Chapter 14 #3
The blue-black strands slipped through my fingers exactly the way I remembered and better than memory had any right to be. She tipped her face up, and I kissed her again, deeper now, the restraint thinning between us with every breath.
We undressed slowly.
Not because desire was weak.
Because it was enormous.
Because rushing would have felt like disrespect after all this time.
Each piece of clothing removed was another door opening. Her shoes. My boots. Her scrub pants. My jeans. The rest became hands and breath and whispered checks that were not clinical anymore but still careful.
Are you okay?
Yes.
Tell me if I hurt you.
You’re not.
Beautiful.
Dylan.
Her name in my mouth. Mine in hers.
No ghosts answering.
When we reached the bed, I sat first because my side still had limits and Destiny was not above using her nurse voice, apparently.
“Careful,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her eyebrow lifted.
“Do not make nurse jokes right now.”
“Yes, Nurse Rourke.”
She shoved my shoulder lightly.
I caught her hand and pulled her down with me.
She came willingly, laughing against my mouth, and the sound opened something in the room brighter than sunset.
Then laughter faded.
She settled beside me, her hair falling around us like a curtain. My hands moved along her back, learning her without hurry. Her skin was warm. Real. Covered in goose bumps wherever my fingers passed.
For years, wanting her had been a wound.
Now it was a language.
I learned it slowly.
The places that made her breath catch. The way her eyes closed when my mouth found her shoulder. The tiny sound she made when my hand slid over her hip. The way she trembled not from fear, but from holding back.
“You don’t have to hold back,” I whispered.
Her eyes opened.
Neither of us missed what that meant.
Not just tonight.
All of it.
The years.
The longing.
The terror of wanting too much.
She touched my face. “Neither do you.”
The last of my restraint went quiet.
Not gone.
Quiet.
There was still care. Still tenderness. Still the awareness of my healing body and her brave, scarred heart. But under it, finally allowed to breathe, was heat. Deep and steady. Ash blown off coals that had never gone cold.
I shifted with her slowly, taking my weight carefully, my side protesting enough that she noticed immediately.
“Dylan.”
“I’m good.”
Her look said lying would result in consequences.
I adjusted, pulling her against me instead, finding a way that did not make pain the center of anything. She helped. Of course she did. Nurse hands. Woman hands. Destiny hands. Touching me now without gloves, without fear, without another woman’s shadow standing at the door.
When we finally came together, it was not perfect.
I had imagined perfect.
A thousand times.
In exile. In guilt. In a hospital bed with shame burning under my skin. In half-sleep after surgery when her voice still echoed in the dark.
But real was better.
Real was her breath catching against my neck.
My hand gripping the sheet when emotion hit harder than desire.
Her whispering my name like she was surprised we had survived long enough to say it this way.
Me stopping because my side pulled and her laughing softly through tears because of course our first time involved medical caution and stubbornness.
Real was us.
Messy.
Careful.
Hungry.
Tender.
Alive.
I kissed her through every breath I could. Her mouth, her cheek, the corner of her eye where tears slipped free, her wrist where the cuff rested warm against her skin. She held my face between both hands when the feeling rose too high and kept me there, looking at her.
“Stay with me,” she whispered.
I knew she did not mean the house.
Or the bed.
Or even the night.
“I’m here,” I said.
Then quieter, because the truth deserved no performance, “I’m not leaving again.”
Her eyes shone.
This time, when she kissed me, there was no grief in it.
No goodbye.
Only yes.
Afterward, the room was almost dark.
The last light had gone violet at the windows. Somewhere downstairs, the house creaked softly, settling around us like it had been waiting for this too.
Destiny lay against me, one leg tangled carefully with mine, her fingers tracing absent shapes over my chest. I had one hand in her hair because now that I had permission, I was not sure I would ever stop touching it.
Her cheek rested near my heart.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Words would have made it smaller.
Eventually, she lifted her head. “You built me a house.”
I looked down at her.
“I renovated you a house.”
“Dylan.”
“Yeah. I built you a house.”
Her smile was sleepy and soft enough to ruin me all over again.
“I don’t live here,” she said.
“Not yet.”
Her eyebrow lifted.
I immediately added, “No pressure.”
She laughed quietly and settled back down.
“I like my apartment.”
“I know.”
“And Lily will accuse me of abandoning her again if I move twice in one year.”
“She would.”
“She cried for two days when I left Albuquerque.”
“I remember.”
“She wrote Destiny’s Abandonment Items on one of my boxes.”
“She’s not wrong.”
Destiny pinched my side lightly.
I laughed, then winced.
She rose up instantly. “Pain?”
“Worth it.”
“You say that too much.”
“I mean it every time.”
She narrowed her eyes, but the worry softened. After a moment, she settled against me again.
“Maybe someday,” she whispered.
My heart stopped doing whatever normal thing hearts did.
“Yeah?”
“Maybe.”
I kissed the top of her head and tried not to hold the word too tightly.
Maybe was not a no.
Maybe, from Destiny, was a door cracked open.
I had learned not to kick doors down.
Downstairs, the little house stood around us with its green tile, quartz counters, saved floors, rosemary by the porch, and one dramatic basil plant fighting for its life in the back garden.
A place where nothing bad had happened yet.
A place waiting to become ours slowly.
Destiny’s fingers slid over my scar again, gentle and unafraid.
“You know,” she said, “the bedroom needs curtains.”
I smiled into her hair.
“What kind?”
“Not white. Too bridal.”
“Agreed.”
“Maybe linen. Something warm.”
I reached blindly for the nightstand, where my phone sat.
She lifted her head. “What are you doing?”
“Making a note.”
Her mouth fell open. “Right now?”
“Yes.”
“Dylan.”
“What? Curtains matter.”
She stared at me for half a second.
Then she laughed.
Really laughed.
In the bed I had chosen. In the house I had built. In the life I had almost been too scared to reach for.
I put the phone back without making the note and rolled carefully toward her again.
“Fine,” I said. “Curtains later.”
Her smile faded into something warmer as I touched her cheek.
“Later,” she whispered.
I kissed her.
Because we had later now.
And that felt like the miracle.