Author: Jill Shalvis

Chapter 12

“A guilty conscience needs no accuser.”

Chloe Traeger

Sawyer spent the next half hour in a state of unaccustomed panic. After Chloe had passed out, he’d run with her to his truck, where he’d found her inhaler on the seat. She’d come to enough to use it several times, and now sat in the passenger seat insisting she was fine.

Ignoring her, Sawyer drove toward town, intending to take her straight to the ER.

“Don’t,” she said. She was wearing sweats—his. He’d grabbed dry clothes from his house. “I’m okay.”

“Chloe—”

“Look, I’m still paying off my last two ER visits.” Her voice was rough and ragged, and she didn’t look nearly steady enough, but she put a hand on his arm. “Please, Sawyer. Just take me home. I have a portable nebulizer there and can give myself a breathing treatment.”

He opened his mouth to demand why the hell she hadn’t had her inhaler on her, but he decided to save that fight for when she didn’t look like a slight breeze could knock her on her ass. Against his own instincts, he drove her home and settled her in on the cottage couch, watching as she gave herself a breathing treatment.

At least she had some color back to her lips. That helped, but Christ, he’d never forget the way they’d turned blue, or how she’d gasped, hands at her throat, fighting to draw air into her lungs.

His fault.

“Mr. Magic Eight was right on once again,” she rasped over the rumble of her nebulizer.

“What?”

She let out a low, wheezy laugh. “The Magic Eight app. The love advisor, remember? It said you wouldn’t get laid, and that I would. Of course, I didn’t get laid laid, but close enough. I mean, I finished and you didn’t get to…”

“Christ, Chloe.”

“And now you can confirm I don’t sound like a mule in a tar pit, right?”

“You stopped breathing.”

“Only for a minute.”

Head spinning, he dropped it into his hands. “Only for a minute,” he repeated dully.

“Yeah.” She paused. “Too soon?”

He’d been mentally flogging himself, and she was joking around. He shoved his fingers through his hair and resisted pulling out the strands by the roots.

“Yeah,” she murmured. “Too soon. Sorry. Sawyer, look at me. I’m fine.”

He gently pushed the nebulizer mouthpiece back in place. She’d passed out from lack of oxygen, and she was comforting him. “Why wasn’t your inhaler on you?”

“Because nothing was on me. We got naked, remember?”

“Fuck, Chloe.”

She had the good grace to look sheepish. “Okay, so I didn’t exactly realize what was going to happen, or that I’d need it. I told you, I’d been on a sex moratorium.”

“No, you absolutely didn’t tell me that.”

“Oh.” She grimaced. “Well, I started to. I told you I couldn’t.”

Okay, she had told him that. And he’d mistakenly—and cockily—believed she’d meant that she couldn’t orgasm with a man.

Which mean that he was an ass. A complete ass.

“And technically, it’s not that I can’t orgasm,” she said, waving the mouthpiece. “Obviously. It’s just that the experts recommend measuring your peak oxygen flow and having a portable nebulizer handy.”

“Okay. So why didn’t we do that?”

“Well, for one thing,” she said, “that doesn’t exactly scream spontaneity and excitement, and second, I didn’t plan on having sex in your shower, it just happened. Which proves point number one.”

“Never again, Chloe,” he said flatly. “I don’t want you to ever again be without that inhaler. Do you hear me?”

She gave him a smart aleck salute that made him narrow his eyes and open his mouth, but before he could say a word, the front door opened and Tara and Maddie came rushing in. Maddie was in the lead, wearing jeans and a USC sweatshirt that Sawyer recognized as Jax’s. She sat at Chloe’s side and hugged her. “You avoided the ER this time.”

Barely, Sawyer thought grimly.

Tara, cool and calm as ever, squeezed in past Sawyer to get closer to Chloe, patting him on the arm as she did, probably assuming that he’d rescued Chloe. If she’d known the truth, he knew he’d have been on the receiving end of a blistering verbal and well-deserved attack. No one did pissed-off-Southern-belle slash protective-mama-bear better than Tara.

But for now, Tara leaned over Chloe and kissed her cheek. “I should have sat on you earlier when you left all half-cocked, making yourself as scarce as hen’s teeth. You were wheezing even then.”

Chloe left the nebulizer mouthpiece in but rolled her eyes as her two sisters continued to mother and baby her, while Sawyer wondered if they had any idea just how strong she really was.

“Can you tell us what happened?” Tara asked Chloe. “What were you doing, and why in God’s name are you streaked with…mud?”

