Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Noah
We stopped at my Houston apartment because it was late, and the drive back to Vesper made no sense, and because the apartment was still there, but the threat was gone.
I hadn’t been back since the day Jackson had walked into the wedding venue, and everything changed. The apartment was exactly as I’d left it. The furniture I’d never properly arranged. The boxes I’d never fully unpacked. The blankness of a space that had been inhabited but never quite lived in.
I went over to the window and looked out, the way I used to when I needed a reminder that I was somewhere no one knew me, and I was safe. But tonight, all I could think about was that it was finally over.
Not completely. I knew that. There would be statements to give, testimony to prepare, and the slow work of Chance Kelly’s case moving through the machinery of the federal justice system.
There would be more therapy. There would be mornings when I woke up still doing the inventory out of habit, still reaching for the lamp, before I remembered I didn’t have to.
Times when I did have to, even if only for my peace of mind.
But the thing that had been coming for me was gone.
Corvane was gone. His network was being dismantled, Imogen was safe, and the documents were in Chance Kelly’s hands. It was really over.
Jackson came to stand beside me. “Must be nice to be home,” he said.
I looked at the apartment. At the bare counter. I thought about the first night I’d spent there, sitting on the floor with my back against the wall because I hadn’t had the energy to unpack, and because I wasn’t sure yet if this place was safe.
At an apartment in a city I’d chosen because it was big enough to get lost in, where I’d learned that getting lost also meant feeling invisible. The one thing Jackson Crowe never allowed me to feel.
“This isn’t my home,” I said.
Jackson looked at me.
“It gave me what I needed,” I said. “Room to breathe. Anonymity. A place to feel safe while I figured out what came next, but it was always temporary. I think I knew that the whole time. I just didn’t know what I was waiting for.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Do you know now?”
I looked at him, at the dark eyes and the still face and the man who’d driven to Houston for me and would’ve followed me anywhere.
“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”
He crossed the room and stood in front of me, looking at me. “Come to the camp,” he said. “Come home with me. We’ll build something out there that belongs to both of us.”
I thought about the farmhouse kitchen in the early morning. The east light through the windows. The treeline and the cedar smell. The early morning silence that felt like peace instead of loneliness, but mostly I thought about what it meant to build a life with this man.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like that.”
He put his hand on the side of my face, and I leaned into it, and that was that. The decision was made. The next thing chosen.
Then he kissed me, and I stopped thinking about decisions and choices.
“Let’s take this to the bedroom,” he said against my mouth.
“Yeah,” I said.
We didn’t rush. That was one of the things about Jackson—he never rushed. He walked me backward down the hall with his hands on my hips and his mouth at my throat. By the time we reached the bed, I was already working on his buttons because I wanted my hands on him, and I was done waiting.
He caught my wrists.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
I looked up at him.
“Let me,” he said. Quiet. Certain.
I dropped my hands.
He undressed us both, and by the time he laid me back on the bed, I was already wound tight, and he hadn’t even started.
“Daddy—”
“I’ve got you, baby boy.” He pressed a kiss to my collarbone, my sternum, moving down. “I’ve got you.”
He took his time working his way down my body, his mouth warm and deliberate, finding every place that made me gasp and staying there until I was making sounds I had no control over, and my hands were fisted in his hair.
“Please,” I managed.
He came back up my body and looked at me with a satisfied expression.
“Tell me what you want,” he said.
“You,” I said. “I want you.”
“You have me.” He took his time getting me ready for him, and when he finally pushed inside, I let out a long, shuddering breath and pulled him closer with both hands.
“Okay?” he said.
“More than okay,” I breathed. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t stop.
He moved slow and deep, his eyes on my face the whole time. I met every thrust, my legs wrapping around him, and the slow build turned into something urgent and inevitable. I reached between us, and he growled low in my ear and said, “Together.”
“Together,” I said, and meant it in every possible way.
When I came, it rolled through me in long waves, and I cried out his name. He was right there with me, his forehead dropping to my shoulder, his grip on my hips tight and certain as he followed me over.
After, he pulled me against his chest and held me there, his hand moving slowly through my hair, and I listened to his heartbeat and the city outside and the particular quiet of a place I was leaving.
“Daddy,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad it was you who came to get me.”
His arm tightened around me. “So am I, baby boy,” he said quietly. “So am I.”
Crowe
The ninth-floor common area was lit up when we walked off the elevator the next afternoon.
I could hear it before the doors opened, the voices, the laughter, the warm chaos of everyone in the same room at the same time.
The smell hit us in the hallway. Whatever Mika had been cooking smelled amazing.
Noah looked at me. “Did you know about this?”
“I may have sent a text,” I said with a shrug.
He shook his head, but the corner of his mouth twitched up in a small smile.
Mika was at the food table and looked up first, his face breaking into a warm smile when he saw us. Hawk was beside him, and he raised his coffee in a nod. Gator and Julius were sitting together on the couch, but Julius stood up the moment he saw Noah, like he’d been waiting for us to arrive.
He crossed the room and pulled Noah into a hug before Noah had fully processed what was happening, and I watched Noah’s arms come up around him and the way he held on.
“Gator told me what happened,” Julius said into his shoulder. “He said you were brave.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “I don’t really think I was. I didn’t take the time to think about what I was doing, recognize the danger, and do it anyway. That would’ve been brave. I just acted without thinking, which was probably not all that brave or all that smart, to be honest.”
“It was amazing. Just don’t do it again.” He pulled back and looked at Noah with the direct, unfiltered look he only shared with the people who mattered.
Trixie, from her stand in the corner, announced, “Noah’s home. Noah’s home.”
The room laughed.
“She’s not wrong,” Mika said, coming around the counter with a bowl that he pressed into Noah’s hands. “Sit down. Both of you.”
We sat. Axel and Maddox were sitting on the floor arguing about the video game they were playing, which meant the world was exactly as it should be. Maddox stopped long enough to shout welcome home back over his shoulder.
“Pay attention to the game. You’re going to get us killed, and I want to beat this guy before we stop to eat,” Axel growled.
I ate my food, but my focus was on Noah beside me. He and Julius had their heads bent together as they talked about something in hushed voices. He reached over without looking and touched my arm briefly before going back to the conversation. Small. Easy. Like he’d been doing it forever.
“So,” Gator said, looking between us. “Word is, Noah won’t be going back to Houston.”
Noah looked up from his conversation with Julius, and our eyes met.
“No,” I said. “He’s not.”
“I’m moving to the camp,” Noah said. “With Jackson.”
Julius smiled at him like he was pleased with the announcement.
But I hadn’t expected anything less from the man who’d found Noah half-destroyed and had sat with him through the hardest parts.
What he cared about was Noah’s happiness, and it was easy to see that he was.
He picked up his glass and looked at Noah.
“To finally being where you belong,” he said.
Noah looked at him and nodded before locking gazes with me. “To finally being where I belong,” he said.
We drank.
Maddox said something to Axel that made Axel throw a napkin at him, breaking the tension. Mika was already up getting more food, Hawk was laughing at something Gator said, and the rest of the room had gone back to their food and conversations. Everything felt… right.
Noah turned to me, and the room went on around us. “Thank you,” he said, quietly, just for me.
It didn’t matter what he was thanking me for. What mattered was that I planned on spending the rest of my life making sure that Noah was happy, safe, and surrounded by people who loved him.
“Always,” I said, and I meant it.