Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Benediction of Becoming
Time doesn’t slow down. It softens.
Like a page-turn breeze or a match catching fire.
It’s been a week of… everything.
Of learning how to hold my ground and the weight of a gun.
Of Cain showing me how to stand with power in my spine and vengeance in my palms.
We train in the afternoons, just the two of us. Sweat clinging to skin, bodies colliding—not in fury, but in something close to worship. He knocks me off balance. I laugh. He calls me good girl with that rough voice that makes my knees go traitorous. Then, I get back up and try again.
I work the bar like I belong there now. I do. Cain lets me set the music sometimes. Hank lets me boss him around—“grudgingly,” he claims, but I catch the way he smiles behind the glassware. I watch the door less often. My hands shake less. My voice doesn't.
Cain makes me practice at the range.
He presses himself behind me, large and steady, adjusting my grip. Whispering things in my ear that are technically about guns, but feel like scripture.
"Steady hands, little sinner. Line it up. Don’t flinch. You’re divine when you’re dangerous."
Some nights, we don’t even make it to bed.
He touches me like I’m holy.
Worships me on the couch.
Mouths prayers against my thighs.
Sometimes he prays with teeth.
Every time, I survive it softer. Stronger.
And every time I think, this might be what it’s like to become someone new.
Warren hasn’t made a sound since the hospital.
Not a letter. Not a call. Not a whisper passed through the cops or court. Nothing.
But silence from him isn’t peace—it’s the rattling hum of a storm just off the shore.
I feel it in the way I check the locks twice before bed.
In the way Cain holds my waist just a little tighter when we walk through the alley toward the bar.
In the way I think, this might be what calm looks like, and then immediately don’t trust it.
And through it all—Cain is… Cain.
Still the storm. Still the sanctuary.
Still calling me his little sinner while brushing my hair with fingers gentle enough to mend the spine I never realized was broken.
I think I love him. No, I know I love him.
I’ve known it in a hundred moments. In whispered promises. In the way he breathes. In the way he bruises and worships in the same breath.
But I haven’t said it.
It lives on the tip of my tongue; sharp and holy and terrifying.
Because what if love makes this real? What if it makes it fragile?
What if I say it and he can’t say it back?
And so I hold it like a secret prayer.
Unspoken. Heavy. Waiting for the right altar to burn on.
Cain tells me to make the apartment mine.
Not in some throwaway comment. No, it’s Cain—so he looks me dead in the eye one night after training, wipes the sweat from my brow with his shirt, and says, “Start filling this place with your softness, little rabbit. It deserves to be stained with you.”
And so I do.
Slowly. Cautiously. Like a stray testing the back door left open.
A couple throw pillows in muted sage. A candle that smells like rain on pavement. A magnet on the fridge that says Bless This Hellhole that Cain laughed so hard at he nearly choked on his coffee.
He takes me shopping for clothes the next day—says I need things that make me feel good.
I pick out basics, practical things. He throws in lace and silk like he’s building an altar.
And God help me—I wear them.
The pantry starts to fill. We cook more now. I chop. He stirs. He calls me chef’s sin and kisses my shoulder until I almost burn the garlic bread.
Even Hank comes upstairs some nights—plopping down at the table like it’s the most natural thing in the world to be fed lasagna by a recovering girl and her feral guardian angel.
There’s laughter. Dishes clinking. A playlist Cain made with songs that don’t match at all—bluesy, metal, old gospel, and whatever that one French jazz track is that he claims sounds like my voice when I moan.
It’s domesticity, sure. But it’s also resurrection.
A quiet rebirth, one mismatched mug at a time.
One night—just before bed, when the world is quiet and I’m wrapped up in Cain like a prayer I never learned to say right—he runs his palm down my spine and whispers against my neck, “What do you love to do, little rabbit? What’s just for you?”
I blink up at him, eyes still heavy, heart already too full. My limbs are tangled with his, a holy wreck of heat and skin and something dangerously close to peace. His question hits like a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
What do I love to do?
I open my mouth, but the words won’t come.
Because I don’t know. I don’t know.
I’ve been surviving so long—ducking blows, biting my tongue, patching myself back together again and again—I forgot that I’m allowed to want things. To like things. To be more than just the sum of the damage.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “I haven’t known in a long time.”
No sarcasm. No armor. Just truth—naked and aching in the dark.
Cain doesn’t say anything. He just presses his lips to my temple and holds me tighter, like that answer doesn’t scare him. Like it doesn’t make me less.
The next morning, I wake up to the sound of something being set down. Movement outside the bedroom. I roll over, and Cain’s side of the bed is empty, still warm.
My feet hit the floor. I wander out, rubbing sleep from my eyes—and stop. The guest room is no longer a sad, empty shell. It’s been transformed. Like magic. Or madness.
Or love.
There’s a long folding table now, covered in a plastic tablecloth splattered with test paint. Sketchpads stacked beside water jars and brushes. A little cart filled with every kind of pastel, charcoal, and watercolor imaginable.
A set of wood-burning tools sits on the dresser, lined up like sacred instruments. A clay kit waits beside them, complete with sculpting knives. A camera—vintage, beautiful, fully functional—rests beside a notebook with “photo prompts” written on the cover in Cain’s messy scrawl.
