Chapter 23 #2
Actually, genuinely happy in a way I hadn't seen since before Sam Jarrow walked through her door.
Not the careful, controlled version of happy she wore like armor.
Real happiness. Unguarded. The kind that made her eyes bright and her mouth soft and my chest feel too small to contain what I felt for her.
"You good?" I asked, my hand tracing lazy patterns on her back—circles and figure eights and her name written in a language only my fingertips spoke.
"So good." She stretched like a cat, muscles flexing and releasing, then propped herself up on one elbow to look at me. Her eyes were clearer than they'd been in hours, the haunted look finally chased away by something stronger. "You?"
"Better than good." I tucked a curl behind her ear, watching it spring free immediately. Stubborn. Like her. "You're incredible, you know that?"
She grinned, wicked and pleased with herself in a way that made me want to flip her over and start all over again. "I have my moments."
"More than moments." I caught her chin, holding her gaze so she'd hear me. Really hear me. "You're the strongest person I've ever met, Hazel. And I've met a lot of people who thought they were strong."
Her eyes went bright for a second, something raw and vulnerable flickering across her face before she blinked it away.
But I'd seen it. The part of her that still couldn't quite believe someone might see her as anything other than a victim or a survivor or a woman held together by lists and backup plans.
She kissed me once, soft and sweet and surprisingly shy after what we'd just done, then rolled off the bed and started hunting for her clothes.
I watched her move—unselfconscious now, comfortable in her skin in a way she hadn't been even an hour ago—and felt something settle in my chest. Something that felt dangerously like contentment.
"What are you doing?" I asked, not ready for her to leave yet. Not ready to share her with the world downstairs.
"Getting dressed." She pulled my hoodie back on, drowning in it, and I had to resist the urge to drag her back to bed. "You have brothers downstairs probably tearing apart my porch or planning military operations in my kitchen."
"Our kitchen," I corrected automatically.
She paused, looking at me with those green eyes that saw too much and somehow still chose to look, anyway. The word hung between us—our—heavier than three letters had any right to be.
"Our kitchen," she agreed softly, testing the shape of it. Then her grin returned, brighter this time, more real. "Now go. Shoo. Get back to work, soldier."
I laughed, the sound surprising me with how easy it came. "Yes, ma'am."
"That's what I like to hear." She threw my shirt at my face with perfect aim. "Put that on before you give Maude a heart attack."
I caught the shirt and pulled it on, still grinning like an idiot.
As I laced up my boots, she came over and kissed me again, this time lingering just long enough to make leaving difficult.
Her mouth was soft and warm and tasted like forever, and I had to physically stop myself from pulling her back down.
"Thank you," she whispered against my mouth.
"For what?"
"For letting me have that. For not treating me like I was going to break."
I cupped her face in my hands, serious now. Needing her to understand this. "You're not going to break, Hazel. You bend, sure. You adapt. But break?" I shook my head. "Not you. Never you."
Her eyes went bright with something that might have been tears, but she blinked them away before they could fall. Her throat worked as she swallowed hard. "Get out of here before I change my mind and keep you up here all day."
"Dangerous threat." I kissed her forehead, then her nose, then her mouth once more because I couldn't help myself. Because kissing her was already becoming as necessary as breathing. "But I'll go. For now."
"Good." She swatted my ass as I headed for the door, and the casual intimacy of it—playful, proprietary, perfectly us—made me grin even wider. "Send Maude up in an hour if I'm not down. I might actually nap after that."
I paused at the door, hand on the knob, and looked back at her. She was standing in the middle of the room in my hoodie, hair wild, lips swollen, looking like everything I'd never known I wanted and somehow exactly what I'd been searching for my entire life.
The words came before I could stop them. Before I could second-guess or strategize or protect myself from the vulnerability of saying them out loud.
"I love you," I said.
The silence that followed felt eternal and instantaneous all at once.
Her breath caught—sharp, audible. Her eyes went wide, pupils dilating until the green was just a thin ring around black.
For a second she just stared at me, and I waited, heart hammering, for her to laugh or deflect or tell me it was too soon, too fast, too much.
Then her face softened into something that made my chest ache—wonder and joy and relief all tangled together.
"I love you, too," she whispered, the words coming out like they'd been locked away too long and finally found their way free.
The world tilted on its axis, righted itself, and suddenly everything made sense. Every mission that had brought me here. Every choice that had led to this inn, this woman, this moment. It all clicked into place like a magazine locking home.
I nodded once, not trusting myself to say anything else without making a complete fool of myself, and headed downstairs. My feet felt lighter on the steps. The house felt warmer. The air tasted cleaner.
I loved her. She loved me. And despite everything—despite Sam Jarrow and secret brothers and a father whose betrayals kept multiplying—that simple truth was enough to build on.
My brothers were exactly where I'd left them—sprawled around the kitchen table with Maude, mugs of coffee in hand, blueprints of the inn spread out like they were planning an invasion instead of home repairs. Sunlight slanted through the windows, catching dust motes and turning them gold.
Lucas looked up when I walked in, took one look at my face, and grinned like he'd just won a bet. "Well, well."
"Shut up," I said automatically, but there was no heat in it.
"Didn't say a word." His grin widened, sharp and knowing and insufferably smug. "But if I did, I'd say you look like a man who just got exactly what he needed."
Ethan chuckled into his coffee, the sound low and warm. Even Elias's mouth twitched.
Maude just smiled, knowing and warm and completely unsurprised. Her eyes crinkled at the corners, and I saw approval there—not judgment, not concern, just simple happiness that the people under her roof had found each other. "That girl resting?"
"She will be," I said, pulling out a chair.
"Good." She patted the chair next to her, and I sat, letting the warmth of the kitchen and the easy rhythm of my brothers' voices settle over me like a blanket. "We've been making plans."
I leaned forward, forcing my brain to shift gears from Hazel upstairs to the threat still circling outside. "What kind of plans?"
Elias tapped the blueprints. "Security systems. Motion sensors on the perimeter.
Cameras at every entrance. Nothing that'll turn the place into a fortress, but enough that we'll know if someone tries to approach.
I'll handle the tech install," Elias said.
"Should have everything operational by tomorrow. "
Lucas pushed a mug of coffee toward me. "And if Sam Jarrow or anyone else shows their face, we'll know about it well before they get within a hundred yards."
"Plus," Elias added, "we're still digging into who authorized Jarrow's release. Once we know that, we can deal with the problem at its source."
“If we need to go harder on Jarrow,” Lucas said, “we will.”
There was no need to say it. A dead man was a dead man. The final act was up to Sam Jarrow.
I looked around the table at these men—my brothers, all of them now, blood or not—and felt something I hadn't felt in years. Not since before Dad disappeared and the world went cold.
Safe.
Not just me, but Hazel. The inn. This fragile, impossible thing we were building together.
"Thank you," I said, the words inadequate but all I had.
Ethan's big hand landed on my shoulder, steady and sure. "Family protects family," he said simply. "Always has. Always will."
Lucas raised his mug. "Welcome to the Dane takeover, little brother. We're loud, we're obnoxious, and we don't leave our people hanging."
I clinked my mug against his, then Ethan's, then Elias's. Through the ceiling, I could hear the soft creak of floorboards—Hazel moving around upstairs, probably actually trying to rest now.
And for the first time in longer than I could remember, I wasn't thinking about ghosts or missions or all the ways the world could go wrong.
I was thinking about the future.
Our future.
And it looked pretty damn good.