Chapter Twenty-Four #2
The afternoon sun comes through the windows in long golden strips, catching dust in the air and warming the worn wood floors. I stand inside the door for a minute with Wolfe’s keys still in my hand, listening to absolutely nothing.
Then I drop them into the little bowl on the table.
The sound feels too loud.
His jacket is still hanging by the kitchen.
I haven’t moved it. I probably won’t.
At some point this has to stop being a museum and become the place I live, but today I don’t have the energy to decide what stays and what goes.
I sink onto the couch and stare at the opposite wall.
This is mine now.
That still feels wrong.
It’s not that I don’t want it, but because I do. Hell maybe that’s the worst part.
That I can see myself here.
My tools in the shed. My guitar near the couch. My clothes upstairs instead of shoved into motel drawers.
Coffee in the kitchen that I actually chose myself.
I can see a life here.
I just wish Wolfe was still part of it.
A knock comes at the door twenty minutes later.
I know who it is before I stand.
Thorne is on the porch with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie, hair messy from dragging his fingers through it and the exhaustion of the day written across his face.
I open the door wider.
“You stalking me?”
“Did a shit job of it if I knocked.”
His voice is quiet.
There’s no real joke behind the words.
I step aside.
He comes in slowly, and the second the door closes behind him, his eyes start moving around the room.
He looks toward a mug on the counter, then the jacket by the kitchen, then the couch.
His expression changes with each thing.
“It’s weird,” I say.
Thorne lets out a slow breath. “Yeah.”
“I keep expecting him to come through that door and ask why I’m touching his shit.”
“He’d definitely complain about the plant.”
I look toward the window.
“It’s barely alive.”
“Yeah, well it was barely alive when I got here, I had no part in that.”
That almost gets a smile out of me.
Almost.
Thorne walks farther into the room and runs his fingers over the back of the couch.
“His mum told me they gave it to you.”
“I tried saying no.”
“Course you did.”
I look at him.
He finally meets my eyes.
“She was right.”
“About what?”
“You needing somewhere that’s yours.”
My chest tightens.
“I know, but this place…It was his.”
Thorne’s gaze moves around the room again.
“That doesn’t mean it can’t still be yours.”
Something in the way he says it makes the ache I’ve been carrying all day shift.
I cross the space between us before I really decide to.
Thorne meets me halfway.
The first kiss is soft enough that it almost hurts.
His hands settle against my face while mine slide into his hair, and neither of us rushes it. There’s no desperation to turn grief into something else, no attempt to forget where we are or who should still be here.
We know.
That’s what makes it different.
When Thorne pulls back, his forehead rests against mine.
“I miss him so fucking much.”
My eyes close.
“Me too.”
His fingers tighten slightly against my jaw.
“I keep thinking I’m getting my head around it, then I remember something stupid and it starts all over again.”
“I know.”
His eyes open.
There’s so much hurt in them that I lean forward and kiss him again before either of us can say something that breaks us completely.
This kiss changes. Still slow and gentle, but deeper.
His arms wrap around my waist and pull me close, and I let myself melt against him because right now I need to feel someone alive under my hands and I know he needs it too.
I can tell by the way he holds me.
We make it upstairs slowly, stopping more than once just to kiss, touch, breathe, and make sure neither of us is running from something we should be feeling.
The bedroom door clicks shut behind us, and for the first time all day, there’s nobody else around.
No team or family. No people trying not to cry in the same room.
Just me and Thorne.
I keep hold of his hand as I lead him toward the bed, probably tighter than I need to, but I don’t care. I need something solid right now, something I chose. That I do actually have control over.
The last few days have felt like one thing after another deciding my life for me. Wolfe. The crash.
The funeral.
Coming home to a cabin that still feels like his even though the keys are mine now. I’m so fucking tired of reacting to things I never wanted.
This, at least, is mine.
I want him here and I want this.
Thorne seems to understand that without me explaining it. He doesn’t try to take over or make the moment into something else. He just follows, quiet and steady, letting me decide how close I want him and how fast any of this moves.
