Chapter Twenty
Bix realized that she needed to do something with her van. It had been sitting there for too long, and it needed to be started
at least. Plus, she had a few things in it that she could probably stand to bring back to the house.
And then she would decide what she wanted to do.
Maybe she would sell it. She could use another vehicle. Something that would be a little bit easier to drive around in.
“Will you give me a jump, Daughtry?” she asked the next day when they were eating lunch together.
“Excuse me?”
“Give me a jump,” she said. “ My van . You absolute pervert.” She elbowed him.
They hadn’t made any pronouncements about their relationship, but they were not hiding it. And she had a feeling that pretty
much everybody knew.
He drove her over to where they had left the van, still concealed in the bushes, and with his help, she got it started. She
drove it around to the edge of the back access road to Four Corners, near the farm store, and parked it there in a turnout.
“We can put a for-sale sign up in it,” she said.
“You’re gonna sell it?”
“Yeah. I don’t really want to drive a big orange camper van into my new life, you know? I mean, I also don’t want to drive it around town. I’m not driving into my new life immediately.” She looked at him, unable to get a gauge on what he was thinking. “That’s okay, right?”
“It’s more than okay. You know you can stay as long as... As long as it’s all working.”
“Good,” she said. “You can tell me, you know,” she continued, “if I need to get my own place.”
“Why would I want you to get your own place?”
She felt something blooming in her chest. Something like hope.
She knew that this wasn’t permanent... Except...
She was starting to want it to be. Something was shifting inside of her. And she had been so certain that this was going to
be temporary, and that she was going to be okay with it. And she felt like maybe...
She wasn’t an idiot if she felt something for him. She had told herself that she wasn’t going to be that person, that she
wasn’t going to be the idiot virgin, that she wasn’t going to be the sad waif who fell for her rescuer. But it was more than
that. And what was really funny was that all the people around her seemed invested in her plumbing the depths of her trauma,
and she knew she didn’t want to do that. But she wouldn’t let herself get to the depths of her own happiness. And why was
that? People didn’t seem to value happiness, herself included. She framed it as being idiotic. While anger and all kinds of
other bad emotions seemed to be treated as valid.
She wasn’t going to go making any declarations to him right now. She needed to sit with all of this for just a little bit longer.
But...
She was starting to think she didn’t want to go. That her happiness wasn’t out there in some vague, isolated future. That
these weren’t random bricks. But a foundation. One that she wanted to build off of. Right here. Was that so crazy? Maybe it
was. She was starting to care less and less.
She felt incredibly protective of these feelings that were rising up inside of her. Entitled to them. Because yes, all those
bad things had happened to her. But so many good things had happened. And she wanted to marinate in those things. To dwell
in them and with them. She wanted joy. To claim it. To own it. Identify finding Daughtry and this ranch, this family, as a
miracle. It was.
The easy thing would be to walk away. To continue on down the road. To not risk herself. Not invest herself.
But she had been alone for all of her life. For a while it had felt brave. Dreaming about doing school. Dreaming about getting
a job at a brewery. Yeah, for a while that had felt really brave.
But it was still walking away. Rather than building on connections. Rather than making more of this, of them. She still wanted to go to school. Maybe she would even get a job away from the ranch. Maybe. She and Daughtry had just talked about how neither of them wanted to get married. Have a family. But she was starting to think that maybe the real bravery was in taking a chance on something that you couldn’t actually imagine. Following along in your heart, even if it didn’t make any sense. Even if you didn’t know the pattern.
To make a whole new path out of something you had never seen before, that was really something.
And if she was so extraordinary, for coming out of the situation that she’d been put in, then she wanted to be the most extraordinary.
The most wildly, blindly happy. Because if she had to acknowledge that her past was a tragedy, then she wanted to claim a
victory in her future.
They drove away from the van, with a few of her things in a crate. “I don’t even think I need these things,” she said. “Not
really. Some weird kitchen utensils and not much more.”
And what she hoped was that his kitchen would just keep on being hers. That she wouldn’t need to ever start a kitchen of her
own. Which was maybe presumptuous. But she was living in a moment of presumptuousness.
“It seems like a big deal,” he said. “Selling the van.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It does. But... it doesn’t feel like it’s my life anymore.”
The most amazing realization was that her new life could be whatever she wanted it to be. Whatever she saw it as. And that
the limit on her own happiness didn’t exist.
Now, Daughtry... She didn’t know about him. She was going to have to wait, bide her time. Figure out when the best time
was to... to say something. Anything.