A faint blush tinged Chloe’s cheeks, and her eyes locked on Sawyer. Slowly she pulled the nebulizer mouthpiece out to speak, but before she could, Tara pushed it back into place.

“No, don’t.” She fussed at the blanket over Chloe’s legs. “It can wait, especially if you’re going to tell me you were rock climbing or—”

“She was with me,” Sawyer said.

Three sets of eyes landed on him. Maddie’s and Tara’s were both curious and completely nonjudgmental.

They trusted him, and right now, the weight of that trust sat like an elephant on his chest. He worked so damn hard to earn the respect and trust of the people of his town, and this was a perfect example of why it was all a sham. He knew full well that he’d had no business touching Chloe, and he’d done it anyway.

Coburn had warned him, all the way back when he was eighteen and scared spitless, that all it took was one step out of line. One extra drink before he got behind the wheel. One reckless word, and his whole world could implode. He knew that, and yet when it came to this, he lost it.

Chloe’s eyes were narrowed, clearly trying to tell him to keep his trap shut, but he refused to let this be her fault. “I was giving her a ride home from the mud springs.”

“The mud springs,” Tara said with a frown. “Those are way out there. How did she get to your house? When you called me, you said you were bringing her here from your house.” She turned to Chloe. “Oh, sugar. What did you do this time?”

Chloe yanked the mouthpiece out. “Nothing!” It wasn’t quite a yell, but only because she was clearly still hampered by her inability to breathe freely.

Tara shoved the mouthpiece back in Chloe’s mouth. “And yet here you lie, struggling to breathe.”

Chloe slapped a hand on the nebulizer power button, and the room went quiet. “You’re right,” she said. “I did do something. I rode to the mud springs, then hiked all the way back to the highway when I couldn’t get the Vespa to start. I tried to hitch a ride, but Sawyer came along and played hero.”

“All that hiking,” Maddie murmured. “That could have brought on the asthma attack.”

Clearly wanting answers, Tara whirled on Sawyer. “Tell me what happened.”

“Hey,” Chloe said before Sawyer could open his mouth. “Talk to me.”

Tara reached back and hit the power button of the nebulizer again. “I was asking him,” she said, eyes on Sawyer. “You picked Chloe up from the highway and then brought her back to your place, and…”

“And I forgot my inhaler,” Chloe said. “I left it on the seat of his truck.”

“Chloe.” Tara’s voice was full of censure and dismay.

Maddie looked equally upset with her.

Sawyer met Chloe’s intense gaze. Obviously she’d rather them think she was completely irresponsible than blame him.

But she wasn’t. Reckless, maybe, yeah. Impulsive, too.

But not irresponsible. So…was she trying to protect him? The notion was unexpected, as was the way it made him feel, but he didn’t need her protection. “She’s okay,” he said to a suspicious Tara, knowing that a good amount of her anger came from a gut-wrenching fear for her sister, the fear that someday they wouldn’t get to her in time, and she’d suffocate during an asthma attack.

It also came from the fact that Tara considered Chloe hers. And no one messed with anything that belonged to Tara, even if that possession was a full-grown woman with her own needs and passions.

“He’s right, Tara,” Chloe said. “I’m okay, like always.”

Thankfully, not five minutes later, Sawyer was paged into work by DEA Unit Chief Reed Morris. An ongoing drug investigation that he was working on had some movement, and his presence was required at a task force meeting. From there, he had to go by the hospital to talk to one of the ER docs on staff. The guy had treated a suspect they needed to interview, but he couldn’t tell Sawyer anything new about the case. He was just leaving the ER, intending to go check on Chloe, when a nurse came running by, stopping short when she saw him.

Mallory Quinn. Sawyer had dated her in high school. Well, not dated exactly. She’d written his English papers, and in turn, he’d done her science and math. He’d also had a big crush on her, but she’d never returned it, preferring the boys who didn’t get arrested when they got bored.

They were friends now and occasionally ran into each other professionally. Seeing him, Mallory skidded to a stop, the relief evident in her eyes. “We need help restraining a patient in bay three.”

He didn’t waste time asking questions but ran ahead of her. In bay three, two orderlies were struggling with a man on the bed.

“Paranoid schizophrenic,” Mallory said. “And off his meds.”

He wasn’t big, maybe five foot seven, and one hundred forty pounds, but given the odd light in his eyes, he was deep into an episode. When the guy swung out with a fist toward Mallory’s face, Sawyer grabbed him, restraining him while Mallory produced a syringe.