And somehow, that makes it easier to breathe.
We undress each other slowly, but there’s nothing delicate about the reason for it. It isn’t romance for the sake of romance, and it sure as hell isn’t us trying to forget where we are.
If anything, being here makes Wolfe feel closer, which should make this harder but somehow doesn’t.
Thorne’s hands shake once when they settle at my waist.
I notice.
He notices me noticing.
Neither of us says anything about it.
I climb into his lap and stay there for a second, close enough that our foreheads touch while his hands settle around my waist. He looks wrecked up close, more than he has let anyone see all day, and it scares me because I know I probably look the same.
My fingers slide into his hair.
“You okay?”
Thorne lets out a slow breath, his eyes dropping before they find mine again.
“Yeah, I just…I don’t know how to do this without him.”
The words hit me right in the chest because I don’t either.
“I don’t know how to do it without him either.”
His grip tightens slightly.
For a second, neither of us says anything. We just sit there with the truth of it between us, surrounded by Wolfe’s cabin, and things. Wolfe still somehow in every corner of the room.
Then I cup his face and make him look at me.
“But we’ll figure it out.”
His brow pulls together like he wants to argue.
“We have to,” I add, softer. “Because he would want us to. He’d want us to keep going, even if we have no fucking clue what that looks like yet.”
Thorne’s eyes go glassy.
I swallow around the lump in my own throat.
“I’m scared too.”
That gets his attention.
“Of what?”
“All of it.” My thumb brushes beneath his eye. “Losing you. Losing Draygon. Waking up one day and realizing this still hurts exactly the same. Trying to make a home out of a place that still feels like him. I don’t know what comes next any more than you do.”
His forehead drops back against mine.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
His hands slide around my back and pull me closer.
“I just need to feel you.”
“I know.”
“I need to know you’re here.”
My throat tightens.
“So do I.”
I kiss him then, slowly, and there’s nothing frantic about it. It’s just both of us trying to remind the other that we’re still here, still breathing, still capable of holding onto something even when so much has already been ripped away.
Neither of us is fixing the other.
We’re just not letting the other fall alone.
I look into his eyes, searching for the man I know beneath the crushing weight of his grief, and I find him waiting for me, his gaze raw and open.
Thorne reaches between us, gripping himself while his free hand slides to my ass and guides me up.
He circles the tip of his cock slowly through my folds, a hiss slipping from his lips before he presses against my opening, and I lower myself onto him inch by inch, feeling the stretch and the fullness of him as I take him deeper.
I gasp at the sensation, my forehead dropping against his as our breaths mingle in the narrow space between us.
Neither of us moves for a long moment. We just stay there, joined and trembling, letting the sheer reality of each other sink in.
I press my palm flat against his chest, my fingers splaying over the hard muscle of his peck. I need to feel it—the steady, rhythmic thrum of his heart beneath my hand. It is the only proof I have that he is truly here, truly alive.
Thorne’s hands come up to my waist, his touch light, almost hesitant, as if he were afraid I might break under the pressure of his grip. He begins to trace the line of my spine, his fingers memorizing every curve, every dip of my back with a devotion that makes my chest ache.
He is touching me as if I am something sacred, something fragile and precious.
“Wolfe should be here,” Thorne murmurs, the words so quiet I almost miss them.
My throat tightens. “I know.”
His eyes stay on mine.
“He should be here with us.”
Something in his face twists, and I start moving again, slow and careful, rocking my hips against him while his hands stay firm around my waist. There’s pleasure there, but it feels secondary right now.
Mostly, I just need the closeness. The warmth of him under me, the drag of skin against skin, the steady beat of his heart beneath my palm reminding me that he’s here.
That I’m here.
I lean down and kiss him, long and deep, and somewhere in the middle of it I realize I’m crying. Tears slip down my cheeks and onto his, but I don’t pull away or wipe them off. I’m too fucking tired to hide any of this from him.
When I finally break the kiss, I stay close enough that our mouths still brush when I speak.
“Wolfe loved you.”
Thorne’s eyes close.