Chapter 35
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— Lilac —
Iheard his bike before I saw him. I’d know that engine anywhere. The sound of it coming across the parking lot pulled me to my feet.
A week earlier, Dutch had come back with the others. He’d found me on the stairs and crouched down to meet my eyes. He hadn’t said much. It’s done. He’s safe. You all are. He’ll be home in a few days. Then he’d stood, squeezed my shoulder once, and gone to find Indira.
I’d sat on that step for a long time before I went to check on the boys.
They were asleep in one of the back rooms, tangled together under a borrowed quilt, utterly peaceful.
Luca had his arm thrown over Knox’s shoulders.
Knox had one fist curled under his chin.
I stood in the doorway and let my breathing slow.
It’s done. He’s safe.
I’d pulled a chair to the doorway and sat with my back to the wall. Still keeping watch.
Now Colt was home.
I’d built up some image in my head. I didn’t know what exactly. But when Colt came through the side door he was just road-dirty. A week’s worth of miles on him.
He looked tired.
Still.
That was it. He was still in a way he hadn’t been since I’d run into him again here in Millfield.
The coiled tension he’d been carrying, the watchfulness, the particular quality of a man waiting for something that hasn’t resolved yet.
Gone. His hands, his shoulders, the set of his jaw. Everything had settled.
I crossed the room and put my hands on his face. He let me. He closed his eyes and leaned into it slightly, like a man who’d been very cold for a very long time and was only now remembering what warmth felt like.
“The boys are out with Handful,” I told him. “Dirt bikes. They’ll be back in an hour.”
He opened his eyes.
I remembered that look. I dropped my hands and stepped back. “Come on,” I said. “Bath first.”
I ran a bath while he stripped down. He moved slowly—the particular exhaustion of someone who had been holding something together across hundreds of miles and finally didn’t have to anymore. His fingers fumbled with his shirt buttons, and I pushed them aside and did it myself.
He sank into the tub with a sound like a man setting down something heavy. I reached for the shampoo.
My hands shook for a moment.
Somewhere beneath the surface of memory, somewhere my mind couldn’t reach, something stirred. Old knowledge. Not mine to name. The feeling passed like a cloud moving over the sun, and then it was gone.
I breathed. I kept my hands moving.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
“You okay?”
“Yes.” I pressed my thumbs into the tight muscles at the base of his skull. “I am.”
He was quiet for a moment. “I killed people,” he said finally. “You know that.”
“I know.”
“I don’t feel bad about it.”
“I know that too.”
He tilted his head to look at me, water beading on his lashes. “Does that scare you? That I’m capable of it?”
I thought about it honestly. The man who had shown up to every school pickup without being asked. Who had taught Knox to tie his shoes with more patience than I’d managed in a year. Who had never once looked at me like I owed him something for the effort.
“No,” I said with a shrug. “You did what you had to do. To protect your family. To get justice for what they took from us.” I cupped water in my palm and rinsed the shampoo from his hair. “I can’t condemn you for that.”
“Some people would.”
“I’m not some people.” I looked at him steadily. “I’m your wife.”
Colt caught my wrist and pulled my hand to his lips. Pressed a kiss to my palm. His eyes didn’t leave mine. “I love you,” he said against my skin.
“I love you too.” I stood and reached for a towel. “Now get out before you fall asleep in there.”
He rose from the water, rivulets tracking down his chest, and I wrapped the towel around his waist. My hands were steadier now. He caught them anyway, holding them still for a moment against his stomach.
“You’ve been waiting here for me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t faster.”
“Don’t be.” I looked up at him. “I love you, Colt. The man who brings me flowers and the man who just—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t need to.
“Both versions,” he said.
“Both versions.” I stepped into him, pressing my face into the side of his neck, and stayed there. His arms came around me—still damp, warm now, solid. “I didn’t know what I’d do if you didn’t come back. I still don’t.”
“I came back.”
“I know.” I tilted my head up. “Now, take me to bed.”
He kissed me right there in the bathroom doorway, one hand cupping my jaw, and then we were moving—or he was moving me, steering me backward down the hall with his mouth still on mine and one hand at the small of my back.
Someone whistled.
Colt didn’t break the kiss. Didn’t even flinch. He raised one hand in a gesture that was probably rude and kept walking.
There was a laugh from somewhere near the kitchen. “Welcome home, VP.”
He walked me through his door and kicked it shut behind us.
He kissed me slowly at first, and then with the particular urgency of a man who has been keeping himself at a careful distance from everything he loves and finally doesn’t have to anymore.
We moved toward the bed without separating, and when we fell together onto the mattress I felt the tension finally leave him.
He was careful with me—slower than I expected, more deliberate. Like he was memorizing something, taking inventory. His mouth at my throat, my collarbone, the curve of my shoulder. His hands unhurried despite the heat of them.
“You feel like home,” he said against my skin.
I pushed him onto his back.
He went without resistance, which told me everything—he wanted this, needed it, but the road was still in his bones and his arms had the particular heaviness of a man running on fumes and willpower. His eyes found mine in the low light. Dark. Wanting.
“Let me,” I said.
He exhaled. “Yeah.”
I shed my clothes without breaking eye contact. His jaw tightened.
I took my time, lowering myself down onto him.
I set the pace and kept it there, slow and deliberate, watching his face—the way his jaw went slack, the way his hands found my hips and gripped without trying to redirect me.
He was giving it over. All of it. The control, the vigilance, the weeks of held tension.
Everything he’d been carrying, I was taking it apart piece by piece, and I could feel the exact moment he stopped holding anything back at all.
“Lilac—”
“I’ve got you.” I leaned down and dragged my mouth along his jaw, his throat, the curve of his shoulder—felt him shiver despite the heat of us. His hands tightened on my hips like he was trying to anchor himself to something real. “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”
His eyes found mine and stayed there. That was what he needed—not just the release, not just my body, but to look at something he loved and have it look back. To know he’d made it home.
I held his gaze and kept moving, slow and sure, giving him everything I had until the last of it left him—his head falling back, his whole body going still beneath me with a long exhale that felt like it had been waiting weeks to get out.
Afterward I stayed where I was for a moment, my hands on his chest, feeling his heartbeat slow back down to something human. His fingers traced up my spine—not pulling me anywhere, just touching, like he needed the contact to believe it was real.
I moved to lie beside him. Within a minute his breathing had gone deep and even.
I watched him in the fading light. The stillness was still there—even in sleep, every line of his face had let go of something. He looked younger. He looked like a man who’d finally been allowed to stop.