45. Cassidy
FORTY-FIVE
CASSIDY
Bindi is sleeping in the other room. It took nearly everything in me not to crawl back into bed and hold her until the world ended, but I slid out as carefully as I could. Through the cracked door I can see her curled up under the faded, patched quilt, hair messy across the pillow.
Sometimes I think I’m already dead. That this is hell and she’s the only good thing I get to keep. The world burned and I woke up in her bed anyway. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s all the heaven I get.
I lay there for an embarrassing amount of time this morning, just watching her breathe like a fucking psycho, memorizing every inch of her—over and over.
Burning her in my brain. She’s so beautiful when she sleeps, it almost makes my chest hurt.
Like there’s too much of her inside me now and not enough room left to breathe.
In the kitchen, the stove crackles low, and I crack a few eggs we picked up at the corner store on the way into a battered cast iron skillet.
They hit the metal with a sharp hiss, the sound stupidly loud in the morning stillness.
While the eggs sizzle, I dump a few scoops of coffee grounds into the filter and flip on the switch.
The machine coughs and sputters to life, steam curling up in lazy spirals.
The smell of cheap eggs and burnt coffee fills the cabin like a fucking miracle.
Last time I cooked for someone I was maybe fourteen, heating canned ravioli on a campfire for one of the kids back in that hell house they stuck me in.
Didn’t matter if it was hot—just mattered that it was mine to give.
This feels the same. Like giving her something normal, something good. Something no one else touched first.
Behind me, I hear the quilt shift.
My girl.
I glance toward the cracked door just in time to catch her stumbling out, barefoot on the cold wood floor, wrapped half-assed in the quilt, still drunk on sleep.
If there’s a God left, this is the only proof I’ll ever believe in.
Her bare feet scuff against the floorboards as she shuffles closer, sniffing the air suspiciously.
“You . . . made breakfast?” she croaks, voice raspy with sleep, rubbing her eyes.
I flip the eggs in the pan like I’m not two seconds from picking her up and pinning her to the wall just for daring to exist this pretty in my shirt.
“Yeah,” I say, casually. “Figured it was about time my wife ate something.”
She blinks at me.
Slow. Confused.
“Your wife?” she echoes, eyebrows arching over sleep-dazed eyes.
I grin, because I can’t help it.
Setting the spatula down, I lean back against the counter, arms crossed, watching her.
“Yeah. Wife. You know—ride or die, in sickness and health, kill and bury together. All that romantic shit.”
She snorts, dragging the quilt tighter around herself like she’s bracing against a storm.
“Pretty sure there’s supposed to be rings involved somewhere in that,” she mutters.
I push off the counter and move slowly. Her eyes are ringed with yesterday’s makeup. I get close enough to smell the leftover salt on her skin. “Fuck the rings,” I say, voice rougher now. “You think a piece of metal ever meant more than this?”
My hand curls at the back to her neck until my thumb brushes her pulse. Her heart jumps under my touch.
“We knew since we were kids,” I murmur, dropping my forehead to hers. “Didn’t need a preacher to tell me, didn’t need vows. The second you smiled at me in that living room . . . you were it, Binx. You’ve always been it.”
For a second she just breathes against me, her fingers curling loosely in the hem of my shirt.
“Fine,” she whispers. “Wife it is. But you’re doing the dishes, too.”
I laugh, press a kiss to her hairline, and go back to finishing breakfast.
“Deal.”
She hitches the quilt higher around herself like a makeshift cloak and pads barefoot toward the table.
“So, what’s the plan today, husband?” she teases, settling into one of the rickety chairs.
The word husband—thrown out so casually—hits me straight in the chest. I pour her a mug of coffee and set it in front of her.
“Eat first, then maybe check the perimeter—see if there’s a town nearby. Grab supplies, and gas up the truck I found in the garage. We need to drive a ways and ditch the charger somewhere.”
She hums around her coffee cup, swinging one bare leg under the table .
“Sounds like a real romantic getaway,” she says dryly, grinning at me over the rim.
I sit across from her, plate in one hand, fork in the other, feeling more at peace than I have since the day they dragged me out of our home in cuffs.
Her joke makes me laugh, and for the first time in forever, it feels like maybe we could have something close to a life.
Just me and her. The only thing that ever mattered, anyway.