Shelves line the back wall, crammed with books about yoga, art, photography, weird little crafts I vaguely remember saying I used to like.
There’s a soft corner reading chair I want to melt into, and the throw blanket tossed over it matches the pillow I picked for the living room last week.
A yoga mat is rolled out near the window, bathed in morning light.
He didn’t just fill a room. He built me a sanctuary. No—he built me a shrine. At the center of the desk sits a note. I recognize his handwriting instantly—half chaos, half devotion.
“You were made for more than surviving. Go make some messes, little saint.”
I don’t cry. Not right away.
Not until I sit down and hold the clay in my hands. Not until I realize I don’t even care if I’m good at it. I just want to try. I just want to feel like I’m allowed to.
And somehow—Cain Devlin gave me that. The sinner. The hellhound. My sanctuary. My beginning.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the floor, sweatpants two sizes too big and covered in smudges of charcoal and what I think is dried glue. There’s something in my hands that was meant to be a wildflower. Bold. Bright. Free.
It looks like if a spider had a breakdown halfway through trying to make art. I stare at it. Tilt my head. Frown.
“Christ on a crooked cross,” I mutter under my breath, pulling back to assess the damage.
“You rang?” Cain’s voice rumbles from the doorway, low and amused and smug in that way that always sends heat to my cheeks.
I jump. Nearly burn myself.
He’s leaning against the doorframe like sin incarnate—shirtless, of course, because why not—and watching me like he’s never seen anything more holy than me in his sweatpants, surrounded by hobby chaos and cursing like a sailor.
I blush and quickly hold up the little wooden mess. “Don’t laugh.”
He walks in slowly, like he’s entering sacred ground. Drops a kiss to the top of my head, then my cheek, then my mouth.
“Oh, I’m absolutely gonna laugh,” he murmurs, brushing a lock of hair behind my ear. “But only because it’s so goddamn precious I might combust.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m smiling. I hand him the wood-burned whatever-it-is, and he turns it over like it’s an artifact.
“A flower?” he guesses.
“Wrong. It’s obviously the fallen angel of dead houseplants,” I deadpan.
Cain chuckles, deep and warm, and then kisses me again—so soft I forget about the smoke curling off my tool and the mess I’ve made.
“You’re my favorite artist,” he murmurs against my lips. “And that’s the most beautifully tragic spider-flower I’ve ever seen.”
I laugh into his mouth, the sound unguarded and real.
And for a moment, I forget that I’m scared. For a moment, I forget that love terrifies me. Because all I feel is him. And this. And whatever the hell this is becoming.
Cain turns the sad excuse for a flower over in his hands like it’s something rare. Reverent. Like he’s decoding some message from the clay.
“You made this,” he murmurs, low and proud. “With your own two hands. I don’t care if it’s crooked, cracked, or weird as hell. It’s yours. And that makes it—”
He pauses, lifts his eyes to mine.
“—divine.”
It hits me in the ribs.
The way he says it. The way he sees me. Not like I’m broken. Not like I’m work to be fixed. Just like I’m mine. Just like that’s enough.
My mouth opens. And without permission from the cautious, overthinking parts of me—the words tumble out.
“I love you.”
And then I freeze.
Oh God. Oh hell.
My entire body goes still, like maybe if I don’t move, he won’t have heard it.
But he did.
I know he did.
Cain blinks once. Just once. And I swear the entire world stops breathing with him.
My heart’s already trying to claw its way out of my chest. I panic. I regret. I consider faking a stroke.
“I mean—I didn’t mean—well, I did, but not like—I didn’t plan—” I stammer, full ramble now, hands flailing. “Forget it. That was… that was just a dumb outburst. Temporary brain fog. An unfortunate slip of—”
“Wait—I—Cain, I’m so…” I choke, hands halfway to my face like I can physically shove the words back into my mouth. “I didn’t mean to say it like that. I didn’t mean to—God, I’m sorry.”
He’s still frozen.
Not moving.
Not breathing.
Just watching me unravel like I’m some sacred scroll he doesn’t want to tear.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper again, softer this time. “I didn’t mean to make it weird.”
My voice cracks right down the center.
“You don’t have to say it back, I just—I shouldn’t have said it. I know people say that kind of thing when they’re overwhelmed, and it doesn’t mean anything, and I know I’m probably just—”
Cain steps in close—closer than air, closer than grace. His hands frame my face like I’m something fragile and sacred, something only a sinner would dare to worship.
His mouth brushes mine, featherlight.
Then again, firmer. Hotter.
A benediction.
“My little saint,” he breathes against my lips, voice rough with restraint. “You are the chaos in my blood, the prayer in my mouth, the only goddamn heaven I’ll ever believe in.”
He kisses me again, longer this time. Deeper.
“I love you,” he murmurs, low and raw, like the words burn coming out. “Not soft. Not sweet. But real. Carved into the marrow of me.”
My eyes blur.
My breath stutters.
But my heart?
That traitorous thing sings.
Cain leans in, nose brushing mine. “Now stop apologizing before I put your mouth to better use.”
I laugh. Actually laugh. And he grins—real, wide, like he just won something eternal.
“Come on, little rabbit,” he says, pulling me toward the door. “Let me take my little saint out for dinner.”