“You’re a big-time beer brewer now, Bix Carpenter.”
She frowned. It was funny. That last name. It belonged to her father. Her brother. And consequently, it didn’t feel much like
it belonged to her. Or like she would even want it to. But the name also spoke of building. And that was kind of interesting.
So maybe she could make the name take on a meaning that was just something for her. Not tied to them.
She had been a carpenter in her own life. She had gotten a brick, and she had started building.
Where she built from here was up to her. And she could confidently say she really felt that for the first time in her life.
Really felt like the control was hers. The agency.
All of it.
She also realized that hope was an ever-expanding resource. The minute you had a little, it grew and grew.
Now she didn’t just want to survive. Now she didn’t just want to live well and comfortably. She wanted to live surrounded
by friends. She wanted to live in this family that she had grown so fond of.
And most of all, she wanted love.
To give love, and have it.
She loved Daughtry. She just did. There was no half-assed way about it. That man was fundamentally lovable.
He didn’t think so, she realized. But she wasn’t quite sure how to untangle all the threads that had caused that.
It just meant they were going to have to have another honest conversation. Just not today.
She wasn’t a coward, after all, but she also wasn’t a fool.
They had a good thing going right now, and she didn’t want to disrupt it. She wanted to get just a little bit more. Just a
little more.
Once they got a for-sale sign put on the van, they went to dinner at Denver’s.
Justice and Rue had gone out to Smokey’s and Landry and Fia were at home. Which left her, Daughtry, Arizona, Micah and Denver.
She caught her reflection in the glass on a framed photograph. It made her heart stutter. She was glowing. The joy and admiration
on her face was so intense it... took her breath away. She looked like a woman who cared. And when you cared you had so
much to lose.
She knew why it scared her.
Because you’re afraid to be happy. Because they’re going to hurt if you lose this.
Well. That was the truth. And she was afraid to lose them. All of them.
But him most of all.
She was afraid of losing his touch. Losing her place in his bed.
That was strange. Because with hope did come quite a bit of fear. A sense of scarcity. A desire to defend. It tapped into
all of her other emotions. Fear, anger, longing.
It wasn’t comfortable.
She had always assumed that people who had a lot of things were completely comfortable. But she was beginning to understand
that the more you had, the more you wanted to guard it all jealously.
But this was great. This night. This dinner. She felt so far removed from the girl she had been that first night. That first dinner. And yet she also felt her, right there with her.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked at the spread of barbecue that Denver put on the table.
“Hey,” said Denver. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, wiping at her eyes.
“You look sad.”
She shook her head. “I’m not sad.”
She did wish that Daughtry would come in and defuse the moment. But everybody else was lagging behind. And it was weird to
have her boss catch her in a vulnerable moment.
“I’m just really grateful, to be here. Your family is the best.”
Denver got a strange look on his face. “That means a lot, Bix. Given our history, that means a hell of a lot.”
She saw his wounds then. The things that he cared about.
He was trying to atone. He might be different than Daughtry but he had a very similar wound.
Finally, everyone else came into the kitchen, and they all sat down at the table, serving big portions all around. And when
they were done, they lingered in the living room chatting. It was the single most domestic experience of Bix’s life. Then
she went back to the house she shared with the man that she loved. They ate cookies. They made love, and they went to sleep.
And the next day, Bix’s perfect life shattered.
Bix was feeling pleased by the end of the day, because everything was going well. They were on track to having another successful day of brewing, and she had decided that she was going to go fishing.
She wanted to catch some fish, and surprise Daughtry with the bounty. She could cook him dinner after his long hard day, and
then she could strip him naked and do wicked, unspeakable things to his gorgeous body. It honestly seemed like the best idea
she’d ever had. So she packed up her fishing pole and went down to the creek, Bear Creek, and when she saw movement on the
other side of the water, her instincts went on high alert.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
Likely to be a farmhand.
“Oh, there she is.”
A chill went down her spine. And out of the bush came her dad and her brother.
“I knew when we saw your van we couldn’t be that far from you. Surprise you don’t have a still set up in here. But we started
brewing a little bit ourselves.”
“What the hell are you two doing here?” she asked.
“Now, is that any way to talk to your family, Bix?” her dad asked. He looked as skinny and threadbare as she remembered. His
gas station baseball cap was pushed up his forehead, his pants torn and dirty. Her brother didn’t look much better. In fact,
he looked about the same age as their dad at this point. Hard living would do that to you.
