Chapter 32
Aftermath
ELI
The room felt hazy around the edges. My pulse was still all over the place. My chest and stomach sticky, and Adrian’s breath warm against my temple. And all I could think was—God, I needed that.
Not just the release, but his weight braced over me, his voice breaking, his hands shaking like mine. The way he said my name as though it hurt him to hold it in.
Adrian lowered himself until his chest pressed lightly to mine, careful of my ribs, careful of every damn part of me. His mouth worked slow kisses along my jaw, and I felt something in my throat go tight.
“I missed you,” I heard myself say, voice wrecked.
His hand threaded through my hair. “I’m here,” he whispered. “I’ve been here. Even when I couldn’t get it right. There’s only you and me.”
I let my fingers slide up his back, feeling the shocks still running through him. He’d come so hard he’d actually cursed—Adrian never cursed. And now he was hovering as though I might disappear if he let go.
A messy little laugh escaped me. “You—uh—you kind of decorated me.”
He lifted himself just enough to look down at the streaks across my stomach and chest, then groaned into my shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t even—God, Eli.”
“Relax.” I nudged his hip with mine. “This is the least dramatic thing that’s happened to me lately.”
He choked on a laugh and kissed my forehead before grabbing the edge of the comforter to wipe at the mess. I caught his wrist before he could.
“Not with that,” I said, horrified. “That’s my favorite blanket.”
“We're washing this anyway,” he muttered, but he dropped it and reached for a T-shirt from the floor instead. He cleaned me up with careful, tender passes, his touch maddeningly gentle. Every swipe made something unsteady open inside my chest.
When he finished, he tossed the shirt aside and leaned in to kiss the spot just under my collarbone—soft, lingering, apologizing without words.
And I cracked. Not fully. Just enough that the breath I let out sounded close to a sob.
He pressed his head to mine. “Hey. Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, even though we both knew that was a lie. I swallowed, a shaky laugh breaking through. “I missed this. Missed feeling you. Missed knowing you were here.”
His hand tightened at my jaw, thumb brushing the corner of my mouth as if he needed the contact to believe it. “You scared me,” he whispered. “When I thought—when you were—” His voice faltered, and he pulled me closer, needing more. “I didn’t know if I’d ever get to touch you again.”
My eyes stung. “You’re touching me now.”
He nodded and lay beside me, pulling me slowly into his chest. I curled into him without thinking, my cheek against the steady rise and fall of his breathing, his hand moving in slow circles on my back.
“I know,” he said, almost as if he was convincing himself. His hand slid to the back of my neck, grounding me with his touch. “I just… need a second to catch up to it.”
I let out a soft breath, leaning into him. “I’m here,” I murmured. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Neither am I.”
We stayed like that for a long minute. Just breathing. Just warmth. Just two clueless asses trying to learn each other again.
Then Adrian chuckled softly. “I think I pulled something.”
“Yeah,” I said, my lips brushing his throat. “My sanity.”
His laughter rumbled through me, and for a moment—just a moment—I felt whole.
He kissed the top of my head, his mouth brushing the hairline scar where glass split my scalp. “We’ll figure this out,” he murmured. “One minute at a time.”
A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it. I hoped he didn’t feel it.
He definitely did.
His arm tightened. “I’ve got you. I’m right here.”
I believed him. Melted into him. Drifted in the safety of his arms, where the world finally felt quiet.
Where I felt wanted.
Where I felt… At home.
Adrian shifted, propping himself on one elbow beside me. His fingers skimmed down my torso, over the small scar from the chest tube. A reminder of the moment he thought he’d lost me. I felt the breath he let out before I heard it.
He placed a kiss on the puckered skin. It wasn’t sexual. It wasn’t even tentative. It was reverent in a way that hit me deeper than it should have, as if he were grateful. Trying to erase the damage with his mouth.
He kissed the next section. And the next. The tiny circular scar at my throat from the trach. The long, ugly line down my thigh.
Careful little brushstrokes of warmth over pain.
Devotion over damage.
