43. “I’m coming back to you.”
“I’M COMING BACK TO YOU.”
YASMINE
Fourteen days became thirteen, then twelve.
After that, I stopped counting.
We didn’t talk about me leaving, but it had gotten into everything. Every look. Every touch. Every night I spent wrapped around him in the dark.
Neither of us knew how to say, I’m not ready for this to pause.
So we didn’t.
Hale showed up early and stayed late, fitting himself into my routines until I stopped noticing where mine ended and his began.
My gear went down across the living room floor in a grid.
He learned the system without asking—charged batteries here, backup lenses there, thermal layers sorted by weight.
I’d find him cross-referencing my packing list against the NSF guidelines I’d printed out, brow furrowed, pencil in hand like he’d been doing it for years.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said once.
He looked up. “I know.” Then went right back to it.
He fixed the zipper on my secondary duffel, replaced the worn carabiner on my camera bag with one that actually locked, and spent three hours researching cold-weather hand warmers before coming back with a ranked list and a look of quiet triumph.
“These last twelve hours,” he said.
“You’re insane.”
“They had good reviews.”
I kissed him instead of arguing.
We did a lot of that, kissing.
We fucked even more.
Mornings, I’d wake with his chest at my back, one big hand spread over my breast, already feeling the heavy slide of him inside me before I’d fully opened my eyes.
“Go on back to sleep, darlin’. I’ll take care of it.”
“This a service call?” I managed, tilting my hips just that bit more.
“You complaining?”
“No.”
His hand slid down, palm splayed low on my stomach to keep me still for it. “Then hush.”
I did.
Lazy afternoons disappeared on the couch, half-packed bags forgotten while I climbed over him, needy and impatient, kissing him quiet whenever he laughed about it.
In daylight, we could still make it fun. Still act like we were only being greedy. But nights were different. At night, the countdown found its way into bed with us.
We got rougher after dark. Hungrier. Hale would drive into me hard enough to shift the mattress, hands locked around my hips like he could keep me there by force of will alone. I met him just as hard, and reveled in it. Every bit as gone as he was.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, the ties came out.
His belt first, then a length of black cord. He was calm about it, matter-of-fact, but his control looked paper-thin when he wrapped it around my wrists and tied them to the headboard.
I’d never let anyone do that before. Never wanted to.
Except maybe I had, in a way. Months back, in his bed, when he told me to put my hands above my head and leave them there, and nothing on earth held them but him saying so.
The rope was just catching up.
Maybe it was reckless, but the effort it took him to stay careful only made me want him more. With Hale, being tied didn’t make me feel helpless. It made me feel chosen. I could give him control and know, down to my bones, he’d never misuse it.
He took full advantage.
And I liked that too.
Later, I woke up to him staring at the ceiling, jaw tight, one arm tucked behind his head.
The clock read 3:47 a.m.
I shifted closer, pressing my bare body against his side. His other arm came around me instantly, his palm sliding over my back.
“Can’t sleep?” I murmured.
“Thinking.”
“About?”
His hand paused between my shoulder blades.
“The quiet,” he said. “It’s going to be so fucking quiet when you’re gone.”
“You’ve got Dolores,” I said. “And Gina and Martin.”
He huffed. “Yeah.”
I’d worked toward this for years, but I hadn’t planned on missing someone before I’d even left.
He wouldn’t ask me to stay. That was never going to be his move. And I trusted, more than I trusted most things, that we would still be us on the other side of six months.
But trust didn’t make the distance smaller, or make me less afraid that something would shift between us while I was nine thousand miles away and unable to get to him.
I slid my thigh over his. “I’m coming back, Hale.”
“I know.”
“I’m coming back to you.” I kissed his chest, then lower, dragging my lips down his stomach. His hand tightened in my hair, but he didn’t stop me. “This doesn’t change us.”
I took his dick into my mouth and felt whatever he’d been about to say leave him in a broken breath.
For a while, neither of us tried to talk.
Then he pulled me up, flipped me onto my back, and pushed inside me in one long stroke.
I wrapped myself around him and we moved together slow and aching, his hips rolling deep, his mouth everywhere he could reach. There was nothing frantic left in it. Just too much feeling and nowhere to put it.
When I came around him, he buried his face in my neck and followed right after.
Afterward, he stayed inside me, holding me close. His thumb brushed the faint marks on my wrist where the cord had been.
“Yeah,” he said quietly into the dark. “You’re coming back to me.”
Neither of us said love.
Neither of us said goodbye.
Neither of us said what would happen if one wasn’t strong enough to survive the other.
We just held on.