42. Declan
DECLAN
The silence in the car feels thicker than the dark sky above us.
Caroline sits beside me, arms wrapped around her stomach like she’s holding herself together.
The streetlights paint her in gold and shadow, flickering across the bruises on her neck.
Her hair’s tied back like she couldn’t stand it on her skin, and her lip is still split from where she bit it during the chaos.
But she hasn’t made a sound since we left the hospital.
I don’t blame her. I don’t have much to say either. Except…I do. It’s just all rotting in my chest, ugly and loud.
I park in front of the house. She doesn’t wait for me to open her door. Doesn’t wait for anything. She walks in like a ghost, barefoot on the tile, the cold slap of each step sharp in the silence, and I trail after her like a shadow who doesn’t know what he’s haunting.
The hallway feels longer than usual. Stretched out by the weight of what we’re not saying. The house still smells faintly of gunpowder and lemon cleaner. Her sweater catches on the edge of the hallway table, and she doesn’t even react. Just keeps walking like she didn’t notice or doesn’t care.
She heads straight for the fridge and pulls out cold leftovers, rice and lemon chicken in a Tupperware.
She doesn’t bother heating it. Just leans against the counter, eating with her fingers.
The food sticks to her thumb before she licks it off, mechanical, like chewing is the only thing tethering her to her body.
I watch her chew. Swallow. Stare at nothing.
“You should sit down,” I say.
She glances at me like I’ve spoken in a language she doesn’t know, then shrugs and slides to the floor, back against the lower cabinets. Her knees pull up. Her chin rests on them.
It’s not what I meant. But it’s honest, so I let her be.
I sit down on the floor across from her, our backs to opposite cabinets, a safe space in between.
“He’ll be okay,” I offer.
She nods like she doesn’t believe it. And fuck, I don’t know if I do either.
We sit in silence again. Not angry. Just emptied. The kind of quiet that comes after an earthquake, when everything’s technically standing but nothing feels stable.
Then she whispers, “I thought I’d be numb by now. After everything.”
I let my head fall back with a thud. “You’re not built for numb.”
“Maybe I wanted to be.”
“No,” I say, meeting her eyes. “You didn’t. That’s why you scare me.”
Her lips twitch. Not quite a smile. “I scare you?”
I laugh without humor. “Yeah. Because you taught me what it means to need something. And needing something means being able to lose it.”
She flinches, like the words struck bone. “That’s not fair,” she murmurs. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“I know,” I say, dragging my hands through my hair. “But it’s the truth.”
She sits up straighter, watching me. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I used to be fine just surviving,” I say. “Fine keeping my head down, doing the jobs, pretending none of it stuck. I didn’t want soft things. I didn’t want…anything real.”
“And now?”
“Now I watch you cry, and feel like my chest is going to fucking cave in.”
She goes still. The microwave hums in the background, even though neither of us touched it. Like the house is grieving too.
I keep going, not letting up with my eye contact, watching her chewing slowly stop. “I didn’t want to feel anything for you. Not like this. It was supposed to be…”
“Nothing?” she offers.
I wave my hand. “I knew it wouldn’t be nothing, not after the night we had.
” I meet her eyes. “I thought the tension might be gone, and if it wasn’t, I thought that’s all there would be.
That’s what we all thought. But you came in and you were—” I drag my hands through my hair.
“You were so fucking alive, Caroline. Even when you hated us. Even when you fought everything.”
She swallows hard.
“I didn’t know how to love anything until you slapped me completely naked. Or crashed a car not knowing how it would end. Or pulled the trigger when you didn’t have to. Held your kids while the world burned around you.”
A breath leaves her lips like a cracked balloon. “You think there’s any room for love in what we’ve done?”
I don’t know if she’s antagonizing me or genuinely asking, but I lean forward, the top half of me an angle against my knees, and I say, “I know there is because I feel it. Don’t you feel it? When you look at me?”
I scoot across the tile, closer to her, and press my hand against her heart.
“Here?” I feel her breasts under my hand, her nipple straining against the fabric of her shirt, and I feel the pounding of her heart.
“Or here?” I move another hand to her stomach, where I sometimes feel a cloying emptiness.
An emptiness that’s somewhere between nostalgia and nausea, the feeling of guests leaving after a wedding and the emptiness of a house before you move in.
She stares at me like she’s seeing a version of me she’s never met.
“I know I’m not gentle,” I admit. “But I would give you every quiet thing I have. If you asked. If you ever wanted it.”
She leans forward, slowly. Her eyes are glassy but clear. “It can’t just be pretty, Declan. Sometimes, it will be ugly, especially raising children.”
“Good,” I tell her, moving even closer. “I’m even better with ugly.”
