12. Caroline #3
“You.” I’m fumbling with his belt, my hands shaking. “Right now. Right here. I don’t care who sees. I don’t care about any of it. I just need-”
“I know what you need.” He lifts me, shifts me, and then he’s right there, pressed against me in a way that makes my vision blur. “Tell me you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. Sean, please, I’m so sure-”
He slides into me in one long stroke, and the sound I make echoes off the concrete walls of the garage. I clap a hand over my mouth, suddenly aware of how exposed we are, how anyone could walk past, how the windows might not be tinted enough-
“Don’t.” He pulls my hand away from my mouth. “I want to hear you. I want anyone who walks past to know exactly what’s happening in this car. Let them see. Let them all see.”
This is wrong, says that voice again. This is reckless and wrong and someone from the club could have followed you and-
Sean moves, and the voice cuts off mid-thought.
He sets a pace that’s just this side of punishing, and I meet him stroke for stroke, my fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.
The car rocks with our movement. The windows are definitely fogging.
Someone is definitely going to notice, and I cannot bring myself to care because nothing in my entire life has ever felt this good, this right, this much like exactly what I needed.
“Tell me who you belong to,” he demands, his hand fisting in my hair, tilting my head back to expose my throat.
“You.” It comes out broken, desperate. “I belong to you.”
“Tell me you’re never going back. To any of them. Tell me you’re done.”
“I’m done.” I’m barely able to form words, pleasure building at the base of my spine like a wave about to crest. “I’m never going back. I’m yours. I’m only yours. Sean - I’m going to-”
“Let go.” His mouth finds the spot behind my ear that makes me see stars. “I’ve got you. Let go.”
I shatter with his name on my lips, and he follows me over the edge a breath later, both of us trembling in the aftermath, clinging to each other in the driver’s seat of his car in a parking garage three blocks from the place where I just ended my relationship with my family.
It should feel like too much. It should feel overwhelming, or wrong, or at least complicated.
It just feels like freedom.
“We really need to stop doing this in places without doors,” I say eventually, when I can form sentences again.
He laughs - a real laugh, warm and surprised - and the sound of it does something complicated to my heart. “I keep meaning to get you home first. You’re very distracting.”
“Is that a complaint?”
“That’s the opposite of a complaint.” He kisses me, soft now, tender in a way that contrasts sharply with what we just did. “That’s me wondering how I got lucky enough to be the one you chose. After everything.”
“You’re the only one who ever actually saw me.” I pull back enough to look at him, this man who waited three years, who turned a boat into a storm for me, who just watched me burn my family to the ground and called me magnificent. “You’re the only one who ever made me feel like I was worth seeing.”
Something passes across his face - emotion, raw and unguarded. He opens his mouth to say something, but his phone buzzes in his pocket before he can.
Then mine buzzes. And buzzes again. And keeps buzzing, a steady stream of notifications that can only mean one thing.
The fallout has begun.
***
I check my phone while Sean starts the car.
Texts from Marie, rapid-fire:
Caro. It’s already moving.
Three people at that club were filming. The Caldwell photo is everywhere now, the timeline’s everywhere, people are stitching it together with the pool video.
Sarah Caldwell is LOSING it that it happened in her house. The Ashbournes pulled Kristi from the spring committee an hour ago. Nobody in that whole circle is taking Graham’s side. Nobody.
I read them out to Sean, and I watch the understanding settle over his face.
“That’s it,” he says quietly. “That’s the sound of it turning. You didn’t need a single lawyer. He spent his whole life making that circle the judge of who matters, and they’re already handing down the verdict.”
I read the texts again. I keep waiting for grief to surface, for some part of me to mourn five years, and there’s nothing there to find, just the strange, weightless quiet of a thing finally setting itself down.
My phone buzzes one more time. A text from a number I don’t recognize.
The Ashbourne Foundation Gala. Saturday. I expect you’ll attend. After all, you are still a Hawke. For now. - K
I show Sean the screen.
His jaw tightens, but something glints in his eyes - anticipation, maybe, or the particular satisfaction of a man who’s been waiting a long time for this exact fight.
“She wants a showdown,” I say.
“Then let’s give her one.”
He pulls out of the garage and into traffic, and I watch the city slide past the windows, all those ordinary people living their ordinary lives with no idea that mine just changed completely.
For the first time, I’m not bracing for what comes next. I’m just going home.