Chapter 58 Tristan
FIFTY-EIGHT
TRISTAN
She tenses, turning her head just enough to confirm what I've said.
I slow my pace, teasing her with my cock, giving her time to decide her next move.
She doesn't know my friends well yet. Not for this kind of fun, so I expect her to pull away, retreat into the version of herself Calder tried to create.
Instead, her eyes find mine again.
"I like it."
"Yeah?" I lean in, sucking her lip between my teeth.
"Yeah…no more being invisible."
I stop moving, seated fully inside her. My cock twitches, but I cup her face, tilting her chin up as I stare into those beautiful blues.
"You are and have always been the most visible thing in any room. You're a fucking supernova, Keira. Let the whole world watch. I don't care who sees, I’ll worship you in front of everyone. I'll spend the rest of my life making sure you never feel invisible again."
She yanks me in for a crushing kiss, and it feels like the beginning of forever.
Then she rolls her hips against me, demanding. "Stop being sweet and fuck me, Tristan."
A dark laugh escapes me, and I give her exactly what she wants. I inch out of her slowly, watching her squirm before slamming back into her.
My eyes never leave her face.
I want to see everything. Every gasp. Every flutter of her lashes. Every moment she loses herself to what we are.
When her head starts to turn toward our audience, my hand finds her throat.
"Eyes on me, Red. Only me."
Her fingers wrap around my wrist. "Only ever you."
"That's right." I snap my hips harder, deeper, chasing something that feels bigger than release. "You're mine. You've been mine since London. Before London. Since whatever cosmic accident decided I'd spend the rest of my fucking life obsessed with a woman I hadn't even met yet."
"Yours." The word breaks apart on her lips. "I'm yours."
"Say it again."
"I'm yours."
"Louder."
"I'M YOURS."
The scream tears out of her, echoing through the warehouse like the final nail in Calder's coffin.
Marco joins the party, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, watching us from the shadows. And by the doorway, Aaron has one hand buried beneath Cat's dress, the other clamped over her mouth to muffle the sounds she's making.
My people. My family. All of us fucked up in the exact same ways.
I glance at Calder. He's watching too. Barely clinging to consciousness, but his eyes are fixed on us.
Would you look at that…we've become the main event.
"Touch yourself." I lean back, giving myself a better view. "Show them how beautiful you are when you come. Show him. Let that be the last thing burned into his dying brain."
Her fingers slide between us as she finds her clit.
The sight of Keira working herself while I fuck her is the most depraved, glorious thing.
"That's it." My rhythm turns erratic, the edge approaching fast. "That's my good girl. Come for me. Come all over my cock while he watches. Give him something to take to hell."
Her head falls back.
She cries out, and her whole body seizes. Her pussy clenches around me so tight I can't hold back another second. I spill inside her while Calder's fading eyes watch the woman he tried to erase find her rapture in my arms.
Where she belongs.
"I love you," she murmurs against my mouth, still trembling. "I love you so much it terrifies me."
"Don't be scared." I kiss her once. Twice. Three times. "I've got you. Always. I'm never letting you go again."
We stay like that, catching our breaths while I remain buried inside her, my cum sliding down her thigh. The world outside this moment doesn't exist. There's just us and the aftermath of something seismic.
Eventually, she glances over at Calder, annoyed, like she forgot about him for a second.
"I want to finish it now."
"Together?"
She looks up at me, and I can't help but kiss her again.
"Together."
She slides off the table on legs that barely hold her. I place the blade back in her hand.
We walk to him side by side.
He's dying from blood loss, shock, and agony dragging him toward the hell he built for himself. But his eyes are still open. His heart still beats on the monitor, weak and thready.
"Any last words?" Keira asks.
His mouth works, and something garbled comes out. Could be her name. Could be a curse. Could be a plea for mercy he never showed her.
We'll never know.
"That's what I thought." She leans close to his face. "Rot in hell, you fucking monster."
The blade opens his throat in one clean motion.
Hot blood spills out, painting the floor, the table, our bodies. Calder's eyes stay locked on Keira as the last traces of life drain away.
On the wife he tortured.
The mother he tormented.
The woman who just ended him.
Ninety seconds is all it takes.
When his chest finally stills and silence swallows the room, the blade slips from her fingers.
