Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
“CARRY YOU” BY RUELLE, FLEURIE
BLOSSOM
Iwake up in Steele's arms, my body deliciously sore in ways I'd had to work years to be able to feel — the stretch of him, the fullness — things I hadn't been sure I'd ever have. I’m also covered in bite marks that will be hell to hide, though I can’t find it in me to care all that much.
The early morning light filters in through my curtains, painting everything in soft gold, including the glorious man in my bed.
He is still asleep, his face relaxed in a way I’ve never seen while he was awake. Without the constant vigilance, the watchful intensity, he looks younger. Still dangerous—those scars make sure of that—but... peaceful.
My room smells like pine and motor oil and sex, and glancing at the clock by my bed, I have approximately twenty minutes before Tina will be up and expecting me to help with breakfast.
Twenty minutes before I have to face the fact that I'd slept with one of my foster son's quasi-brothers and was already thinking about doing it again. Desperate to do it again if I’m being completely honest.
Twenty minutes before I have to figure out how to hide the evidence of what we’ve done from a house full of children and one very perceptive housekeeper.
I am so screwed.
“Stop thinking so loud, Flower,” Steele's deep voice rumbles, his arms tightening around me. “Can hear your brain spinning from here.”
Gods he sounds delicious in the morning. More husky than usual, and it’s an effort not to climb on top of him and lose myself in his touch again.
I watch as his thick eyelashes flutter open, his gaze finding mine immediately and it’s as though the world falls away when he looks at me.
“Morning, beautiful,” he whispers, his large, scarred hand coming up and caressing my cheek. I lean into the touch, unable to resist.
“Good morning, Steele.”
“God I love it when you say my name,” he murmurs, his eyes darting to my lips before he uses his grip to pull me to him.
My breath sighs out of me when our lips meet.
It’s like coming home after a day spent in the pouring rain.
Like putting on the warmest jumper, getting into pyjamas after a hard day.
I allow myself to get lost in Steele. In the way his lips move against mine.
The way his tongue teases the seam of my mouth before he deepens the kiss.
We slowly pull apart, and he’s watching me with those dark eyes.
I find myself tracing the scars on Steele's chest, my fingers gentle as they map the evidence of his past. “Can I ask you something?” My voice comes out softer than I intended.
“Anything, Flower.”
I hesitate, my finger pausing on a particularly vicious scar near his ribs. “When I told you last night, about not being able to have kids. You didn't even hesitate. Why?” My heartbeat thrashes in my chest, my eyes unable to meet his as I wait.
He captures my wandering hand, brings it to his lips and presses a kiss to my knuckles. “Because it doesn't matter.” My gaze snaps up to his.
“It matters to most people.” My throat tightens as my father’s harsh words try to sound in my ears.
“I’m not most people.” He tugs me closer, arranging me so I'm draped across his chest, his arms banding around me. “Tell me about it. I’d like to know, to understand. But only if you want.”
I'm quiet for a long moment, my cheek pressed against his pec where I can hear the steady thrum of his heartbeat, letting it lend me strength. Then the words start spilling out.
“It's called MRKH syndrome. Happens to about one in five thousand women.” My finger resumes tracing his scars, needing something to do with my hands. “Lucky me, right?”
“Hey.” His hand comes up, tilting my face so I have to meet his eyes. They’re full of concern, of warmth that makes the backs of my eyes prickle. “None of that.”
I try for a smile and fail. “My father certainly thought I was unlucky. One more way I failed to be the daughter he wanted.” My voice breaks slightly. “Can't even give him grandchildren to carry on the family name. Turns out Nox was right—I really am just a poor little rich girl with daddy issues.”
A growl rumbles through his chest, the sound vibrating against me. “Your father's a fucking asshole. And Nox was talking out his ass.”
That startles a real laugh out of me, even as tears prick my eyes. “Yeah. He really is. My father. An arsehole, I mean.”
His arms tighten around me, one hand coming up to stroke my hair. “You said you found out at sixteen right? When your periods never started?” I’m grateful to move away from the subject of my dad, it’s a wound that never heals. That still bleeds.
“Yeah.” I feel his inhale of breath. “My periods never started and my GP finally sent me for scans.” The memory still aches, even after all these years and I have to force myself to take a deep breath.
“I was born without a uterus or cervix. I have ovaries and they work fine, produce eggs normally, but…” I shrug against him, trying for casual and missing entirely. “Nowhere for a baby to grow. ”
“Fuck, Blossom.” His voice is strained, like he’s hurting for me.
“I had to do a lot of work to have any kind of normal intimate life — years of treatment. But I got there.” My small smile fades as memories flood my mind.
“I remember sitting in that doctor's office, hearing them explain that I'd never carry a child, and just... shattering. Like my whole future had been rewritten in an instant.” The tears are falling now, silent and hot against my cheeks. “I was devastated. Felt so broken.”
“You're not broken,” he says, fierce and immediate.
I lift my head to look at him, needing him to understand. “I know that now. Took a while, but I got there. Well, mostly. My father though…” I swallow hard. “He made it worse. He could barely look at me after. This just felt like more proof I was fundamentally flawed.”
The rage in his eyes is immediate and scorching. “He said that to you?”
“He didn't have to say it. I could see it every time he looked at me. Every time he left me behind.” I rest my chin on his chest. “But then I realised—if I couldn't have children the traditional way, I'd mother the ones who desperately needed someone to love them.” My smile is bittersweet.
“Poured all of that grief into something good. Something meaningful.”
