Chapter 6
Lena
Two weeks after the truth came out, Hawk showed up at my door with a look on his face I hadn't seen since before he left — restless, purposeful, the look of a man with somewhere he needed to be.
"Walk with me," he said. "There's somewhere I want to go. If you're okay with it."
"Should I be worried? You've got a very specific look."
"Good look or bad look?"
"Undetermined. Somewhere between 'I have a surprise' and 'I've done something to your porch.'"
"No porch damage. I promise." He held up both hands, mock-innocent, and something about the easy humor in it — the first real lightness I'd seen from him since the morning I told him everything — eased a knot in my chest I hadn't realized was still there.
"Nico's already asleep at Juliet's for the night.
Sleepover with Lucia. I've got a few hours. "
"Then walk with me."
"That's oddly specific information for a man who just showed up unannounced."
"I checked with Juliet first. I'm learning." He grinned, and the sight of it — easy, unguarded, nothing like the wary caution he'd carried since riding back into town — settled something in me that had been braced tight for two straight weeks. "Come on. Trust me."
"That's a loaded request, coming from you."
"Fair. I earned that one." He winced, but didn't back down, holding out his hand instead, patient, waiting. "Trust me anyway. Just for tonight."
I took his hand.
I knew where we were headed before we reached the trailhead. Some part of me had known the second he asked, some old instinct that recognized the shape of the request even before my mind caught up to it.
"The bluff," I said, as the path started climbing.
"The bluff."
"We haven't been up there together in six years."
"I know." His grip tightened slightly around my hand, steady, grounding. "Figured it was time we reclaimed it. Before it's just a place I used to know instead of a place that's still ours."
The climb was harder than I remembered, my legs unused to the incline after years of sticking to flatter, easier paths, but Hawk kept a slow, patient pace beside me, one hand steady at the small of my back on the steeper sections, and by the time we crested the top, my breath had gone ragged for reasons that had nothing to do with the climb at all.
The bluff path hadn't changed in six years.
Same worn stones, same wild rosemary crowding the edges, same slow climb that opened, at the top, onto a stretch of clifftop grass overlooking the whole dark sweep of the coast, stars scattered thick overhead the way they only seemed to gather in this exact spot.
I hadn't been up here in six years. Standing at the top of the trail now, looking out at that familiar view, something in my chest cracked open that I'd kept carefully sealed for a very long time.
"I used to come up here alone sometimes," I admitted.
"After you left. I'd sit right there—" I pointed to the flat stretch of grass where we used to lie for hours, "—and I'd talk to you.
Out loud. Like an idiot. Tell you about the pregnancy, and then about him, every milestone, every small thing I wished you could see.
I don't know if I believed you could actually hear me.
I think I just needed somewhere to put it. "
"I wish I could've heard you."
"I know." My voice caught. "I used to imagine you could. It helped, some nights, imagining that."
He crossed the space between us and took my hand, gentle, careful, like he was asking permission with the gesture instead of assuming it. "I'm here now. You can tell me all of it. Every milestone. We've got time."
"Tonight?"
"We've got tonight. And tomorrow. And every night after that, if you'll let me.
" His thumb traced slow circles against my palm, and something in me that had stayed clenched tight for six years finally began, carefully, to unclench.
"But tonight, I don't want to talk about the six years we lost. I want this to be about us.
About what's still here, underneath everything else. "
The way he said it, low and certain, sent heat curling low in my stomach, six years of careful distance collapsing in an instant.
"Is that why you brought me up here?"
"Partly." He pulled me closer, until there was barely any space left between us, until I could feel the warmth radiating off him even in the cool night air.
"Mostly I brought you up here because this is where I fell in love with you the first time, Lena.
I wanted to see if it still felt like that. If we still felt like that."
"And?"
"And I've never stopped, not for one single day of the six years I was gone.
" His free hand came up to cup my jaw, tilting my face toward his, and the look in his eyes stole whatever response I'd been about to give.
