Chapter 50
Chapter
Fifty
Logan
After a quick dip in the hot tub—and more I thought you were dead sex—Salem and I eventually make our way down to the beach to join our friends. My legs are shaky, either from my still weak muscles, the numerous positions Salem and I tried, or the fact that she’s holding my hand.
Xed and Matty lay stretched out on the sand, apparently too cool for swimming. Huck is teaching Hannah to surf in the waves. When we draw closer, Taylor looks up from the lopsided sandcastle he's building with Christian—and immediately drops his attention to our entwined hands.
“Oh, thank fuck,” he nearly shouts, brushing sand off his arms. “Is the fight over, then? Are Mom and Dad back together?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Salem scoffs. “We’re just calling a temporary truce.”
I study her from the corner of my eye. “Truce, huh?”
She lifts a shoulder, the sunlight catching on her lashes when she gives me a heated look. “Figured I should at least be civil with you after I fuck you.”
“Pretty sure I was the one who did all the fucking. You laid there like a dead fish.”
“I did not!” She raises a fist to punch my shoulder, but I twist out of the attack and tug her against my chest.
“Damn.” Taylor whistles low, watching our interaction. “Guy comes back from the dead and grows a set of balls. Salem would have killed me for that comment.”
She tosses him a glare sharp enough to cut glass. “I still might, Taytortot. Keep talking.”
“Noted,” he coughs, raising both hands in surrender.
Shit, that reminds me. “Speaking of fish, where is mine? Did you kidnap him?”
My wife wriggles in my arms. “Can't exactly take a goldfish on a plane. My neighbors are watching him until I get back.”
“Good. He probably misses me. Bet he never doubted I'd come back, unlike everyone else.”
There’s a collective groan from the group and Christian tips his sunglasses down to squint at me. “Come on, hermano, don't be salty. We thought you'd left us for Jesus.”
Salem snorts, but there’s a catch in it, the kind that makes me want to cradle her face and promise I’ll never go anywhere again. “I never doubted you,” she whispers.
That quiet admission sucker punches me harder than anything else these past few months.
“Thank you,” I say, kissing the top of her head gently.
She's quiet for a long moment, eyes trained on where Huckslee helps Hannah stand on her child-sized boogie board. “You’re still insufferably annoying.”
“You still married me,” I shoot back before trailing my lips down her neck.
She exhales softly and arches her back, but Taylor ruins the moment by pelting us with a handful of wet sand.
“Alright, Romeo and Juliet, that's enough. Help us dig a moat for Hannah.
Salem sighs dramatically but grabs my hand. “We'll continue this later.”
Before we can drop down next to them, though, she spins suddenly and lifts the camera around her neck to snap a shot of my face.
I blink, momentarily stunned. “What was that for?”
“Documenting proof that you’re actually alive. For science.”
“Science?”
“Mm-hmm,” she says sweetly, taking another quick photo. “It's not every day I get to meet a real-life zombie. How's it feel to come back from the dead?”
I lunge for the camera, but she darts out of reach. “Salem.”
“What, too soon? I’m just doing my job.”
“You’re not on the clock!”
With another shrug, she aims the lens at Taylor and Christian fighting over sunscreen. “Doesn’t matter. I shoot the moments I don’t want to forget.”
That shuts me up quick.
Just like that, I’m hers all over again, helpless to do anything but follow her over to that castle in the sand like some hopeless tide, always pulled home.
“You’re in charge of the tower,” Taylor informs me, sunglasses holding back his damp hair. “It needs to be structurally sound.”
“It's just sand, dude.” I sit with a grunt and pull my wife down beside me.
Hannah comes sprinting up from the waves at that moment, her floaties flapping as she barrels toward us. “The moat needs water! And the castle must be ocean-protected or it’s not real.”
Christian just sighs and starts kicking a shallow trench toward the shoreline. “Your wish is our command, mi pequena princesa.”
Salem raises her camera to capture it all—Hannah’s toothy grin next to her two dads, Huck exiting the ocean like Poseidon, Christian and Taylor mid-sand-fight. She follows it up by pulling me in for a selfie, and I plant a kiss on her cheek as soon as the shutter clicks.
It’s way too hot out here, my legs hurt like hell, and I’m low-key terrified that this is all temporary, but for now… I feel like I finally belong somewhere.
Maybe I’ve found that peaceful love I've been searching for. Not the kind you have to fight for, or run from, or earn by nearly dying—even though I did all three. It’s the kind of peace that sneaks up on you, that soft silence in your chest when the people you love most are nearby.
The kind that says, "You're allowed to be happy now.”
I wrap my arm around Salem’s waist and tug her into my side, holding tight to that promise we made:
No matter where we go or who we love, we’ll always find our way back to each other.
It doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else. It doesn’t need permission or explanation. This messy, beautiful thing that we’re building is ours.
And maybe that’s the truest form of love there is; living our authentic selves despite the world telling us we're wrong. Maybe the world is wrong for judging how consenting adults choose to be happy.
And I am. Finally. So is Salem.
In the end, that's all that really matters, anyway.