Chapter 8 #2
"You don't have to brace for anything anymore."
"I know. I'm just not entirely sure how to stop yet. Six years of bracing for something, and then three more weeks of bracing for something else — it's a hard habit to put down all at once."
"Then we put it down together. Slowly, if that's what it takes.
" I brushed a stray tear from her cheek, my thumb lingering against her jaw.
"I'm not going anywhere, Lena. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not any of the thousand ordinary days after that.
You can take as long as you need to actually believe it. "
"Nico's at Elio and Sienna's tonight," she murmured against my throat, once we'd finally settled. "Movie night. He won't be back until tomorrow morning."
"Is that so."
"It's so." She pulled back just enough to meet my eyes, something warm and certain and entirely without hesitation in her expression. "Come home with me properly tonight, Tomas. Not the bluff this time. Our house. The one we're actually going to build a life in."
I didn't need to be asked twice.
We walked to the house together in the fading evening light, hands linked, unhurried, the particular ease of two people who finally, truly had nowhere else they needed to be.
She led me through the door, past the same refrigerator gallery of a child's drawings, up the stairs to a bedroom I'd never seen before, simple and warm and entirely hers.
"I've imagined you here," she admitted, a little shy despite everything we'd already shared on the bluff. "More times than I probably should have, given the circumstances."
"Show me," I murmured, echoing the words from the clifftop, though everything about tonight felt different — steadier, surer, no more danger hanging over either of us to rush the moment along. "We've got all the time in the world now."
I kissed her slow, deliberate, savoring every second in a way I hadn't quite let myself on the bluff, where urgency and six years of longing had driven everything faster than either of us probably intended.
Tonight there was no rush at all — just the two of us, finally safe, finally free to take our time.
I undressed her carefully in the lamplight, learning her all over again with none of the desperation of that first night, just patient, devoted attention to every response I drew from her, every soft gasp and murmured plea.
I laid her back against the pillows and kissed my way down her body slowly, deliberately, tasting every inch I uncovered, until I settled between her thighs and set about proving exactly how thoroughly I intended to make up for lost time.
"You're staring," she murmured, a little breathless, as I paused to trace the curve of her waist.
"I'm allowed. I've got a lot of years to make up for."
"That's not an excuse to be slow."
"It's exactly an excuse to be slow." I pressed a kiss to her hip, unhurried, deliberate, watching her arch beneath even that small contact, and then I lowered my mouth to her properly, drawing a sharp, broken gasp out of her that echoed through the quiet room.
She fisted both hands in my hair, hips rising to meet every slow, deliberate stroke of my tongue, her breath coming faster, her murmured pleas turning increasingly desperate as I worked her steadily toward the edge and then deliberately backed off, unwilling to let this end too fast when I'd waited six years for the privilege of taking my time.
"Tomas—" My name broke on her lips, half plea, half warning. "You're going to kill me."
"Not planning on it." I looked up at her, watching her face in the lamplight, utterly wrecked and beautiful. "Planning on doing this properly. Every single time."
I finally let her fall apart under my mouth, drinking in the sound of my name breaking from her throat as release rolled through her in long, shuddering waves, and I didn't stop until she was boneless and trembling, both hands still tangled in my hair.
"I keep my promises now. New policy." I worked my way slowly back up her body, tasting every inch of newly bared skin along the way, until I was braced above her, watching her catch her breath, all traces of teasing dissolved into pure, unguarded want on both our parts.
She undressed me in turn, her hands steadier than they'd been on the bluff, more certain now, unhurried and thorough as she traced every scar and line I'd earned over six hard years, and by the time she'd finished, I was every bit as desperate as she'd just been.
"My turn," I murmured, settling between her thighs again, this time to join our bodies fully, sinking into her slow and deep, both of us groaning at the exquisite, overwhelming fit of it.
"I love you," she said, arching beneath me as I began to move, unhurried and deep, savoring every inch of the connection between us. "I love you, I love you—"
"I love you too." I caught her mouth again, swallowing the rest of the words, my hips rolling into her with slow, deliberate purpose, drawing a low moan out of her with every deep stroke.