“How do we cross over to the other side?” her dad asked.
“If you’re smart, you don’t,” said Bix. “This is a big working ranch. Believe me when I tell you, you can’t brew here.”
“We can’t?”
“You can’t,” she said. “I tried. Believe me.”
“You look... you look different,” her dad said, coming to the edge of the riverbank opposite her. “You look like a house
pet.”
“I work here now. At the ranch.”
“You work somewhere?”
“Like I said. I got caught. By a cop.”
“Well now, how come you didn’t get thrown in prison?”
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, suddenly feeling antsy. “Because he didn’t arrest me. He lives here.”
“Oh, I see how it is. And he took you in ?”
The really annoying thing, the upsetting and enraging thing, was that she knew her dad was going to assume Daughtry had taken
her in as a piece of ass. And she would’ve loved to have been self-righteous and say that there was nothing going on between
them.
But there was. There fucking was . And even though it hadn’t been like that in the beginning, it was like that now. And she didn’t have a self-righteous corner
to stand in.
“Yeah, well, he’s not gonna do the same for you,” she said.
“No,” said her dad, “we’re not quite so pretty.”
“Just get the hell out of here. I don’t even know how the two of you got out of prison.”
“Commuted sentences,” her dad said. “So now we’re out. What do you have going here exactly, Bix?”
“I said, I work here. I’m brewing beer.”
“You got a spot for your old man?”
The very idea of bringing them into this life, this place, made her want to peel her skin off.
“Why did you even come looking for me?”
“You’re family,” he said.
“That’s never much mattered. What do you want from me?”
“The truth is, Bix,” said her dad, “you’re the most talented moonshiner of all of us. And we need to get something going again.”
“Well, I don’t do that anymore. I don’t need to. I have a job.”
“And a sugar daddy,” her brother said.
She crossed her arms and stared Chip down, her rage a flame. “So what if I do? If I got one, you can get one too. Go get one.”
“Hell no. You owe us. We’re family.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” she said.
Nothing but trauma and pain and hurt. Scars inside and out. She was her own woman because of her own grit. They could go to
hell.
“Well now, I’m sure there’s some way we could figure out how to make you do it. Something you don’t want your sheriff to know
about,” Chip said, stroking his chin.
They were threatening her. Threatening to blackmail her. And in the past, she would’ve tried to handle this on her own. She wasn’t going to do that now. Because she wasn’t alone. Because she loved Daughtry. Because she had Daughtry. And she was going to go to him.
“If you two aren’t gone when I get back, I swear you’re going to be sorry.”
And she ran. For all that she was worth.
When Bix came running up to the house holding her fishing pole, her eyes wide, everything in Daughtry went on high alert.
“Daughtry,” she said. “My dad and my brother here. They got out of prison, and they’re trying to... They think that they
can blackmail me into making sure they get a job on the ranch. I don’t... I don’t want them here. I want them to go away.”
A monster woke up inside of him. It raised its head, and growled.
“Hang on,” he said.
He went into his bedroom and opened up his safe. He got out his badge, and his gun. He strapped the gun to his hip, put the
badge in his pocket.
Bix eyed the piece on his hip.
“You don’t need that,” she said.
“I never assume, Bix.”
He got into his truck, and she went around to the passenger side.
“Stay here,” he said.
“What?”
“You don’t need to come over there.”
“The hell I don’t. This is my family. This is my responsibility. My drama.”
“Get your ass in the house, Bix. I will come home when it’s safe, and I’ll get you then.”
“They’re not dangerous.”
But all he could think was the stories that she’d told him about her brother. That was a cruel son of a bitch. He knew that
much. And he wasn’t going to let them near her. Not again. Because he had seen the condition they’d left her in. He’d seen
it.
And he fucking hated them.
“Stay,” he said. And then he started the truck and drove away. He saw Bix immediately make a beeline toward the river, running
like hell itself was on her heels.
Little varmint. She couldn’t be told.
He drove down the highway, deciding that he was going to hike in on their side of the creek, the same side he’d gone in on
when he had found Bix.
He saw a beater truck, and a bunch of shit lying around. He wasn’t surprised.
They were exactly those kind of people. Not just the kind of people who would mooch off of someone else’s land, but who would
have no respect for it while claiming it was nobody’s, too wild to be owned. But they certainly didn’t actually mean it. They
meant that the world was there for them . That any limits prescribed shouldn’t apply to them . If they could own things, then they would demand everybody else stay away from them.
