8. Silas #3
"Now." I rise from the dirt, lean into the truck, cup her face in my bloodied hands.
"I do not want to wait. I do not want to give them another chance to take you from me.
I want to stand in front of a judge and say the words that make you mine in the eyes of the law, the world, everyone.
I want to put a ring on your finger that tells every man who looks at you that you belong to me.
I want to take you home to this house and finish building it together, nail by nail, room by room, until we are old and gray and still fucking in the kitchen at midnight because we cannot keep our hands off each other. "
She laughs, the sound broken and wet and full of joy. "Yes," she says. "Yes, yes, yes. Now. Take me now. Marry me now. I am yours, Silas. I have always been yours."
I kiss her. Soft this time, gentle, a promise sealed with lips and breath and the taste of her tears. Then I close her door, circle the truck, and slide into the driver's seat. Her hand finds mine on the gear shift, her fingers interlacing, her bandaged feet propped on the dashboard.
The truck roars to life. I back onto the road, turn toward Southampton, and we drive through the dying afternoon into the gray promise of evening.
The courthouse is twenty minutes away, a brick building on Main Street that I have passed a thousand times without noticing.
Tonight it is the most important place in the world.
She dozes against the window, her hand still in mine, her breathing soft and even.
I drive with one eye on the road and one on her profile, the curve of her cheek, the flutter of her lashes, the smudge of dirt on her temple that I want to lick away.
My cock stirs in my jeans, already hard again, already needing her, always needing her.
I ignore it. There will be time. There will be a lifetime.
The sky deepens to purple, then black. Stars appear, distant and cold.
I drive through the empty streets, past the darkened storefronts, past the beach where I first saw her standing at the waterline, past every moment that led us here.
The courthouse appears around a bend, its brick facade illuminated by streetlamps, the flag snapping in a breeze that smells of salt and autumn approaching.
The parking lot is empty except for one car.
A red Mercedes.
Stella's Mercedes.
She is standing in front of the courthouse steps, arms crossed, her face pale and furious in the streetlamp glow. She has been waiting. She knew we would come. She knew her daughter would run to me, and she knew I would bring her here, to the one place where we could make our bond unbreakable.
I slow the truck. Stop. Kill the engine.
Selene wakes, blinks, follows my gaze to the figure on the steps. Her hand tightens on mine, her fingers pressing into my palm, her breath catching in her throat.
"Silas," she whispers.
"I am here," I say. "I am always here."
Stella steps forward. She moves into the headlights, her silhouette sharp and unforgiving, her heels clicking on the asphalt. She stops in front of the truck, directly in our path, and raises one hand like a traffic cop or a prophet commanding the sea to part.
"Get out," she says, her voice carrying through the glass, cold and broken and full of a mother's desperate fury. "Both of you. We need to talk."
Selene's hand finds mine on the gear shift. Her fingers are cold, trembling, but her grip is iron.
I look at Selene. She looks at me. Her eyes are wide, frightened, but beneath the fear there is a fire I recognize, the same fire that burned in her when she climbed out that window, when she ran three miles through the dark, when she pressed herself against the concrete and took every inch of me without hesitation.
She nods. Small. Almost invisible. But it is enough.
I open my door. Step out into the night. The air is cool, tasting of salt and endings and the promise of a future I will fight for with every breath in my body.
I walk around the truck. Open her door. Lift her in my arms, her bandaged feet dangling, her torn dress riding up her thighs, her body pressed against my chest where it belongs.
She wraps her arms around my neck and buries her face in my throat, and I feel her heart battering against my ribs, matching the rhythm of my own.
I turn to face Stella.
She stands in the headlights, her arms still crossed, her face streaked with mascara and rage and something that might be grief.
She looks at her daughter in my arms, filthy and marked and radiant, and I see the moment she understands.
The moment she sees what we are, what we have become, what we will be until the day we die.
"Put her down," Stella says, but her voice wavers, cracks, loses its certainty.
"No," I say.
I hold Selene tighter. I step forward, into the light, into the future, into whatever comes next.
Stella does not move. She stands her ground, a mother defending the last thing she thinks she can control, and I walk toward her with my woman in my arms, my heart on my sleeve, my cock still hard with the memory of her, and I do not stop.
I will never stop.