Chapter 16
Austin
Iwake before her.
I don't move. I lie on my back with her head on my chest and the room still half dark.
I listen to her breathing, and I let myself believe it.
That this is real. That it's going to last. That I haven't somehow managed to dream the whole thing from the moment she opened her office door and everything changed.
She's real. Her hair is spread across my chest, and her hand is open flat against my ribs.
Her breathing is slow and even and she smells exactly the same as she always did.
Underneath whatever she puts on her skin there's just her, just Sav, and I've missed that smell every day for ten years without ever letting myself say so out loud.
I heard EJ talking to Sav about his drawing on the wall. He doesn’t know how to whisper.
I think about the look on her face when he asked her if she wanted to be in it.
She said yes before she'd thought about it. That's the part that I keep coming back to. Not the yes, but the speed of it.
It's early. Six, maybe just before. The light is coming up slowly behind the curtains and the compound is quiet.
I stay still and I don't try to think about what comes next.
There's club business waiting and the High Stakes problem. Then there’s all the conversations we still haven't had about what this means and what she's willing to take on.
All of that is real and all of it will still be there in an hour.
Right now, she's asleep on my chest and I’m going to hold that for exactly as long as it lasts.
I hear the soft pad of feet in the hallway.
My door opens a crack and EJ's face appears in the gap, hair going three directions, pajama top on inside out the way it always is on a Sunday because he dresses himself half asleep and never checks.
He looks at Savannah. He looks at me. His face does the thing it does when he's taking in information.
I wait.
"Is she staying?" he asks. Very quiet. He doesn't want to wake her.
I look at her face. The softness of her when she's asleep, the way ten years of holding herself together eases off and she's just Sav, just herself. Just the girl I've loved my whole adult life sleeping on my chest like the last decade didn't happen.
"I hope so," I say.
EJ looks at her for a moment longer. Then he looks at me. Then he does the small nod he does when a thing is decided, and he doesn't need any more information about it. He pulled that door to where it was. His feet pad away down the hall and his bedroom door clicks shut.
I stare at the ceiling.
Savannah breathes steadily against my chest. Outside, the compound is starting its morning. I can hear Pops' door and the sound of Jules moving around in her garden, which means it's later than I thought. In a few hours I'll need to get up and deal with everything that needs dealing with.
Right now, I have my son across the hall and my girl on my chest and Jules is out there doing something useful with her tomatoes and for the first time in ten years the future doesn't feel like something I'm trying to talk myself into.
I stare at the ceiling.
I smile.