Chapter Seventeen
Rowan
I don't leave his side that evening, not once, riding back to Larkspur pressed close behind him on the bike even though Preacher offered to drive me separately, some old, stubborn instinct refusing to put any more distance between us than absolutely necessary after watching a man's blade come close enough to matter.
The whole ride back, I keep one hand pressed flat against his chest, feeling his heartbeat under my palm, steady and alive and real, and I think about how close I came, this afternoon, to losing something I hadn't even finished deciding whether I wanted to keep.
That thought sits with me the whole way into town, uncomfortable and clarifying in equal measure, the particular clarity that only shows up after real danger passes and leaves you standing in its aftermath forced to actually name what you were afraid of losing.
We end up at the shop, not the house, some unspoken agreement between us that whatever conversation is coming belongs in the place I built with my own hands rather than the one we built together and half-lost. Deb takes one look at the both of us, bandaged and adrenaline-wrecked and clearly needing the room, and locks up early without being asked, squeezing my hand once on her way out, a silent, fierce kind of solidarity that doesn't need words.
"Call me tomorrow," she says, low, just for me. "Or don't. Whatever you need."
"I will. Thank you, Deb. For everything today."
"Don't thank me yet. Go talk to your husband." She says the word deliberately, testing it, watching my face for a reaction I don't quite manage to hide, and then she's gone, the bell over the door ringing once behind her into the quiet evening.
The shop sits quiet around us in the aftermath, familiar and strange at once, every surface exactly where I left it that morning before the whole world tilted sideways, and I find myself moving through the space slower than usual, taking stock of it the way you take stock of anything you almost lost, my father's photo by the register, the flash taped up behind the counter, four years of my own hands and my own choices made solid in brick and ink and careful bookkeeping.
All of it still here. All of it still mine, more securely mine now than it's ever been, thanks to a man upstairs currently bleeding through a bandage he insists doesn't need attention.
Wyatt sits at my kitchen table upstairs, the same table from that first chili dinner three weeks ago, his sleeve rolled up over Preacher's field bandage, and I make tea neither of us really wants because my hands need something to do while the rest of me catches up to everything that just happened.
"You could have died today," I say, finally, setting the mugs down, my voice steadier than I feel. "Actually died, Wyatt. Not a metaphor. A blade three inches from doing real damage instead of just grazing you."
"I know."
"You didn't hesitate. Not even a second. You just moved."
"There wasn't a version of that moment where I hesitated, Rowan.
Not with you standing there." He looks at me, direct, unguarded in a way that costs him something even now.
"I'd make that same choice again, every time, no math involved, no calculation.
That's just what it means to actually love somebody.
Not the poetry of it. The part where your body decides before your brain gets a vote. "
"That terrifies me a little, hearing you say it that plainly."
"It should, probably. It terrifies me too, if I let myself think about it too long.
" He turns his coffee cup slowly, the same habit I have, the same nervous tell we somehow both developed independently over nine years of marriage.
"I spent two years running from anything that made me feel that solid, that certain.
Today I didn't run from it. I ran toward it, without thinking, and some part of me is still catching up to what that means about who I actually am underneath everything I did wrong. "
"Who are you, underneath it?"
"Somebody who'd rather bleed than watch you get hurt. Somebody who finally stopped being afraid of how much that's true." He meets my eyes, steady. "I don't know if that's enough to undo what I did. I know it's the truest thing about me right now."
I sit across from him, the tea going cold between us the same way it did that first night, and I think about everything that's happened in the last three weeks, a window breaking, a man in my shop with a message written for a stranger who turned out to be my husband, a break-in in the dark, a patch surrendered in front of a whole charter, a deed signed over with nothing asked in return, a memory from March I'll never get to hold the same way again, and now this, a blade meant for me landing in his arm instead because he didn't think twice about where his body needed to be.
"I need to tell you something," I say, and I watch him go very still, bracing the way he's braced for every hard conversation these past three weeks.
"I'm not scared anymore. Not of Dax, obviously, that's actually over now.
I mean I'm not scared of the question anymore.
Whether I can trust you. I've been treating it like some enormous, unanswerable thing for eight months, and today, watching you move toward danger instead of away from it, without a single second of hesitation, I realized I already know the answer.
I've known it for a while, actually. I just wasn't ready to say it out loud yet. "
"Rowan—"
"Let me finish. Please." My voice cracks slightly, and I let it, done holding every piece of myself together the way I have for eight months straight.
"I'm not choosing you because I'm scared of being alone.
I've proven to myself, these eight months, that I can build a whole life without you if I have to.
I'm not choosing you because the sex was ever the problem, because it wasn't, we both know that.
I'm choosing you because I've watched you do the actual work, the unglamorous, thankless, no-guarantee work, for three straight weeks, and today you did the hardest version of it without even thinking, which tells me it's not performance anymore. It's just who you've become."
"I don't deserve—"
"I didn't ask if you deserve it. I'm telling you what I've decided.
" I reach across the table, and this time I don't stop an inch away, I close the distance all the way, my hand covering his uninjured one, warm and certain.
"I still have a scar, Wyatt. March still happened.
The eleven days still happened. I'm not pretending any of that away, and if you ever act like I should, that's the day this actually ends for good.
But I'm choosing you anyway, clear-eyed, on my own terms, because the man sitting across from me right now earned it, day by unglamorous day, and I'm done pretending I don't see that just because seeing it scares me. "
"What made today different? I need to understand it, so I know how to keep being the man who earned this instead of accidentally becoming the one who loses it again."
"Today you didn't calculate. You didn't weigh me against anything.
Your body just knew where it needed to be, and it went there, and that's the exact opposite of March, isn't it.
That's a man who's stopped standing at any kind of fork in the road at all.
" I hold his gaze, steady. "I needed to see that with my own eyes, not just hear you promise it. Now I have."
He doesn't say anything for a long moment, just looks at me like he's trying to memorize the exact shape of what I just said, something moving behind his eyes that looks almost like disbelief, a man who spent three weeks preparing for every outcome except this one, unguarded acceptance instead of one more conditional test to pass.
"I need you to say it back," I tell him, quiet. "Not because I'm fishing. Because I want to hear where you actually are with this, not just how grateful you are that I said it first."
"I'm right here." His voice comes out rough, certain.
"I've been right here for three weeks, hoping, not letting myself expect, because expecting felt like one more way of managing you into a decision instead of actually earning it.
Hearing you say it, on your own terms, in your own time, that's worth more than I know how to put into words that don't sound cheap next to what you just gave me. "
"Then don't try to find words. Just kiss me."
When he finally moves, it's slow, careful, giving me every chance to pull back if I need to, his uninjured hand coming up to cup my face, gentle, reverent.
"I love you," he says, quiet, certain. "I never stopped, not for one day, not even in Amarillo, not even at my worst. I know that doesn't excuse anything. I just need you to know it's true, the same way everything else I've told you these three weeks has been true."
"I know." I lean into his hand, finally, fully, eight months of careful distance dissolving into something neither of us rushes. "I love you too. I never stopped either. That's the whole reason this hurt as much as it did."
When he kisses me, it's slow and careful at first, like he's still checking, still giving me room to change my mind, and I don't, I press into it instead, both hands finding his face, three weeks of charged, unresolved almost-moments finally allowed to become something whole.
He tastes like the tea he didn't drink and something underneath that's just entirely, achingly familiar, nine years of knowing exactly how he kisses colliding with eight months of not letting myself remember.