"I love you. I loved you then, I love you now, and finding out about Nico didn't change that — if anything, it just gave me one more reason I can't imagine walking away from you again. "
"Tomas—"
"Let me finish." His voice roughened, raw with everything he'd clearly been holding back since the moment he rode back into town.
"I know I have to earn back trust. I know six years doesn't disappear because I said the right words on a clifftop.
But I need you to know where I stand, Lena, before anything else happens tonight.
I'm not here for a second chance I'm going to waste.
I'm here because you're it for me. You always have been. "
The stars overhead blurred slightly, my eyes stinging with tears I hadn't expected. "I love you too. I never stopped either. I just got so good at not letting myself feel it that I almost forgot how."
"How do you feel now?"
"Terrified," I admitted, half a laugh caught in it. "In a good way, if that makes sense. Like I forgot what it felt like to want something this much and now I remember all at once and it's a lot."
"I can work with terrified." His mouth curved, something warm and a little wicked in it. "Terrified in a good way is basically my favorite kind of terrified."
"Is that a professional assessment? Six years of enforcer work qualify you to diagnose terror now?"
"Extensive field research, yes." He laughed, low and warm, before something more tender crept back into his expression. "For what it's worth, I've been terrified since the second I saw you across that harbor. Hasn't stopped once. I've just gotten better at not letting it show."
"You hide it well."
"Years of practice." His hand found my jaw again, tilting my face up to his, all the humor softening into something far more serious. "Show me," he murmured, closing the last inch of distance between us. "Remind yourself. I'll help."
He kissed me then, slow at first, careful, like he was giving me every chance to pull away if I needed to.
I didn't pull away. Six years of careful distance dissolved the instant his mouth found mine, and I kissed him back with everything I'd kept locked away — the grief, the longing, the stubborn, unkillable love that had survived six years of silence and come out the other side still burning.
His hands slid into my hair, angling my head for a deeper kiss, and I felt the low, urgent sound he made against my mouth in my own chest, an answering ache spreading through me everywhere he touched.
We sank down together onto the soft grass at the cliff's edge, the same spot where we used to lie mapping constellations neither of us could name, and this time there was nothing careful or hesitant left in either of us.
"Six years," he murmured against my throat, his mouth trailing slow, worshipful kisses along my collarbone. "Six years of imagining this and none of it comes close."
"Tell me," I breathed, arching into his touch, "tell me what you imagined."
"Everything." His hand found the hem of my shirt, drawing it slowly upward, pausing to press a kiss to newly bared skin with every inch he uncovered.
"I imagined your laugh. Your hands. This exact spot, under these exact stars, with you underneath me finally letting me love you the way I never stopped wanting to. "
The night air was cool against my skin as he undressed me with unhurried reverence, but his mouth and hands left trails of heat everywhere they moved, and by the time he'd bared me completely to the starlight, I was trembling with a need six years hadn't managed to dull even slightly.
"Tomas." His name came out as barely more than a whisper, an ache and a plea both at once.
"I've got you." He settled over me, his own clothes discarded somewhere in the grass beside us, skin against skin for the first time in six long years, and the sound he made at the first full contact between us was rough, reverent, undone. "God, Lena. I've got you. I'm not letting go again."
He paused there a moment, propped above me, his eyes moving over my face like he was memorizing it all over again, cataloging every small change six years had made.
"What?" I asked, breathless, half laughing at the intensity of his focus.
"Nothing. Everything." He shook his head, a rough exhale escaping him. "I just need a second. I've pictured this so many times I half expect to wake up back in whatever safehouse I was hiding in, and I don't want to move too fast and find out this isn't real."
"It's real." I reached up, cupping his jaw, grounding him the way he'd grounded me on the climb up. "I'm right here. We're both right here."
"Yeah." Something in his shoulders eased, and the last of his careful hesitation gave way entirely. "Yeah, okay. Real."
He took his time with me, unhurried despite six years of wanting, mapping every inch of me with his mouth like he was relearning something precious he'd been forced to forget, until I was shaking beneath him, whispering his name into the dark like a prayer I'd been saving for exactly this moment.