Chapter 81

Abby

Daphne said one more day.

Kade didn’t argue with her, which was how I knew how much this meant to him. He simply nodded, wrote something on the corner of a patrol report, and the next afternoon, at the exact moment Daphne signed off on “moderate walking, flat ground, nothing stupid,” he was standing at the bottom of the packhouse stairs with a bag over his shoulder, pretending he hadn’t been waiting.

“Flat ground,” I reminded him.

“It’s flat.”

“Mostly flat?”

“Mostly.” He held out his hand. “I’ll carry you up the last hill if I have to.”

“You will not.”

He didn’t smile, but his eyes did.

We left through the back of the packhouse just as the sun touched t