Chapter 7
seven
. . .
Clayton
I wait until evening. Until the house is quiet. Until she’s curled on the couch with a blanket and that look in her eyes—the one that says she’s still picking through the wreckage of yesterday, still trying to decide if what we have is real or just convenient.
I can’t sit. I stand by the window, arms crossed, watching the motion lights trip on and off in the yard as a cat wanders through. My security system. My cameras. My fortress. Built to keep her safe. Now it feels like what it is: a cage I constructed because I was too afraid to let her choose.
“Winny.” My voice sounds strange. Too careful. Too measured. “We need to talk.”
She looks up. Those honey eyes wary, guarded. She pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders. “Okay.”
I turn from the window. Face her. My heart is doing something irregular and painful behind my ribs. Fifteen years on the force. I’ve delivered death notifications. Held the hands of widows. Stared down the barrel of a gun without flinching. None of it prepared me for this.
“I’m going to give you a choice.” The words feel thick. Difficult. “A real one. Not the kind where I tell you what I want and you say yes because you’re scared or grateful or alone. A real fucking choice.”
She sits up straighter. The blanket falls to her lap. “Clayton?—”
“Listen.” I hold up a hand. Need to get this out before I lose my nerve.
“Option one. I help you get your house in order. All of it. The mortgage, the insurance, the paperwork your parents left behind. I set you up with support services—financial advisor, grief counselor, whatever you need. I help you move back in. I install a security system that’s actually appropriate.
And then...” I swallow. Hard. “Then I step back. Professional distance. I’m the detective who responded to your call.
Nothing more. You get your life. Your freedom.
No cameras. No me watching your every move. Just…you. Making your own choices.”
The living room is too quiet. I can hear the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. The soft click of the security system resetting. The sound of her breathing.
She doesn’t speak. Her eyes are fixed on my face, searching, and I can’t read what she’s finding there. For the first time since I met her, my cop instincts are useless. I can’t see through her. Can’t predict her. She’s a complete mystery, and it’s terrifying.
“Option two.” My voice drops. Roughens. The careful control starts to crack.
“You stay. Here. With me. You let me keep you the way I’ve been keeping you—the cameras, the security, the following you to the grocery store and growling at anyone who looks at you too long.
You take my last name someday. You let me put a ring on your finger and a baby in your belly and you let me breed you until you’re round with my kid, until there’s no fucking doubt in anyone’s mind who you belong to. ”
The words come out raw. Filthy. Earnest in a way that makes my chest ache.
This isn’t dirty talk. This is the truth, stripped bare and ugly and real.
I want to claim her. I want to fill her.
I want to see her belly swell with my child and know that she’s carrying part of me, that she’s tied to me in the most permanent way possible.
But I want her to choose it. Not because she has nowhere else to go. Because she wants me. Just me. However damaged, however possessive, however fucking terrifying I am.
“Those are the options,” I say. My voice is wrecked. I can hear it. “No pressure. No manipulation. Just…tell me what you want. And whatever it is, I’ll make it happen. I swear to God, Winny, I will make it happen even if it kills me.”
I don’t move. Don’t cross to the couch. Don’t reach for her. For once in my life, I stand still and let someone else decide.
The silence stretches.
She looks at me. Really looks. Her eyes track over my face—the scars, the hard lines, the set of my jaw that hasn’t softened in fifteen years. She looks at my hands. My big, scarred hands that have broken bones and held dying men and cradled her head like it was made of glass.
She looks at the living room. The fortress I built. The cameras. The deadbolts. The evidence of how afraid I am of losing her written across every surface of this house.
She looks back at me. And she doesn’t speak.
My heart is in my throat. Literally. I can feel it pounding against my Adam’s apple, each beat a small agony.
The toughest cop in the precinct. The man who walked into armed standoffs without backup.
The detective who’s taken bullets and kept moving.
And here I am, standing in my own living room, watching the woman I love try to decide if I’m worth keeping, and I have never been more afraid in my life.
One path means freedom for her. A life built on her terms. No possessive bastard twice her age crowding her, controlling her, watching her sleep. She could date boys her own age. Go to college. Live in a house without cameras. Be normal. Be free.
The other path means me. Forever. My obsession.
My protection. My cock inside her every night, filling her, breeding her, claiming her in ways that should scare her but somehow don’t.
It means belonging to someone who would burn the world down to keep her safe.
It means never being alone again—but also never being entirely your own.
I watch her think. Watch the emotions move across her face—fear, longing, uncertainty, something softer that might be hope. I watch her hands twist in the blanket. Watch her bite her lower lip the way she does when she’s working something out.
And I wait.
I wait like I’ve never waited for anything. Not moving. Not breathing. Just standing there, offering her everything I have and everything I am, and hoping it’s enough.
Hoping she chooses me.
The silence stretches so long I start to hear my own pulse in my ears. The refrigerator clicks off. The security system hums. Somewhere outside, a car passes, headlights sweeping across the ceiling.
And Winny looks at me. Takes a breath. Opens her mouth.
And says?—