Chapter 5
five
. . .
Clayton
The surveillance system arrives on a Tuesday.
Three exterior cameras, motion-activated, night vision.
Professional grade. The kind I’d recommend to a domestic violence victim or a witness in protection.
Not the kind a thirty-six-year-old detective installs because he can’t stand the thought of his eighteen-year-old girlfriend walking to the mailbox alone.
I mount them myself. Drill into the siding. Run the wiring through the attic. Test each feed on my phone until the yard is a grid of overlapping sightlines, no blind spots, no angles where someone could approach without me knowing.
It’s not enough.
The fourth camera goes inside. Just one. Pointed at the front door. I tell myself it’s redundant security. I’m lying. I want to see her come home. I want to watch her walk through that door and into my house, into my life, and know she’s where she belongs.
She catches me checking the feed on my phone while she’s eating cereal at the kitchen island. Her spoon pauses halfway to her mouth.
“Clayton.”
“Mm.”
“Are you watching the front door camera right now?”
I don’t look up. “Maybe.”
“We’re in the same room.”
“I know.”
She sets down her spoon. “This is getting a little...”
“Necessary,” I finish for her, and finally meet her eyes. “You’re eighteen. You’re grieving. You’re beautiful. And I’m a possessive bastard who’s seen what happens to people who aren’t protected. So yeah. I’m watching the door. Deal with it.”
She doesn’t argue. She just shakes her head, a small smile playing at the corner of her mouth, and goes back to her cereal. Like my insanity is something she’s decided to accommodate. Like it’s charming instead of pathological.
It’s not charming. It’s fucking terrifying how much I need her in my sight.
The grocery store is worse.
I follow her at a distance. Ten feet back. Close enough to intercept, far enough to give her space. She pushes the cart. I scan the aisles. Every man gets assessed, categorized, dismissed or monitored based on a threat calculus that lives in my hindbrain and has nothing to do with police training.
The bagger is maybe twenty. College kid. Messy hair, quick smile. He helps her load her groceries and says something that makes her laugh—a real laugh, the kind that lights up her whole face—and my chest goes tight. My jaw clenches so hard I feel it in my temples.
He touches her hand passing her the receipt. His fingers brush hers.
I’m across the parking lot before I decide to move. My hand finds his shoulder. Not hard. Not yet. Just enough pressure to make him turn.
“She’s with me,” I say. Quiet. Calm. The voice I use right before things get ugly.
The kid blinks. Looks at Winny. Looks at me. Does the math—my size, my age, the way I’m standing between them like territory—and goes pale.
“Sorry, man. Didn’t know.”
“You know now.”
I take the cart. Winny doesn’t say anything until we’re loading the bags into my truck. Then she slides her hand into mine, squeezes, and says, “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m thorough.”
“You growled at him.”
“I did not growl.”
“You absolutely growled. It was like watching a bear claim a picnic basket.”
I shut the tailgate harder than necessary. “He touched you.”
“He touched the receipt.”
“Same thing.”
She laughs again. That sound. It does something to my chest that shouldn’t be legal. I pull her against me, one arm around her waist, and press my face into her hair. Breathe her in. Vanilla. Sleep. Something sweet underneath that’s just her.
“Mine,” I murmur against her scalp.
“Yours,” she agrees, and the surrender in that word feeds something hungry and bottomless inside me.
Nights are when the careful control goes to hell.
I fuck her every night. Not gentle. Not anymore. The careful, measured claiming of the first week has given way to something rawer. I take her against the wall. On the kitchen counter. Bent over the arm of the couch with her ass in the air and my hand fisted in her hair.
The breeding talk comes with it. Not dirty talk. Vows.
“I’m going to fill you up,” I tell her, driving into her with long, deep strokes that have her crying out, her nails leaving half-moons in my shoulders. “Gonna breed this perfect little pussy until you’re round with my kid. Until everyone who looks at you knows exactly who you belong to.”
She comes hard every time. Her body clenches around my cock, milking me, and the sight of her—head thrown back, throat exposed, taking everything I give her—destroys me.
I come deep, pulsing inside her, filling her the way I promised, and hold her hips tight against mine so nothing leaks out. So it stays where it belongs.
After, I clean her with a warm washcloth. Tuck her against my chest. Stroke her hair and tell her she’s my good girl, my perfect girl, and the way she melts into me—trusting, boneless, completely surrendered—feels like winning something I didn’t know I was fighting for.
It’s too good. That’s the problem.
The crash comes on a Thursday morning. Rain against the windows. She’s folding laundry on the bed—my shirts, her tiny things, the domesticity of it so normal it hurts—and I’m watching her from the doorway, coffee going cold in my hand, when her voice breaks the silence.
“Clayton?”
“Mm.”
“I’m scared.”
I’m across the room before the word fully lands. Sitting beside her on the bed, setting the coffee aside, my hand finding the back of her neck. “Talk to me.”
She keeps folding. A pair of my socks, rolled together with methodical precision. Her eyes don’t leave her hands.
“I’m scared that once…once everything settles. The grief. The shock. Once I’m not just this hollow, broken thing you found in a corner...” She swallows. “I’m scared I’ll realize I’m only with you because I had no one else. That you’re a bandage. Not a…not a forever.”
The words hit like a physical blow. My chest tightens. My throat closes. The room—my room, our room—suddenly feels too small, too bright, the rain too loud against the glass.
I can’t breathe.
Fifteen years on the force. I’ve stared down armed men. Taken bullets. Held dying witnesses and delivered bad news to families and walked through scenes that would break most people. Never once felt fear like this. Not terror. Worse. The hollow, yawning certainty that she might be right.
That she might walk away someday because I was convenient. Necessary. Not chosen.
My hand trembles against her neck. I can’t stop it.
“Winny.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. Rough. Fractured. “Look at me.”
She does. Those honey eyes wet, afraid, searching my face like she’s trying to memorize it.
“I can’t...” I stop. Try again. “The thought of you leaving. Of you waking up one day and deciding I was just…just what was available.” The words come out broken. Gravel in my throat. “That fucking destroys me, baby girl. You understand? That wrecks me.”
Her face crumples. She drops the socks and reaches for me, both hands finding my face, and I pull her into my chest so hard I worry I’m hurting her. Can’t loosen my grip. Can’t let go.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers against my shirt. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean?—”
“Don’t apologize.” My face is buried in her hair. My eyes are burning. I haven’t cried in fifteen years. I’m not crying now. But something is happening behind my ribs that feels like drowning. “Just…don’t leave. Please don’t leave.”
“I won’t. I won’t, I promise?—”
“You can’t promise that.” The words come out harder than I mean.
Desperate. “You’re eighteen. Your whole life is ahead of you.
And I’m…fuck, Winny, I’m twice your age.
I’m set in my ways. I’m possessive and controlling and I install cameras and follow you to the grocery store and growl at college kids.
What the fuck kind of future is that for you? ”
She pulls back. Looks at me with those clear, honest eyes, and says the thing that breaks me completely:
“The only one I want.”
I kiss her. Hard. Desperate. My hands framing her face, thumbs under her eyes catching the wetness there, and she kisses me back with the same hunger, the same wild, broken certainty.
We don’t talk about it again. We don’t need to. I hold her the rest of the morning, her head on my chest, my hand in her hair, and the rain keeps falling and the cameras keep watching and nothing is fixed. Nothing is certain.
But for now, she’s here. In my arms. Where she belongs.
Where I need her to stay.