I exhaled shakily. “Adrian…”
He didn’t stop. If anything, he went slower. His breath puffed against my skin between kisses, warm and soft, grounding me in a way I didn’t know I needed.
“I hate that this happened to you,” he murmured between two kisses just under my ribs.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
His lips stilled on my skin. “I still hate it.”
My hand slid into his hair, combing gently through the dark strands.
“Adrian,” I whispered again, quieter this time. “Come here.”
He lifted his head, eyes warm and a little glassy, and crawled up to lie flush against me. His body fit against mine perfectly, like coming home after being lost for too long.
His cheek rested against mine.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said, voice thick. “I didn’t know if I’d get to hear you be a smartass again.”
I huffed out a laugh that sounded embarrassingly close to a sob. “Still here.”
“Yeah,” he whispered, brushing his nose against mine. “You are.”
He kissed me—a deep, lingering kiss—and my whole body loosened under him, the ache in my ribs easing as his mouth moved over mine.
When he pulled back, his thumb stroked once over the scar at my throat, light as breath.
“I’m going to take care of you,” he said simply. “Even when you pretend you don’t need it.”
“And when I do need it?” I asked.
His hand cupped my jaw, fingertips curling against my stubbled skin. “Then I’ll give you everything.”
I held him close, stroking absent patterns against skin I used to touch without thinking.
“I thought I lost you,” he said quietly. “Not just that day. But after. When you woke up and looked at me like… like I was a stranger walking around in my husband costume.”
I winced. Not because he was wrong, but because he wasn’t.
“Adrian,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I know.” He swallowed hard. “But I still felt it. Every room we were in together… it was like someone had walked through first and erased all our fingerprints.”
My breath stuttered—because yes, that was exactly how it felt on my side too: as if our entire history had been wiped clean with industrial-strength bleach while the rest of the world went on as if nothing had changed.
“I was scared to touch anything,” he continued, voice soft. “Scared if I reached for you, I’d smudge whatever progress you’d made. Ruin something. Make it worse.”
I blinked up at him, heart twisting. “I missed you. Even when I couldn’t remember all the reasons why, I missed you. Like muscle memory. A language I’d forgotten how to speak but still dreamed in.”
He smiled, small and pained. “You still talk pretty, you know that?”
I huffed. “I talk fine. You just think you’re supposed to be the poetic one.”
He snorted. “Please. My metaphors are trash. You’re the one who once compared us to—what was it?—‘two halves of a broken compass that still point home.’”
I groaned loudly. “I was twenty-two and caffeinated. Don’t hold that against me.”
He grinned. “I loved it.”
“You loved everything I said back then. I could’ve compared us to… to mismatched socks, and you would’ve swooned.”
He raised a brow. “Swooned?”
A laugh cracked out of me, surprised and helpless. God, it felt good.
He leaned in closer, skin to skin. “But since we’re revisiting metaphors…”
My stomach fluttered ridiculously.
He traced the scar again with his lips, pressing his love into my skin with invisible force.
“You’re like… a lighthouse after a storm,” he murmured between kisses. “A beacon that still stands, even when half the coast looks like hell.”
I blinked hard. “That’s… that’s not trash.”
“I’ve been saving it,” he admitted. “Didn’t want to waste it while you were concussed.”
I swatted his shoulder. “You can’t call your husband a storm-wrecked lighthouse and then make concussion jokes.”
My chest warmed. God, it felt good to say the word husband out loud, to feel confident in it.
“Watch me.”
I laughed into his chest, the sound shaking both of us. His hand curved around my back, holding me as if I wasn’t fragile or broken or missing pieces—just his.
“Eli,” he murmured into my hair, “I’ll wait as long as it takes. For all of you. Even the parts that are still healing.”
I tipped my head up, eyes stinging again. “You won’t have to wait forever.”
“I know.” He kissed the corner of my mouth. “You’re already finding your way home.”
I breathed him in—his warmth, his strength, his scent, his love—and finally let myself believe it.
We were still us
Still reaching.
Still coming back.
Even if the tide had dragged us out farther than either of us ever expected.