Chapter 40
Nico
* * *
Icarry her.
She wraps her arms around my neck, and I lift her and carry her through the hallway to our bedroom, and the act of carrying is not about strength.
It's about needing to hold her. To feel her weight against my chest. To know with my body what my mind has been telling me for days: she's here.
She's real. She's not in a chair in a factory or a house in New Hampshire or the passenger seat of a car I sent away.
I set her on the bed. Stand over her. Look.
"What are you doing?"
"Looking at you."
"You've seen me before."
"Not like this."
Not like this. With the knowledge of almost. She's in my shirt, and her hair is across the pillow, and her eyes watch me with the steady clarity that has defined her since she sat in my office and said, "I'm not most people." She was right.
I was a fool. And she's here.
I kneel beside the bed. Take the hem of the shirt.
Lift slowly. Kiss the skin as it reveals: her hip.
The curve of her waist. Her ribs. She lifts her arms, and the shirt comes off, and she’s bare beneath, and I stop breathing the way I stopped breathing the first time and will stop breathing every time because the sight of her undone is the thing that undoes me.
"I almost lost you."
"You didn't."
"I would have destroyed the world."
"I know." She reaches for me. Pulls my shirt over my head. Her hands on my chest. My scars. She traces the bullet wound on my shoulder, the long scar down my ribs. The cartography she's memorized. "Show me."
I undress her the rest of the way. Slowly. Each piece of clothing removed like something sacred. I kiss her neck. The curve of her shoulder. The inside of her wrist.
I stop there.
The marks. Where the zip ties cut. Fading now, six days later, but visible. Pink lines against her pale skin. The physical record of what she survived because I packed a bag.
I press my lips to the marks. She tenses.
"Don't."
"I need to."
"Nico—"
"Let me. Please."
She's quiet. Then her hand comes to my hair. Permission.
I kiss both wrists. The left. The right. Not to heal. I can't heal this. Not to apologize. Words are for apology. This is something else. This is acknowledgment. I see what my decision cost your body. I see the evidence. I'm not looking away.
She lets me. The letting is the bridge. The act of allowing my mouth on her injuries is forgiveness delivered without the word, and I receive it the way I receive everything she gives me: on my knees, grateful, aware that I don't deserve it and committed to earning it anyway.
Then lower. My mouth traces her collarbone. Between her breasts. Down the center of her body. I pause at her stomach. Press my lips there. Stay.
Five weeks. Nothing to see. The skin is flat and warm and holds a future neither of us planned. I kiss the place where my child is growing, and the kiss is for both of them.
"I'm here," I say against her skin.
Her fingers thread through my hair. She arches when my mouth moves lower.
I take my time. Relearn her. The sounds she makes, the breath that catches, the small shifts that tell me what she needs.
I find her center and give it everything because I almost didn't get to do this again and I will not waste a second of the gift.
She comes slowly. A wave. Her hand in my hair, my name on her lips, the sound quiet and raw and entirely mine.
I move up her body. She pulls me to her. I enter slowly. Eyes open. Watching her face. She watches mine.
Neither of us looks away.
For a moment we don't move. The fullness. The warmth. The connection that isn't just physical, but the sum of every door knocked on, every argument, every reconciliation, every factory floor and kitchen counter that led us here.
Slow. Deep. Each stroke deliberate. Each one saying what words have been trying to say for thirty-five chapters: I'm here. I'm not leaving. I'm not sending you away.
"I love you."
"I love you."
Simple words. After everything — the power dynamics, the moral complexity, the secrets, the violence — the simplest words in the language. And they're enough.
She wraps her legs around me. I press deeper. Forehead to forehead. Breathing synchronized. The world outside — the alliance, Dmitri, Lex, the city — none of it exists in this room. Just two heartbeats and the third one too small to hear.
She comes. I watch it move through her face like light through water. I hold her gaze. Catch every sound.
I follow. Her name. The only word I know.