CHAPTER 13
Selene
We move to his bedroom without either of us saying it out loud, some unspoken agreement passing between us that the time for waiting has finally ended, twelve years of grief and two years of careful walls both dissolving in the quiet morning light.
Mia's still asleep in the next room, and some small, practical part of my mind registers that fact and files it away, but the rest of me is entirely, completely present in this moment — Damon's hands careful and reverent as they map the parts of me he's clearly imagined a thousand times over twelve long years, his mouth finding mine again and again like he's still not entirely convinced I'm real.
"Tell me if you want to stop," he murmurs against my jaw, voice rough with restraint, giving me every opportunity to pull back even now, even after everything we've just laid bare between us. "Any time. I mean it, Selene."
"I don't want to stop," I whisper back, and mean it with everything I have left after two years of guarding myself so carefully I'd nearly forgotten what it felt like to want something without immediately calculating its cost. "I want this. I want you."
He kisses me again, slower now, and I feel every wall I spent two years building finally, completely come down, replaced by something that feels less like surrender and more like coming home.
What follows is unhurried in a way that surprises me — no rush, no urgency beyond the deep, patient want that's been building between us since the moment I walked into his garage soaked through and furious at the sight of him.
He treats me like something worth taking his time over, worth learning slowly, worth cherishing rather than simply claiming, and somewhere in the quiet, unhurried give and take of it, I feel the last of my hyper-vigilance finally, fully release its grip on my body for the first time in two years.
There's nothing to watch for here. No exits to calculate, no threats to catalog, no part of me holding back in preparation for the moment this turns into something else, something dangerous.
There's only Damon, patient and certain and entirely focused on me, and the particular safety of being wanted by a man who's already proven, a hundred times over in the space of a single week, exactly how far he's willing to go to protect the people he loves.
Morning light shifts slow across the room as the hours pass, and somewhere in the quiet aftermath, wrapped together beneath worn sheets that smell like him, I feel something settle into place in my chest that's been missing for longer than I fully realized — not just safety, though there's plenty of that, but a kind of belonging I'd stopped believing I was allowed to want.
"You okay?" he asks eventually, voice still rough, one hand tracing slow, absent patterns along my bare shoulder.
"Better than okay." I press closer against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow gradually beneath my ear, steady and real. "I don't think I've felt like this in longer than I can remember. Maybe ever."
"Good." He presses a kiss to the top of my head, and I feel him smile against my hair, something warm and unguarded in it that I haven't seen from him until this exact moment.
"Because I've spent twelve years imagining this, and reality just ruined every version I ever pictured.
It's better. You're better than anything I let myself hope for. "
I laugh softly, some of the day's earlier grief finally easing into something lighter, and tip my head back to look up at him — this scarred, dangerous, fiercely gentle man who sold a decade of his life to protect a promise he never got to explain, who came back into my life exactly when I needed someone willing to stand between me and every threat I've been fighting alone for two years.
"I love you," I say, and the words come easier than I expect, twelve years of complicated grief finally resolving into something simple and true. "I think some part of me never stopped, even when I hated you for leaving. I love you, Damon."
Something in his face shifts entirely at that, twelve years of carried guilt and grief visibly loosening its grip all at once, replaced by an expression so open and unguarded that it steals my breath.
"I love you too," he says, voice rough with feeling.
"Never stopped for a single day. Not one, in twelve years.
" He pulls me closer, arm tightening around my waist, his hand coming to rest gently over mine where it's pressed against his chest. "You're home now, Selene.
Both of you. I'm not letting either of you go again, not for any reason, not for any debt anyone could ever demand of me.
Whatever it costs this time, I'm keeping you. "
I let myself believe him completely, for the first time in two years letting go of the careful calculation that's governed every relationship, every decision, every fragile piece of trust I've extended since I drove away from Richard's mansion with nothing but a packed bag and my daughter's hand in mine.
Outside, somewhere beyond these walls, I know the danger hasn't actually passed — Richard's still out there, still funding whatever violence he thinks will win him back the daughter he never truly wanted for the right reasons, and Red Jaw's still circling somewhere at the edges of Oakhaven's territory, waiting for an opening.
But here, in this quiet room with morning light falling soft across worn sheets, wrapped in the arms of a man who spent ten years of his life buying me a safety I never knew I needed, I let myself believe, just for now, that whatever comes next, I won't be facing it alone.
"Both of us," I echo softly, pressing closer against his chest, feeling his heartbeat steady and sure beneath my ear. "Home. I like the sound of that."
"Get used to it," he murmurs against my hair, voice thick with quiet certainty. "I'm not planning on it changing."