Chapter 47 #2
He bent and kissed her forehead.
Then her temple.
Then the corner of her eye.
Aubrey closed both hands around his shirt.
“Bennett.”
“I’ve got you,” he whispered.
That was when she broke.
A breath that turned into a sob before she could stop it. Her forehead dropped against his chest, and his arms came around her at once.
He held her like he had nowhere else to be.
Like nothing in the world mattered more than keeping her upright.
Aubrey gripped the back of his shirt.
“I hate that I still want her to love me right.”
Bennett’s hand moved slowly over her hair.
“I know.”
“I’m too old for that.”
“No.”
“She’s never going to be what I needed.”
“Maybe not.”
Aubrey pulled back enough to look at him.
His eyes were dark and steady.
“But that doesn’t make what you needed wrong,” he said.
The tears came harder then.
Bennett kissed them from her face.
One cheek.
Then the other.
As if every place she hurt deserved reverence.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
She gave a broken little laugh.
“I’m crying.”
“I know.”
“My face is a mess.”
She shook her head, but he kissed her again.
Her cheek.
Her mouth.
Her chin.
Aubrey went still.
“And I want you,” he said, his voice low and rough with honesty. “God, Aubrey, I want you so much.”
Her fingers tightened in his shirt.
“Then want me.”
His eyes searched hers.
“Not because you’re hurting.”
“Because I’m here,” she whispered. “Because you are. Because tonight I don’t want to feel like something someone forgot to come back for.”
Something moved through his face.
Pain.
A kind of fierce tenderness.
He kissed her again, slower this time.
Aubrey rose into him, and he gathered her close, one hand at her back, the other cradling her face as if he could hold every broken piece of her without cutting himself.
When he lifted her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face against him.
He carried her down the hall without hurry.
In the bedroom, he set her on her feet beside the bed and kissed her again.
Every kiss said what he did not yet know how to say aloud.
You are here. You are wanted. You are not alone.
Aubrey touched his face.
There was still grief in him. She could feel it—not between them, but beside them.
She kissed him anyway.
And he let himself be kissed.
Let himself want.
Let himself hold a living woman in the dark and not apologize to the dead for needing warmth.
When he drew her down with him, it was not desperate.
It was careful. Tender.
His hands moved as if asking permission even after she had already given it. His mouth found her shoulder, her throat, the curve of her jaw, each kiss softer than the last until Aubrey felt cherished in places she had only ever learned to protect.
She whispered his name once.
He answered by holding her closer.
And for a while, there was no murder.
No will.
No Anne.
No Blackwood pressing its history through the walls.
There was only Bennett’s hand threaded through hers.
His breath against her hair.
Telling her he wanted her.
Showing her without words that some part of him had already chosen her, even if another part was still afraid of what that meant.
Later, Aubrey fell asleep with her cheek against his chest.
Bennett stayed awake.
He listened to her breathing until it steadied. Listened to Moose shift once in the hall and settle again. Listened to the house creak softly around them.
Aubrey’s hand rested over his heart.
Bennett looked down at her.
He thought of her sitting in school offices. Waiting at windows. Learning not to expect anyone to come.
His arm tightened around her before he could stop it.
She stirred but did not wake.
“I’m here,” he whispered.
The words were for her.
Maybe for himself too.
A long time passed before he carefully slipped from beneath her.
He pulled the blanket over her shoulder and stood beside the bed, watching until he was sure she was still asleep.
Then he left the room.
The hallway was dark except for the thin spill of moonlight from the kitchen window.
Claire’s photograph hung where it always had.
Bennett stopped in front of it.
She was laughing in the picture.
Head tipped back. Hair loose around her shoulders. One hand lifted like she was trying to wave him away from the camera.
He had taken that photograph on a Sunday afternoon in October.
Before the diagnosis.
Before the long months of measuring hope in test results, pain medication, and whether she could keep soup down.
Before the ring on his finger became less a symbol of marriage and more a punishment he had never been brave enough to name.
Bennett looked down.
His thumb found the band by habit.
He twisted it once.
The skin beneath it was pale from years without sunlight.
He thought of the barrel room.
The sound behind the racks.
The rush of footsteps.
The split second when instinct had taken over.
Then he had heard Aubrey behind him.
One breath.
That was all it had taken.
One breath, and everything in him had turned back.
Not toward the threat.
Toward her.
He needed to get back to her.
The realization moved through him slowly.
Then all at once.
His gaze drifted toward the bedroom.
Aubrey slept on the other side of the wall.
In his bed.
In his life.
He looked back at Claire’s photograph.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he whispered.
His thumb pushed at the ring.
It slid to his knuckle.
Stopped.
Bennett stared at it.
His chest tightened.
He could take it off right now and lay it on the table beneath Claire’s photograph like an offering.
His throat worked.
“I’m trying,” he said.
The words nearly broke in the middle.
Bennett closed his eyes.
For a moment, he saw Claire in the hospital bed, too thin beneath white sheets, smiling at him with more courage than he had ever possessed.
He opened his eyes.
The ring remained halfway over his knuckle.
Slowly, Bennett slid it back into place.
Not because he loved Aubrey less.
Because guilt, he was learning, did not loosen simply because love had begun.
He rested his fingertips against the wall beneath Claire's photograph.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Then, after a long moment, quieter still—
“Not tonight.”
Bennett turned away from the photograph and went back to Aubrey.