Her knees bump mine. Her hands slide up my neck like she’s memorizing the shape of my pulse. She whispers, “I don’t know what it will be like…with all of you.”
“I don’t care. If I can get even a sliver of you, I’ll take it. Even if it’s the ugliest piece. Caroline, I don’t care. Please, just share some of you. Let me love that piece.” She kisses me. Not hard. Not to start something. Just to feel. And fuck, I feel it.
It’s not sex. Not heat. Not a fire. It’s an ache. It splits me in two and rebuilds me around her.
She pulls back. Her forehead presses to mine. “I don’t know how to survive this,” she admits.
“You’re not surviving it alone.”
“I still want to run.”
“I’ll chase you,” I say. “But I won’t drag you back.”
She makes a sound that’s half laugh and half sob.
Then she climbs into my lap and lets me hold her, legs wrapped around my waist, arms around my shoulders. Like we’re drowning, but we’ll sink together. Her fingers dig into my back like she’s trying to hold me inside her skin. Like if she lets go, everything will collapse.
I breathe her in. Her skin, her hair, the remnants of antiseptic and lemon and fear. I peel her bloody dress off her, tossing it aside onto the linoleum. My hands skim down her back until I find her bra and unclasp it.
Her mouth is hungry against mine as she unbuttons my shirt and throws it away, her hands running down my chest, admiring me in a way I’ve never been admired.
I grip her thighs and rock her gently against me.
She makes a sound I’ve never heard from her before, like she’s pleading with me and surrendering to me all at once.
Her hands move to unbuckle my belt and unbutton my pants. She releases my erection, gasping when she feels how hard I am. Her hand is warm around me, and I rock into her grip until her hands are moving her underwear aside and guiding me into her, her breaths deep and her lips pressed to my jaw.
She kisses me wordlessly, and her breath hitches when I push into her, stretching her around me, feeling every bit of the warm, wet place that I sink into.
When she sways her hips, her hands steady her rhythm against my shoulders, and her fingers scan the scar beneath my collarbone like braille.
She pauses there, asking how I got without words.
I pull her closer in response and tip my head up to her as she moves up to her knees for leverage.
Our mouths find each other again, hungrier now, searching for truth with intermingled tongues.
When I press up into her, my hands on the back of her ass, forcing my length as far as I can, she gasps into my mouth, and I feel the monster in me shaking the cage bars.
She buries her face in my neck as she moves over me, every slow thrust a confession neither of us can speak aloud. I hold her hips and try to remember to breathe. Her breasts brush against my chest, slick with sweat, and every soft sound she makes pulls something unholy out of me.
We stay like that for a long time. Moving together, shivering, breaking open in each other’s arms. She clutches the back of my head like she’s terrified I’ll disappear mid-breath, and I press kisses to her shoulder, her jaw, her temple. Anywhere I can reach. Anywhere she’ll let me stay.
When she falls apart, it’s silent. A breath that doesn’t make it out.
A tremble that starts in her thighs and rolls through her like a quiet quake.
She holds me as if the world might split in two.
And when I follow her, it’s with a groan I try to swallow against her throat.
I don’t want to scare her. I just want to stay.
After, we collapse into each other. There’s no separation between us. Just skin and sweat and whatever this thing is that’s grown between the wreckage.
“I keep thinking it’s not over,” she says after a long while, voice muffled against my shoulder. “Like something worse is coming. Like this peace is fake.”
“It’s not fake,” I say. “It’s fragile maybe. But it is real.”
She lifts her head and looks at me. Her face is raw, streaked with tears. “You really believe that?”
“I have to. Or I’ll lose my mind.”
She gives a bitter laugh, brushing at her cheek. “Too late for me on that front.”
I tighten my arms around her. “Then let’s be a little insane together.”
She rests her forehead in the hollow of my neck, and for a while we don’t move. I shift slightly, just enough to tuck a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. Her skin is cool, damp from tears. I feel the weight of her on my thighs, the way she melts into me, no longer bracing for impact.
“You’re not alone anymore,” I murmur. “You don’t have to hold it all.”
Her voice is paper-thin. “What if I don’t know how to let go?”
“Then let me help you.”
She nods into my chest.
Minutes pass, or maybe hours. Time feels soft around the edges.
“I hated you,” she says eventually. “All of you. In the beginning.”
“I know.”
“I wanted to burn this house down.”
“You still might.”
She smiles faintly. “God, you’re insufferable.”
“And yet,” I say, brushing my lips over her temple, “here you are.”
“I think you might be the only person in the world who sees that side of me,” she whispers. I don’t have to ask what side she means because I think she might be right, and I do see it. The bloodthirsty side. I have my own.
And I know without grand declarations or vows that this is what love looks like after war. Quiet and heavy and rebuilding. Unfolding in the ruins.