everything won’t be fixed. There will always be Hilary.”

“I’ll break up with her!”

“How many times have you broken up with her? Every single time you go back. We’ve been broken up for just over a month and you ran back to her after two weeks or less.”

“That’s not fair, Rose. You’re with Mason now!”

“The key difference is that Hilary is toxic and Mason is anything but.” I swallowed. “Mason encourages me to grow and face my past. He believes I can face the hard things. He respects me and my opinions and treats me as an equal.”

“Are you saying I don’t?”

“Joe—” I turned to face him “—you see me as the innocent naïve woman you met months ago. Mason sees me for the person I am now.”

He started to protest.

“No.” I curled my hand around his neck, the act itself feeling intimate and familiar. “You can’t help it. You were always upset by how Violet wanted to protect me from the world, but you tried to protect me from it too. You always put limits on what you thought I could do. Mason doesn’t do that. He encourages me to try things myself.”

“Do you really expect me to be okay with you dating him?” he asked in disbelief.

I didn’t point out that he’d moved on first. Instead, I swallowed the new lump in my throat and lowered my voice. “Part of me will always love you, Joe. But we’re done. I’ve moved on. I just hope that you’ll stop running back to Hilary someday. You deserve better.” I stood. “I hope you have a happy life, Joe. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

I started to walk away, but he snagged my wrist and pulled me to him, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing his cheek to my abdomen. “You’re what I’m looking for, what I’ve always been looking for.”

My fingers threaded through his hair out of instinct. I pulled them out and cupped his head, trying to keep from sobbing. “Then I hope you find something else.”

Police and sheriff cars pulled up in front of the house, and officers started to pour out of their cars. Several ambulances followed behind, their sirens on and lights flashing.

Joe stood and turned to look at me, tears in his eyes. “I’ll figure out a way to fix this.” Then he left to tell the officers what had happened.

I went back inside the house. Mason’s eyes filled with worry when he saw me. “Rose, go back outside.”

Several state policemen pushed past me and one of them grabbed my arm. “Miss, you need to wait outside. This is a crime scene.”

Yeah, this was my crime scene.

But Mason nodded and motioned for me to leave.

I went outside and sat back down on the bench, watching the commotion in a daze. A state police officer sat down and began to take my statement. Part way through, the paramedics rolled the chief deputy’s gurney out and lifted it into the first ambulance. Several minutes later, another paramedic came out with Mason’s. I jumped up and ran over to him, grabbing his hand as they wheeled him to the ambulance.

“Mason, I’m coming with you.”

The paramedic at the head of his gurney shook her head. “I’m sorry. Only the patient is allowed in the back.”

Mason’s grip tightened on mine and he glanced up at the woman and said, “Maggie, either she comes with me in the back or I’m getting off this gurney.”

“Mr. Deveraux,” Maggie protested, shooting me a glare. “You need medical attention.”

“Then let Rose ride with me.”

Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me. “It goes against protocol.”

Mason reached for the buckle of the strap securing him to the bed. “Then stop and let me off.”

The paramedics stopped and Maggie tried to push Mason back down. “You can’t even walk on that leg.”

“If you think I’m getting in this ambulance without her, you’ve got another think coming. It will be days before I let her out of my sight.”

Maggie moved to the side of the gurney, glaring at me. “If you cared anything about him at all, you wouldn’t interfere with his medical care.”

The other paramedic motioned Maggie to the side and they got into a heated conversation.

I glanced over my shoulder at them and then back to Mason. “Another member of the Mrs. Mason Deveraux hopefuls?”

He grimaced.

“Why do I think that dating you is going to make me the enemy of half the Fenton County female population?”