“That's why you started fostering so young,” he says, light in his eyes as understanding dawns.
“The second I turned eighteen and inherited this house from my mother. Packed up and moved here from England. Tina thought I was crazy, but she helped anyway.” My smile becomes genuine.
“And now I have six—well seven including Justin—kids who call this place home. Plus have all the others who’ve passed through.
I can't carry them in my womb, but I carry them in my heart just the same.”
“They're lucky to have you, Flower.” His voice is thick and his hand cups my cheek, thumb brushing away my tears.
“I’m lucky to have them.” I search his eyes, needing to know. “But Steele? It's okay if you change your mind. About me. About this. Things have happened so fast and if you want kids of your own someday—”
He stops me with a kiss—firm, possessive, leaving no room for doubt.
“I meant what I said last night,” he says when he pulls back, his forehead resting against mine. “You're not getting rid of me that easily. Or my brothers.”
My breath catches, my cheeks heating. “Your brothers?”
His smile is slow and wicked. “They're going to want you too, Bloom. I told you, they’re halfway there already. And when they find out about this?” His hand slides possessively over my hip. “They're going to want to make damn sure you know it doesn't matter to them either.”
Before I can respond to that earth-shattering statement, his expression shifts—becomes more serious, almost vulnerable in a way I haven't seen from him before.
“You showed me yours,” he says quietly. “Fair's fair I show you mine.”
My hand, which has been absently tracing his scars, stills. “You don't have to—”
“I want to.” He catches my hand, guides it to the worst scar—a vicious, puckered thing that bisects his chest. “Foster home. I was twelve. The father didn't like that I stood up to him when he went after one of the younger kids.”
My heart clenches. “Steele…”
“He had a knife. Liked to use it.” His voice is matter-of-fact, but I can feel the tension in his body, in the way his muscles are coiled and stiff. “This one was because I got between him and a six-year-old girl who'd wet the bed.”
I press a kiss to the scar, feeling him shudder beneath me.
“This one—” he guides my hand to his shoulder, where the skin is mottled and uneven, “—cigarette burns. Too many to count. He'd do it while I slept, thought it was funny to wake me up that way.” His abdomen is also covered in cigarette burns, they’re everywhere and my throat closes at the thought of all the times as a child Steele was burned.
“Jesus Christ,” I whisper, tears burning my eyes again.
“The one on my face?” His jaw clenches. “That was the last one he ever gave me. I was fourteen, bigger by then. He came at me with the knife again and I…” He swallows hard. “I fought back. Put him in the hospital. That's how I ended up in the group home where I met Anatole and Nox.”
I shift up so I can cup his scarred cheek, the one with the vicious line bisecting it. “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
“Don't be sorry. That's where I found my brothers.
That's what led me here, to you.” His brothers.
Who'd spent years trying to keep Justin with them.
Who'd come here with nothing and were building something, for Jus, for each other.
And somehow for me too. His hand covers mine on his face.
“You said you felt broken when you found out about the MRKH. I felt the same way about these.” He gestures to his scarred body.
“Thought they made me a monster. That I was as violent and damaged as the man who gave them to me. That he just helped show on the outside what was rotten inside.”
“You're not a monster,” I say fiercely, echoing his words to me.
“I think I might be starting to believe that.” He looks at me with a small smile and my heart skips a beat.
“But Flower? I need you to understand something.
These scars, your condition—they're just parts of our story. They don't define us unless we let them. And I’ve been doing that for far too long. It stops now.”
“When did you get so wise?” I ask, my voice thick with emotion.
“Since I met a woman who turns trauma into love. Who takes broken kids and shows them what home means.” His thumb brushes across my cheekbone and I feel all the skin on my body flush at his words, at the gentle praise in them. “You taught me that, whether you know it or not.”
I lean down, kiss him softly. “We're quite the pair, aren't we? Both broken in different ways.”
“Not broken.” His arms tighten around me. “Survivors. There's a difference.”
“Survivors,” I repeat, testing the word. Liking how it feels.
“And Flower? Those scars on my body? I'd take a thousand more if it meant keeping you and the kids safe. That's what I'm good at—protecting what's mine.”
My breath hitches. “Yours?”
“Ours,” he corrects, that dark intensity returning to his eyes and my heart skips another beat. “Mine, Anatole's, Nox's. You're ours, Blossom. And we're going to spend every day proving to you that your father is wrong. That you're not broken or flawed or any of the shit he made you believe.”
I can't speak past the lump in my throat, so I just kiss him again, pouring everything I can't say into it.
When we break apart, both breathless, he smirks. “Besides, you've got your own mark on me now.”
I look down, seeing again the raised welts my nails left on his mahogany skin — raised slightly, like brands — the bite marks on his collarbone where I'd lost control. “Oh god, I'm so sorry—”
“I told you last night, don't be.” His grin is wicked.
“I love seeing my marks on you, Flower.” His eyes trace the marks on my pale skin slowly, something fierce and satisfied in his expression, and I feel seen in a way that has nothing to do with shame.
“Only fair you leave yours on me too. We're even.”
“We've marked each other,” I say softly.
“Yeah, we have.” He pulls me close again, tucking my head under his chin. “And I'm not planning on letting you go.”
We lie there in the golden morning light, two scarred survivors who've somehow found each other, and for the first time in a long time, I feel truly seen.
Not despite my scars, but because of them.
Not despite his darkness, but because of it.
We understand each other in a way that goes bone-deep.
And that's worth more than any perfect, unblemished future I once imagined.