48. I Know, All The Fish You Want -Finn #2
Doc Fluffbutt strutted through the doorway and into the hall with the imperial bearing of a creature who had survived the apocalypse, a car escape, a crawlspace, and a kayak crossing, and now expected to be treated accordingly.
His tail stood straight up, the tip curled slightly forward, and he didn’t look back at me once.
Ungrateful little bastard.
I shut the door.
Silence.
Just her.
Just the sound of her breathing and the distant, muffled sounds of Lock moving around in the kitchen—a cabinet opening, water running, the soft clink of a bowl being set on the floor.
I stood still for another moment, letting the silence settle around me, letting the reality of this room and this moment sink into my bones.
The exhaustion pressed down on me with a physical weight now, heavier with every passing second, my body’s final notice that whatever had been keeping me upright was gone and would not be coming back.
I moved to the bed.
I stripped down in the dim light—jacket, boots, shirt peeled away from dried blood and salt, jeans, socks—until there was nothing left but bruises and bandages and a body that swayed where it stood.
All of that could wait until morning. Every wound, every scrape, every practical concern my surviving brain kept trying to queue up for attention—later. Not now.
I eased onto the mattress behind her, lowering my weight slowly, carefully, bracing one hand against the bed frame to control my descent.
I didn’t want the shift of the springs to disturb her.
The sheets, cool, clean, and impossibly soft after hours of gravel, metal, and saltwater, caught against my skin.
The sensation alone almost undid me, making my eyes sting and my throat close with something I didn’t have a name for.
I lay still for a moment, on my side, facing her back.
I was close enough to catch the warmth radiating from her body, close enough to smell her—salt from the ocean air still clinging to her hair, beneath it the faint trace of soap, and something that belonged only to her.
I hadn’t known I’d memorized it until this moment, when it flooded my senses and my chest ached with recognition.
I couldn’t stop myself.
Didn’t want to. Didn’t try.
I reached for her.
My arm slid around her waist, pulling her back into me gently but firmly.
My hand settled against the soft skin of her stomach where her shirt had ridden up, my fingers spreading across her warmth.
I drew her flush against me until her back pressed into my chest and I could feel every breath she took.
The contact spread through me like heat returning to frozen limbs—not just physical, not just the relief of touch after hours of isolation, cold, and pain, but something that made the silence in me less loud, less like a held note waiting to collapse.
She didn’t wake.
Didn’t open her eyes, didn’t startle, didn’t tense.
But her body responded—instinctive, unconscious.
Her breathing hitched, just slightly, a small catch in the rhythm that lasted half a second before settling back into something slower, deeper.
And then she leaned into me. Not a conscious movement—nothing deliberate or aware—just her body recognizing mine in sleep, gravitating toward the warmth and the pressure and the shape of me behind her, settling backward into the curve I’d made for her, her body finding the fit without searching for it.
My throat tightened so hard that I couldn’t swallow.
I pressed my face into her hair, burying myself in it, breathing her in with long, slow, deliberate breaths that filled my lungs with her scent and pushed out everything else—the rot, the blood, the ocean, the dead. All of it receding, all of it losing its grip, replaced by this. By her.
I tightened my arm around her waist, pulling her closer until my lips brushed the back of her neck—not quite a kiss, just the natural consequence of holding someone this close and needing them this badly.
Her skin carried the same warmth as the rest of her, soft and smooth beneath my mouth, and I let myself linger there, my breath moving across her skin in slow, unsteady waves.
“Hey,” I whispered against her skin. “Libby.” Just her name. Then, quieter: “I love you.”
Three words I had never spoken to anyone outside of family. They emerged steadier than I expected—no stumble, no hesitation—and then the room simply held them there, in the dark, against the back of her neck.
I reached up and brushed the hair from her face, my thumb catching on the faint stiffness tears had left along her cheek. My fingers trembled—exhaustion, cold, something else—and I let them rest there, against the side of her face, until my hand steadied.
“I’m here,” I said again, softer still, my lips moving against the shell of her ear. “I will never leave you again.”
She shifted in my arms. I thought her eyes might open and find mine, and I’d get to watch the moment she understood.
But she didn’t. She slept on.
Her body pressed back against mine with a quiet, unconscious certainty, her hand drifting in sleep until her fingers found my forearm where it crossed her body and curled around it.
And I held her.
This—right here—this moment, this room, this woman in my arms, her heartbeat against my chest, her hand on my arm, the warmth of her soaking into me and driving out the cold that had lived in my bones for months.
This is what I wanted.
Not the running. Not the fighting. Not the empty rooms and the easy exits and the carefully maintained distance I’d spent my entire adult life treating as strength rather than what it actually always had been—fear.
My eyes closed.
The exhaustion that had been waiting finally collected what it was owed, pulling me down into the mattress, into her warmth, into the dark.
One thought made it through before the rest went quiet.
Don’t lose this.
Whatever it takes.
Don’t lose this.
I hadn’t known, until tonight, that there were things worth being afraid of losing. Now I did. Now I knew exactly what I stood to lose, and exactly what that would cost me.
I held her tighter and let go.