His anger was at a boiling point. It was beyond.
“Show yourselves,” he said. He didn’t hear anything. “I’m going to start getting impatient.” He put his hand on his gun.
“Easy now,” came a voice up ahead. An older man stepped out from behind a tree. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Well, mister, the problem is, you’re on my land. And I consider that to be trouble.”
“Are you Bix’s cop?” the old man spit.
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
Right now, he was Bix’s warrior. Right now, he was everything. Right now, he was going to lay waste to these assholes.
“Daughtry!”
He looked across the river and saw Bix, standing there looking furious.
“I told you to stay home,” he said.
“We’re family,” said her father. “Bix is always going to be here for us.”
“That’s too bad,” Daughtry said. “Because as long as she’s here, she won’t be. I mean it. I want you off my land, and I never
want to see you again.”
And that was when her brother appeared. Stepping out from behind a tree adjacent to her father. And Daughtry saw red. He crossed
the space without thinking and reached out, grabbing him by the neck. “You sack of shit.”
“Hey,” her brother said, his voice getting high. Yeah. He wasn’t so tough when his opponent wasn’t a little girl.
“I know all about you. The way that you treated her. I might just kill you. Nobody’s going to dig around here looking for
a body. This is my land. And everybody trusts me. I’m the good guy.”
“You don’t seem like much of a good guy,” her dad said.
Maybe that was true. Right now, he didn’t care.
He should try to get ahold of himself. Try to find the straight and narrow and get back on it. But dammit, he just couldn’t
bring himself to do it. These people didn’t care.
And he couldn’t bring himself to care either. What he wanted was to hurt them. Because they’d hurt the dearest, most amazing
person he’d ever known.
He wanted them to hurt too.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he said. “My dad wasn’t just a moonshiner. My dad used to get out there and break the
legs of people who didn’t pay him back. And I watched. I helped. And now? I’ve got the law on my side. Nobody would believe
you over me. And nobody would ever suspect me of anything. I’m a changed man.”
“You’re crazy,” said her brother.
“Yes. I am. Push me to the edge and see how crazy I can be. Let’s see.”
“Daughtry,” Bix said. “You don’t want to do this. You really don’t. I know you. I know that this isn’t you.”
He snarled, “It is me. And this is why I don’t let myself get like this. But now it’s too late.”
“I’m her father,” her dad said.
“You didn’t do a damned thing for her. You left her to her own devices. She’s brilliant and smart and wonderful and it has nothing to do with you. And you,” he said, looking directly at her brother. “You are a petty, slimy, abusive coward. And if I squeezed my fist just now and ended you nobody would miss you. Your mother wouldn’t even miss you, would she?”
Daughtry really had the guy going now. Terrified. Good. He had terrified his sister. And he deserved no less.
He was shaking now, the adrenaline really going. He saw red. He was at the edge of losing control completely. Even when he’d
been his dad’s right-hand man he’d never been like this. This was different. Deeper. This felt so gut-wrenching, so personal.
Bix, all skinny and scabbed.
Bix telling him she’d been locked in her room for days. Left in the woods alone.
They’d had her all those years and they hadn’t cared for her. He hated them for that.
He hated them.
He heard splashing, and he looked to his right, and saw Bix running across the river.
“Don’t,” she said. “Do not do this because of me. Please. Daughtry, I care about you too much. I don’t want you to do this.
It isn’t because I care about them. It’s because I know you. And I know this isn’t what you want. I know it’s not. Don’t do
this. Not for me.”
“Who else would I do it for?”
“They’re not a danger to me. They’re going to leave.”
And she stood there, panting, her clothes wet. “Leave,” she said to her father and brother. “Because you better believe that
he will do what he says. And he didn’t even tell you about all the brothers he has, and all the other ranchers on this ranch
who will back him up. Who will make sure that he never faces any consequences.”
“Go,” Daughtry said, letting go of her brother’s neck finally. “If I ever see you on my land again, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
He took a step back, and Bix grabbed his arm.
“I never thought I’d see it,” her dad said. “A turncoat. Taken up with a cop.”
Bix rounded on her dad. “No, Dad. I’m a woman, and I’m making my own life. The choices I’m making are mine. You don’t get
to decide what I do. What I believe. How far I’ll go. I get to decide that. All the decisions I made, I made them because
you kept me just hungry enough. Just poor enough. Just scared enough. I’m not scared anymore. I have a bank account. I’m going
to college. I’m on a payroll. I’m going to pay taxes. You can’t stop me. You don’t own me. And I don’t owe you anything. I’m
proud of myself. And it has nothing to do with either of you.”
