Chapter 99 Laney
Laney
It doesn’t happen all at once.
Healing never does.
It starts in the kitchen, with burned toast and quiet laughter that surprises both of us.
It continues in the hallway, when he reaches for my hand without thinking.
And it finally catches up to us in the bedroom, when the house is quiet and Emmy is asleep and the world feels—maybe for the first time—far away.
Saint closes the door softly behind us.
Not like he’s sealing us in.
Like he’s keeping the noise out.
He stands there for a second, like he’s not sure what comes next.
I step into him.
Put my hands on his chest.
Feel his heart.
Still strong. Still steady. Still here.
“You don’t have to be careful with me,” I whisper.
His jaw tightens.
“I don’t know how not to be.”
I slide my hands up his neck and kiss him.
Not urgent.
Not desperate.
Just… sure.
He exhales like he’s been holding his breath for weeks.
His hands come to my waist. Hesitant at first. Then firmer.
Like he’s remembering something he almost forgot.
We don’t rush.
We don’t need to.
This isn’t about hunger.
It’s about home.
He rests his forehead against mine.
“I thought if I stopped moving, everything would catch up to me,” he says quietly.
“It did,” I say. “And you’re still standing.”
He looks at me like I’m something fragile and unbreakable at the same time.
“I don’t want to lose this,” he says.
“You won’t,” I tell him. “We’re not surviving anymore. We’re living.”
That’s when he kisses me like he believes it.
Later, when we’re under the covers, wrapped around each other, the world feels smaller.
Safer.
His arm is heavy across my waist. Protective without being tense.
I trace the line of his shoulder.
“Saint?”
“Yeah?”
“You can stop being the shield,” I say. “I can stand with you.”
He turns his head and looks at me for a long moment.
Then he nods.
And for the first time since I’ve known him…
He sleeps.
Really sleeps.
No alarms in his body.
No war behind his eyes.
Just us.
When I wake in the middle of the night, he’s still there.
Still holding me.
Like he finally understands:
This isn’t something he has to defend.
This is something he gets to keep.