She doesn't speak. Doesn't move.
Just stands there trembling, staring at the corpse of the man who called himself her husband. As if he ever understood what that word meant. What it took to be a husband, a father, a man.
He only wanted the image of them. The illusion.
Ewan Calder was never capable of loving anyone but himself.
I step behind her and wrap my arms around her waist. Hold her steady while the tremors work through her body.
"It's over," I say into her hair. "It's really over."
"I didn't think I'd ever be free," she whispers.
"You're free." I turn her gently, tilting her face up to mine. "You survived him. You outlasted him. You ended him. And now you get to live."
"We get to live," she corrects through tears, and the smile that breaks across her face is sunrise after years of darkness. "All three of us."
I kiss the corner of her quivering mouth. "All three of us."
Against the far wall, Aaron starts slow clapping.
"Well." His voice cuts through the silence with impeccable timing. "That was certainly something."
Cat elbows him. "Shut up. It was beautiful."
"It was definitely memorable." He pauses, considering. "I might need therapy."
"You're already past needing therapy."
Keira laughs, burying her face against my chest.
Marco steps out of the shadows, already pulling cleaning supplies from a cabinet. His expression is carefully neutral, but I catch the slight smirk tugging at his mouth.
"I'll handle the body. You two need a shower." He pauses. "Several showers. And possibly an exorcism."
"Thanks, Marco."
"Don't mention it." His eyes cut to Aaron and Cat, who have finally untangled themselves. "Seriously. Don't ever mention what I just witnessed. To anyone. Ever."
"Noted," Aaron says solemnly, hand over his heart.
"Don't be a prude, Marco." Cat rolls her eyes and moves toward the door, pausing to look back at us.
"Hale's been asking for you. He's having the best time with Zoe and Dom, but he wants his mom…" She smiles, eyes bright. "And his dad."
His dad.
That's me.
Hearing that, knowing it's really mine now, I can't stop my eyes from tearing up.
"We're right behind you," I reply.
Aaron raises his fist, meeting my gaze. He doesn't say anything, but the pride in him says it all.
You did it, brother. You got them back.
Then they're gone, and it's just us.
Keira and me.
Standing in a warehouse full of blood and carnage, holding each other like we're two immortal vampires with forever stretching out ahead of us.
She pulls back to reach for her clothes, tugging them on with hands that have finally stopped shaking.
"I need to say something."
"Anything."
She steadies herself with a breath. When she looks at me, her eyes are clearer than I've ever seen them.
"Thank you. For finding me. For refusing to give up. For loving me when I didn't know how to love myself."
I take her hands. Stop her from retreating into gratitude when she deserves so much more.
"Keira, baby, I didn't save you. You saved yourself. I just reminded you who you've always been."
"You did more than remind me." She rises on her toes, pressing her lips to mine in a kiss that tastes like promise. "You brought me back to life. And I'm going to spend every day making sure you know what that means to me."
"Starting now?" I tease.
Her laugh is light and real and free. "Starting after we shower. And sleep for approximately one hundred years. And hold our son. Take me home, Tristan."
"Thought you'd never ask." I lace my fingers through hers and lead her toward the door.
We step out into the cold New Jersey night.
Stars are scattered across the sky like spilled diamonds on black velvet. The air tastes clean and sharp and new somehow. Like the world has been washed clean while we were inside.
Keira tips her head back, letting the breeze tangle her hair.
"I never thought I'd get this," she whispers, almost to herself.
"Get what?"
"A second chance." She turns to me, and the look on her face could restart my heart if it ever stopped. "At life. At love. At this, with you. All of it."
I press a kiss to her temple. "You deserve the world, and that's exactly what you're going to get."
"You've already given me everything I could ever want."
"I haven't even started."
I open the car door, but before she slides in, I catch her wrist. "You and me, Red. Forever and then some."
"Forever and then some," she echoes.
She settles into the passenger seat and I close the door.
As I round the car, I take one last look at the abandoned warehouse. The place where Ewan Calder took his final breath. The place where Keira rose from the ashes of who she used to be.
A tomb and a birthplace, all in one.
I get in the car, start the engine, and drive toward the rest of our lives.
And for the first time since I opened that lockbox, I let myself believe that we're going to be okay.
Better than okay.
We're going to be everything.