She looked at her brother and put her hands on her hips. “He’s mad about the stuff you did to me. I just laugh at it. You
know why? Because you’re small. You always have been, you always will be. And you were always threatened by me. Because I’m
smarter than you. Because I work harder than you. Because I will always be better. It isn’t because I was born that way. It’s
because it’s what I choose. I choose to be better. Than both of you.”
That was when her brother lunged at her. Daughtry’s rage caught a light and burned bright. He stood between the two of them,
cocked his fist back and punched him square in the face. And punched him again. And again.
Bix screamed, her dad ran. And Daughtry hit him, again and again.
“Please,” Bix said. Grabbing his arm.
That was enough. Enough to clear the haze, if only for a moment.
She put her hands on his chest, pushed him away. And he realized how far he had gone. And that he didn’t feel bad. Not at
all. He felt powerful. He felt proud that he had defended her. His woman. His...
He was breathing hard, and it was taking time, but suddenly, bits and pieces of reality started to filter in.
He hadn’t been like this for so long. Hadn’t lost his temper. Hadn’t forgotten where he was or what he was doing. Not for
a long time. And now he had. Spectacularly.
It wasn’t that it wasn’t deserved. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was realizing how much of that was still him.
He didn’t feel a great sense of honor over what he had done. A reluctant call to arms.
No. It had been easy.
“Go,” he said. He looked down at her brother. His nose was broken for sure. He had taken a step toward Bix, and Daughtry had
been right to defend her. He knew that. He did. But it was all the other stuff, tangled up and messed up inside him.
They hightailed it back to their bigger truck, and started it and drove away.
Bix was holding on to his hand, looking at his knuckles, which were split. She looked up at him. “Let’s go back home.”
“I’m fine,” he said, jerking his hand away from her.
“Oh, stop,” she said. She stalked ahead of them to the truck.
“What?”
“You know what!” she said. “You’re being sullen and ridiculous.”
“I just turned your brother’s face into a tenderized steak.”
“He shouldn’t have tried to hit me.”
“You’re not happy with me.”
“No. I’m not. Because I trusted you. I went to get you, and you didn’t listen to me. You took matters into your own hands,
and it escalated. But it’s fine. It isn’t like he’s never been punched in the face. And he has deserved it every time. Even
if he didn’t, it was probably just compensating for times when he deserved to be punched and wasn’t. So I don’t feel sorry
for him. But I feel like you put yourself in a dangerous situation, and that I don’t like.”
“I’m a cop, Bix. That’s going to happen sometimes.”
“It’s not the same thing and you know it! You know. Just... shut up.”
They rode back to the house in silence, and when they got back she walked wordlessly inside, and went into the bathroom.
He heard the water running in the bath and went to check on her.
“Take your clothes off, you absolute asshole.”
“I just chased those dicks off, I don’t even get a thank-you?”
“Thank you. Get naked.”
He hadn’t expected that. But when Bix wanted him naked, far be it for him to deny her. He took his shirt off, his jeans, everything
else.
“Get in the tub, Sheriff.”
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“Taking care of you. Now get in the tub.”
He gave her a side eye but stepped into the hot water. “You have too many clothes on,” he said.
“I’m good.” She got soap on her hands and moved to the side of him, running her hands over his shoulders. It felt good. But
he didn’t deserve it.
He didn’t have the strength to stop her.
Some wall had come down inside him and he didn’t know how to build it back up. Didn’t know if wanted to even if he could.
She moved her hands down over his chest and he grunted. Then she moved to his split knuckles and he growled as she got soap
into his wounds.
“Ouch, Bix.”
“Well, you should have thought of that before you behaved like an uncivilized grunion.”
“A grunion?”
“If the tiny gills fit.”
He gripped her wrist and pulled her toward him. “Nothing about me is tiny.”
She smiled. “No.” Then she kissed his cheek. “Thank you, for defending me. No one has ever done that before. Not like that.
Not in any way. It’s only ever been you. Always you.”
He felt like he was standing on scorched earth, and she was expecting grass to grow around his feet. But he liked it. And he didn’t want her to stop.
He wrapped his hand around the back of her head and kissed her, pulling her in hard. She whimpered. He reached down and pulled
her shirt up over her head, unhooked her bra with one deft hand. Then he guided her so that she was standing up, so that he
could get her jeans off. So that he could lift her down into the tub, fit her right over him.