"This is it for me, Lena. You. Him. This house.
I'm not chasing any mirage anymore. I found exactly what I was looking for. "
I braced one hand beside her head and used the other to hitch her leg higher around my waist, changing the angle until she cried out, nails dragging down my back, and I picked up the pace, driving into her with a steady, relentless rhythm that had her chanting my name against my throat.
"Tomas, I'm close, I'm—"
"I know. I've got you." I slid my hand between us, working slow circles right where she needed it most, matching the rhythm of my hips, and felt her tighten around me, her whole body going rigid before she shattered again, crying my name into the quiet room as her release washed through her.
The clench of her around me dragged my own release up fast and hard, and I followed her over with a rough groan, burying myself deep one final time as pleasure crashed through me in long, overwhelming waves, her name the only word left in my head.
We stayed tangled together a long moment after, both of us breathing hard, my forehead dropped to her shoulder, neither willing to move or break the contact between us just yet.
Afterward, tangled in the sheets with her head resting against my chest, I traced slow patterns against her bare shoulder and let myself finally, fully believe it — the danger gone, the secret finally spoken, the family I'd been chasing without even knowing it for six long years now solidly, permanently mine.
"Marry me," I said, the words arriving with total, unplanned certainty, surprising even myself with how naturally they came.
She lifted her head, eyes wide in the dim light. "Right now? In bed, no ring, completely unplanned?"
"I'm aware it's not the most romantic delivery."
"It's terrible, actually." But she was laughing, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes again, and she pressed a kiss to my chest before answering. "Ask me properly. With a ring. Somewhere nice. I want the whole story to tell Nico someday."
"Is that a yes to the eventual proper version?"
"That's a yes to all of it, Tomas. Whenever, however you ask." She settled back against my chest, contentment radiating off her in a way that matched exactly what I felt myself.
"For the record," I added, "I'm going to ask properly. Ring, restaurant, probably something embarrassingly sentimental involving the bluff, since apparently that's become our whole thing now."
"I'd expect nothing less."
"Nico's going to want to help pick the ring. Fair warning."
"He absolutely will. He has strong opinions about sparkly things ever since Lucia's birthday party had a craft table with glitter glue.
" She laughed, soft and warm against my chest, and the sound of it settled something in me that had been unsettled for six long years.
"You're really doing this. All of it. The proposal, the wedding, the whole complicated, unconventional family. "
"I'm really doing all of it. Every complicated, unconventional piece." I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, certainty settling over me like the tide finding its level. "I'm not going anywhere either. Not this time."
We stayed like that a long while, tangled together in the quiet dark, and I let myself feel, fully and without reservation, the enormous, hard-won relief of a mirage that had finally, after six impossibly long years, turned solid and real beneath my hands.
Somewhere down the hall, in a room decorated with dinosaur sheets and a nightlight shaped like a submarine, my son was sleeping soundly at a friend's house, blissfully unaware that his parents had just spent the evening ending a threat and starting a future in the same breath.
Tomorrow he'd come home to an ordinary Friday — breakfast, school, an argument about pasta shapes — never knowing how close the danger had come, or how thoroughly it had finally been put to rest.
That felt right to me. Some things a child didn't need to carry.
He'd have the rest of his life to know his father as steady, present, unshakeable — the man who stayed, not the one who'd once had to run.
Whatever else came, that was the story I intended to give him, one ordinary, uneventful day at a time.
I fell asleep with Lena's breathing steady against my chest, the coast outside the window quiet and dark and entirely, finally, safe, and dreamed for the first time in six years of nothing at all — no threats, no running, no unfinished business trailing behind me.
Just an ordinary future, waiting exactly where I'd left it.
Somewhere around dawn I woke briefly, just long enough to feel her still there beside me, warm and real and permanent, before sleep pulled me back under, deeper and easier than it had in longer than I could remember.