Chapter 30 #2
I don't flinch. Don't try to quiet him. Don't say it's okay or that he's safe.
I just hold him. My arms around his head and shoulders, my hand in his hair, fingers stroking through the short strands, being the steady one while he lets nine years of buried pain finally surface.
My own eyes burn but I don't cry. This is his moment to break.
Mine was in the basement. His is here, in my arms, finally safe enough to fall apart.
When the sobs finally slow, then stop, he stays against my neck another minute, breathing harsh and wet.
When he lifts his face, his eyes are red and swollen, tear tracks obvious on his cheeks, snot that he wipes with the back of his hand like a child.
He looks at me like a man who's been truly seen for the first time and doesn't know yet if he'll survive it.
I wipe his face with the back of my hand, slow and gentle, cleaning what he missed.
"I love you."
The words come out steady, certain, the way they've been waiting to come out since the lemon tree, since the bench under the moon, since the night I rode back to him with tears inside my helmet. "I should have said it weeks ago. I love you, Gunner."
He goes absolutely still — the stillness I once mistook for threat, now just a man holding something so it can't break. "Again," he rasps.
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you, you impossible man." I press the words against his jaw, his temple, the silver line of his scar. "I love you."
Something in his shoulders lets go, a weight sliding off that took nine years to build. "I've been living on the hope of that," he says against my hair, "since the night you painted yourself in my flowers."
We sit in the new quiet, unhurried. The cottage holds us while afternoon shifts toward evening.
Tomorrow the criminal world will claim us again.
The Zayas threat I've heard whispers about, Miami's underworld, all of it waiting.
But tonight we're just two people on a couch who found their way back to each other.
"Hallstein's dead," he tells me, voice still rough and thick from crying.
"I handled it personally. The family backed me.
The originals are with the Atlantic — the garden's just a garden now.
Logan's team extracted Camille, the caregiver from the house.
She's safe at Casa de Acogida, the shelter in Hialeah.
A recovery suite first, then her own room there for as long as she wants it. "
"Is she okay?" I ask. "Does she have family?"
"Sister in Bogotá. Marisol's bringing her up, coordinating everything." His hand tightens on my hip. "Marisol mobilized the whole empire. For Camille. For you. Said we don't leave women behind anymore."
"And the Pentagon?"
"Erika texted an hour after the dossier broke. The commission appointment is dead. They're pretending his name was never on the list."
So the Delgado empire mobilized for two women this week. Camille and me. The family that deals in violence choosing to protect instead.
Then I tell him about the dance. The conservatory leotard under the wrap skirt, armor under camouflage.
The untying on stage, letting it fall, stepping out of seven years of pretense.
The six-minute solo while Pristine watched frozen, their carefully constructed version of me shattering in real time.
"Jarrod walked out at minute three. His mother followed."
Something shifts at Gunner's mouth. Almost a smile, the first non-grief expression since the tears. His hand tightens possessively on my hip.
"No applause at the end," I continue. "I didn't bow. Didn't acknowledge them at all. Just walked off and left them with their shock."
"Wish I'd been there," he says quietly. "Wish I could've seen you claim yourself like that."
"You're here now. That's what matters."
We sit as the light goes gold through the windows.
Nicolas's radio sounds faintly from his studio, the rhythm of creation continuing despite everything broken and healed.
Later, he comes through from the back, pauses in the hallway doorway. Sees us on the couch. Me still across Gunner's lap, the conservatory leotard damp at the collar from tears and sweat. He doesn't interrupt, doesn't speak. Just nods once, then goes upstairs.
The cottage light turns amber, then deeper gold toward evening. We don't move, don't need to. We're finally in the same place at the same time, choosing each other despite the cost.
His hand slides up my thigh, fingers finding the edge of my leotard where it meets skin. His voice goes rough against my ear: "I've waited too long. I need you tonight."
My body's response is immediate. Heat flooding between my legs, nipples hardening to painful points, every nerve ending suddenly alive.
After everything we've survived, after the basement and the tears and the breaking open, we've earned this hunger.
The cottage is quiet, Papa's upstairs behind a closed door, and Gunner's hand is exactly where it needs to be, fingers tracing the line where fabric meets flesh, making me squirm in his lap.
"Then take me," I whisper, grinding down against the hardness I can feel through his jeans, and feel him go completely still beneath me.
His fingers slide under the elastic, finding me already wet, already ready, and I gasp at the contact, my hips bucking involuntarily. After so long apart, just his fingers on me feels like coming home and going to war at the same time.
God help us both, because I don't think either of us is going to survive what happens next.