Everything in him was on fire. His arousal was rampant, his whole body on high alert. Because those walls were knocked down.
And there was nothing left. There was no resistance; there was no protection. There was nothing. Nothing but this. Nothing
but her.
He wanted her.
For just one moment, he wanted her, without control, without boundaries, without anything. He didn’t know what this was. This
extreme riot of need that was assaulting him mercilessly. It wasn’t anything he’d ever felt before. Wasn’t anything he’d ever
known. And any other time, at any other moment, he would’ve pushed it away. But not now. Not now.
His soul felt raw. Everything felt exposed. Every dark, deep part of him. All of the things that he had tried to disguise.
All of the things that he had tried to push down.
It was her. It had been, from the moment they’d met. It had been inevitable, this. The ending of all his control. The ending
of everything he had tried to construct himself to be.
She hadn’t taken the brick and smashed his face, but she might as well have. She had smashed the man that he had fashioned himself into. The idol that he had built of himself. Dead, unfeeling. Not real.
But... what was the alternative?
The alternative was the man that had been out there today.
Uncontrolled. Unashamed.
All good when it was directed at protecting somebody, but what if it wasn’t?
Because things could get twisted. That was the thing. He had felt conviction on that level when he had been out doing errands
with his father.
He had been the one to inflict physical punishment sometime. He could remember that. Punching a man. Over and over again until
he agreed to pay. Hurting someone physically and feeling justified because they’d had a deal, and they knew the terms.
And that was the real problem.
Not what he had done today, but it was the path that this kind of behavior led down.
But he couldn’t think about it right now. He didn’t have the strength to think about it.
Because she was with him, over him, kissing him until neither of them could breathe. Because he could feel her molten, slick
center against his arousal, and he wanted nothing more than to sink inside of her.
He wanted her. He moved his hands down her back, down to cup her ass, and brought her hard against his body. She gasped, arching against him, bringing her breasts up to the same level as his mouth. He took one breast between his lips and sucked her hard. Made her cry out with need. Then he did the same to the other one.
Bix.
It would always be her.
And she would always make this thing inside of him come to life.
If he were a different man...
If he were a different man, then it would be fine. But he wasn’t. It wasn’t. And all they had was right now, so he was going
to give everything. Everything.
She had said that there was a time limit on this. It was going to have to be sooner. Sooner than he wanted it to be. Sooner
than they had imagined.
But this had brought everything out into the open. Every ugly, bad thing.
And he couldn’t ignore that. He just couldn’t.
He shifted, and that brought the head of his arousal to the entrance of her body.
“Bix,” he ground out.
“I’m good,” she said. “Cycle wise. It’s fine.”
He shouldn’t. But he was out of control. He shouldn’t, but every wall was demolished.
He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. And for the last fifteen years of his life that had been enough. The drumbeat of
what he should and shouldn’t do, of who he should and shouldn’t be, had been enough to keep him from doing things. To make
him do the right things. But not now.
Because the bigger drive, the bigger truth, was how much he needed her. And so he brought her down over his length, skin to skin, felt her all glorious and wet and tight around him, and it was like a song inside of his soul.
He lost himself in it. In her.
He had never wanted anything or anyone so much.
He never would again.
Because after this the walls would go back up. After this, everything would be finished. After this, there would be no more.
This was goodbye.
Not just to Bix, but to the man he had become while he was with her.
It had to be that way.
He watched her. With every stroke, as she took each and every bit of pleasure that was afforded to her. He felt like he had
been cut open, flayed. He felt like he was being rubbed down with salt. He felt like he had died and gone to heaven. He never
wanted it to end.
He held on as long as he could. Until she was shaking. Until she gave up her own release. And then he demanded it again. He
put his thumb between them, where their bodies joined and stroked her until she cried out. And then, only then did he let
himself go over.
He poured himself into her, and then brought her face down to his, kissed her hard, swallowed her cry of pleasure. His forehead
against hers, held her there like that.
She put her hands on his face, and he saw something horribly, indescribably sad in her eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“You break my heart, Daughtry. Because I don’t think you know... I don’t think you know how amazing you are.”
“Don’t,” he said.
“I won’t. Not tonight.”
He wrapped his arms around her, and held her. They stayed like that until the water was cold. And then he carried her to bed.
Because he needed to hang on. To the next few hours, to everything. He needed this. He needed Bix.
And he felt like once the sun rose, everything would change.