Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Seraphina
Slow It Down – Benson Boone
True to his word, Trey keeps me with him.
We shower together in a quiet that feels almost reverent, like the world can’t quite reach us in here, and when we step out, he dresses me himself.
One of his cotton T-shirts slides over my skin—soft, familiar, the same one I used to steal before everything fractured into survival and locked doors and watching the world through reinforced glass.
It settles on me like something borrowed from another life.
Or maybe like something he refuses to let me lose.
I sit on the edge of the bed and watch him as he moves around me, and even in the stillness, my mind won’t stay quiet.
It keeps circling back to him. To Gideon.
To the image I can’t erase no matter how hard I try.
Trey taken again, dragged back into the basement, hurt in ways I can’t undo, or worse, not coming back at all.
I can’t let that happen.
I won’t survive it twice.
Every night, I pray now. Not the kind I used to say out of habit, but more desperate. I ask God to watch him. To keep him breathing. To keep him here, with me, where I can see him. Where I can reach him.
Because without him, I don’t know what I am anymore.
Trey settles beside me, stretched out across the bed on his stomach. He’s only in his boxers, the lines of his body relaxed, his tattoos shifting subtly with each movement as he turns the page of a pregnancy magazine like it might contain classified intelligence.
I watch him for a moment too long.
He looks completely absorbed. Mildly offended. Deeply invested.
His brows are drawn tight as he studies whatever he’s reading.
Then he glances over his shoulder at me.
“Baby,” he says, low and serious, like he’s trying not to alarm me. “I don’t think you should fucking read this. It’s…” He hesitates, clearly searching for the right word. “It’s fucking scary.”
My lips part slightly.
He turns another page, shaking his head in disbelief. “And they keep referring to the baby as fruit. What the fuck is that about, baby? I’m never going to look at fruit the same way again.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
I shift onto my stomach beside him, close enough now that my shoulder brushes his as I peer over to see what’s captured his attention so completely. The magazine is open to a section on early pregnancy—weeks eight to nine, small diagrams and reassuring headings about development and symptoms.
It still doesn’t feel real when I read it.
Not until I look at him.
My fingers trace absent patterns across one of his tattoos as I settle in, my voice lighter but threaded with something warmer.
“You’re offended by fruit?” I murmur.
His grip tightens slightly on the magazine like it’s personally insulted him.
“I’m offended by all of this,” he mutters, then exhales through his nose.
“But especially the fruit thing.” His eyes flick to mine.
“When the baby is ready to come out,” he reads, then goes noticeably pale, “it’s going to be the size of a watermelon.
What. The. Fucking. Shit. Baby, you can’t take a watermelon, right?
Do we need to practice? Does it have to be fresh?
What if its frozen, it would be tougher, right?
No, no, you would get freezer burn…fuck, baby. ”
My eyes widen at the image he’s just dropped into my mind, and I instinctively close my legs.
Trey stares at my stomach for a beat, before shaking himself out of it.
“But your pussy is so fucking tight. It’s going to…you can’t…how—”
He cuts off abruptly when he sees my face, then forces a quick, unconvincing smile.
“It’s going to be like watching my favorite cupcake get backed over by a truck...but… you, we, got this.”
He looks back down.
“Okay, maybe I fucking don’t,” he mutters under his breath. “But you know I did the hard work. All that thrusting, sewing seeds, way better than barley.”
I snatch the magazine from his hands and fling it across the room. It misses the box entirely.
“Trey,” I hiss, pushing up slightly, “you’re not allowed to spiral on me right now. You’re not allowed to freak me out!”
I slap his chest for emphasis.
He blinks once, like he’s trying to reset his entire thought process.
“Right. Right, okay.” He drags in a breath, nodding seriously. “Well, I mean…right now it’s more than likely the size of a cherry? I thought rice. Rice is fine. You can take rice.”
“Trey… I am not going to be putting anything in my… in my—”
I pause, then force myself to meet his eyes dead-on.
“Pussy.”
It feels like a miracle I got the word out without stammering. My cheeks flare instantly, heat crawling up my neck before I can stop it.
Then he moves, rolling over me until he’s above me, bracing himself on his forearms as he pins me into the mattress.
“I love cherries, baby,” he murmurs, voice dropping rougher as he leans in. “I can do great things with a cherry stalk.”
His mouth brushes mine, just enough to steal the breath from my lungs, his teeth biting my lower lip in a teasing, unhurried pull.
“Focus,” I whisper, though it lacks any real force.
His mouth curves faintly, like he knows exactly what he’s doing to me.
“I am focused,” he murmurs. “Call me the secret agent…shit, what was it? The Manchurian Candidate…I think that’s it? Fucking sounds like someone applying to be a soccer fan…but anyway, doesn’t matter. Point is, consider me activated with the special key phrase.”
I have absolutely zero idea what goes on in his head half the time, but he’s so cute when he runs off like that—trying to include me in whatever chaotic thought spiral he’s in.
God. I love him.
The sound of movement filters in from beyond the bedroom door—footsteps in the hall, the low murmur of voices as the house begins to settle around us again. Security shifting positions. Someone laughing quietly down the corridor. The faint thud of doors closing upstairs.
Normal life, carefully reconstructed.
Even Niko is staying. Refusing to leave Chace, like distance has become its own kind of threat. All of them under the same roof, spread out through the upper floors like watchpoints in a fortress we pretend is still just a home.
I should be thinking about that.
I am thinking about it.
But it all blurs the second Trey’s hand returns to me.
His fingers slide up my body slowly, unhurried. The roughness of his fingertips catches against my skin—callused from years of guitar strings, from work and obsession and everything he’s built himself out of.
He kisses me again, and then pushes the soft cotton t-shirt up, revealing my body.
Heat follows him. The quiet collapse of everything else.
I know what he’s doing.
He presses against me, his mouth licking and sucking, his attention unhurried, leaving me marked in ways no one else will see.
Then he stills.
It happens so suddenly I feel it before I fully register it. His movement slowing, his weight easing back just enough for him to lift his head and look at me properly.
“Do you think our baby will have red hair like you,” he murmurs, thumb moving in a slow, absent circle, “or dark like me?”
There’s something different in his voice now. Almost thoughtful in a way I’m not used to hearing from him.
His dimples appear—brief, boyish.
“I want to play my guitar for him.”
A pause settles between us.
“Him?” I repeat quietly, searching his face.
Trey’s smile widens like the idea has already taken root, like it’s already become truth inside him. “Yeah,” he says without hesitation. “It’s a boy.”
His hand drifts lower, settling over my stomach.
“I can’t see it being anything else.”
A quiet breath leaves him, almost a laugh, but it doesn’t fully form. His gaze drops to where his hand rests, then lifts back to me again.
“And he’s mine,” he adds, “So I’m going to teach him everything I know.”
His thumb stills.
“A daughter…”
He exhales through his nose, shaking his head slightly.
“She’d never be out of my sight,” he admits quietly. “Not for a second. I’d lose my mind over her. The security we have in place would need to double. Triple.”
My gaze drifts past him before I can answer.
To the balcony doors—wide open.
The Los Angeles sky is impossibly blue, clean in a way that still feels unreal after everything. Warm air moves through the room, carrying the soft, citrus scent of the orange tree just beyond the terrace, bright and grounding all at once.
For a moment, I just breathe it in.
Then I smile at him.
Not because of what he said—but because of what I see when I look at him.
It comes back to me so vividly it almost steals my breath.
The sketch.
After our wedding.
Trey drawn the way I couldn’t stop seeing him—head thrown back, undone, utterly lost in me. The night sky above him scattered with stars like shattered diamonds, catching light in the dark.
Even on paper, he looked unreal.
Like something ascending to grace.
Beautiful in a way that shouldn’t exist in the same world as me.
An angel who somehow chose to stay. “I want to draw you,” I say softly.
My fingers curl slightly against my palm as the thought settles more firmly.
“Like this,” I add, my voice gentler now, certain in a way I don’t always get to be. “Right now. I want to capture it.” My eyes trace him again, slower this time.
“This happiness,” I admit, almost quieter. “I don’t want to forget it. I want something that holds it still for me. ”Trey’s response is immediate.
“Where do you want me?” he grins. “Exactly where you are right now. Don’t move.”
I don’t give him time to respond properly.
I’m already up, crossing the room in quick, excited steps as I gather my sketch pad and pencils, my fingers moving with purpose as I pull everything I need together—the soft graphite set, the kneaded eraser, the sharpener that always rolls to the bottom of my bag.
When I turn back, he’s still exactly where I left him.
Which, for Trey, feels like a miracle in itself.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to strip completely?” he teases, mouth curling with that familiar grin. “I’ll be your Rose. You can be my Jack. But no pegging.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it, light and unguarded.
Then I pause.
“Who is Rose and Jack? And what is pegging?”
The reaction is immediate.
His mouth opens like I’ve just committed a crime against culture itself.
A beat of stunned silence.
Then he shakes his head slowly, like he’s deeply, personally disappointed in me.
“We’re fixing this,” he says firmly, pointing at me like it’s now a matter of urgency. “We are absolutely fixing this. I’m going to have to catch you up on movie knowledge—because this…this is unacceptable.” His dimples pop, his eyes sparkles, “As for pegging…”