Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
NAOMI
The suitcase is packed by midnight.
Took less time than it should have. Clothes folded, toiletries zipped into the front pocket with the broken zipper, shoes lined up by the door.
My grandmother's Bible sits on top, cracked cover facing up.
Everything I own, organized and ready to move in under fifteen minutes.
Running is a skill, and I'm very good at it.
Sitting on the edge of the spare room bed, I stare at the bag.
The room is dim, just the moonlight through the window casting silver across the floor.
Down the hall, the cabin is silent. No creaking floorboards.
No coffee machine. Sully is either asleep or sitting in the dark, which seems more likely.
My hands aren't shaking anymore. They shook for the first hour. The hour after telling a man my worst truth, watching his face close down, hearing him reduce everything we've built in a week to the word "complication." Now they're steady. Numb. The body's way of preparing for what comes next.
Edmonton after I left Matt. Saskatoon after he found me in Edmonton.
A shelter in Winnipeg that smelled like bleach.
A church basement in Thunder Bay where a woman named Gloria gave me a coat and a phone number for Sanctuary Match.
Each place smaller, quieter, further from anything resembling a life.
And now this. The furthest I've ever run, the most beautiful place I've ever found, and the first man who made me think maybe I could stop.
Gone in the morning.
Pulling my knees up, I press my forehead against them. The ache in my chest is enormous. Not the sharp, panicked ache of Matt's violence, but the slow, crushing weight of having something taken away by someone who was scared of keeping it.
Because that's what happened. Sully didn't reject me because of Matt.
He rejected me because of himself. Because his mother left, his father died, his grandmother died, and every person who's ever mattered to him has disappeared.
Loving people is a losing bet in Sullivan Cross's universe, and I walked in holding a hand full of cards he didn't want to read.
He's scared. I know scared. I've been scared for two years. But fear doesn't feel any less devastating when you understand where it comes from.
Three a.m. The cabin settles around me. Wood contracting in the cold. An owl outside, distant, patient. The Herefords are quiet in the pasture. Everything peaceful except the wreckage in my chest.
Then the floorboards creak.
Slow. Deliberate. Stopping outside my door.
My body goes tense. Old reflex. Matt used to stand outside doors. Waiting. Building the silence into something that pressed against your ribcage until you couldn't breathe.
"Naomi." Low. Rough. Not angry. Something else entirely. "Please don't be packed."
Silence. My fingers grip my knees.
"Please."
That word, from a man who talks to cattle more willingly than people, cracks something open in me.
He doesn't say please. Not to Rebecca on the phone, not to the stubborn tractor, not to the heifer that kicked over the water trough yesterday.
Sullivan Cross is a man who operates in statements, not requests.
Getting up, I open the door.
He's standing in the hallway in jeans and nothing else. Bare feet on the cold floor. Hair wrecked from running his hands through it. Eyes red. Not from crying. From something worse. The raw, sleepless look of a man who spent three hours staring at a ceiling and lost an argument with himself.
His gaze drops to the suitcase behind me. His jaw clenches.
"You're packed."
"What did you expect?"
The question isn't cruel. Just tired. So goddamn tired of being the woman with one suitcase who's ready to go before the dust settles.
"I expected you to fight me on it." He swallows hard. "You fight me on everything. The spices. The coffee ratio. Whether Gerald is a good name for a bull."
"Gerald is a great name for a bull."
"Naomi." His voice breaks on my name. Actually breaks, splitting down the middle so the raw part shows through.
"I got scared. I got so scared I did the thing I always do, which is push first so I don't have to feel it when someone leaves.
And you walked into that spare room with your bag in the closet because you already knew, didn't you? You already knew I'd do this."
My throat tightens. "I hoped you wouldn't."
"I know." He runs a hand down his face. "Gran would've slapped me sideways. She'd have said, 'Sullivan James Cross, that woman baked you sweet potato pie and you made her sleep alone, you absolute donkey.'"
A laugh escapes before I can catch it. Watery. Shaky. But real.
"She called you a donkey?"
"Regularly." He leans his shoulder against the doorframe.
Close now. The hallway is narrow. His chest is right there, warm skin, dark hair, breathing hard.
"Here's the thing. I've been alone on this mountain for a long time.
Alone was safe. Alone meant nobody could leave because there was nobody to go.
Then you showed up with your suitcase and your grandmother's Bible, making my coffee right, naming my cattle, sleeping in my bed.
And when you told me about Matt, the fear wasn't about him. It was about you."
"About me."
"About losing you. About caring this much after a week. About sitting on this porch when I'm sixty watching that road, wondering if today's the day you pack the bag and go down the mountain like everybody else."
My heart is hammering. Every defense I have left wants to build a wall, protect the soft parts, prepare for the moment this dissolves into another goodbye. But his eyes are locked on mine with an honesty so complete it hurts to look at.
"Here's what I came to say." He straightens off the doorframe.
"I don't want you to go. Not tomorrow. Not next month.
Not when Matt is a memory neither of us thinks about anymore.
If he shows up at this cabin, I will handle it.
Not because you need protecting. Because you're mine, and nobody touches what's mine. "
The breath leaves my lungs.
"I know that sounds like something a crazy person says after a week."
"It sounds like something your grandmother would've written in a letter."
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. "Gran's exact words were, 'Sully needs a woman who won't let him calcify.' I'm pretty sure she meant you."
Stepping forward, I close the distance between us. My palms press flat against his bare chest. His heart is hammering as hard as mine. This man, this big, stubborn, terrified man who talks to cows and reads crossword clues like love poems, is shaking under my hands.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say. "But I need you to hear me.
I have spent two years running from a man who thought he owned me.
If I stay, it's because I choose to. Every day.
Not because you carried my suitcase or fixed my door or told Sanctuary Match you'd be at the bus stop. Because I want this. I want you."
He pulls me against him so fast my feet leave the floor. Both arms wrapped around my waist, face buried in my neck, breathing ragged. Warm. Solid. Real.
"I love you." Rough. Muffled against my skin. "I know it's too soon. I don't care."
"It's not too soon." My fingers tangle in his hair. "It's right on time."
He laughs against my neck. A real laugh, vibrating through both of us.
Then his mouth finds mine, and the laughing stops.
This kiss is different from every one before it.
Open. Unhurried. Not driven by storm-dark urgency or the desperate need to feel something besides loneliness.
This is a man kissing a woman he almost lost, tasting her with the focused attention of someone who has decided, fully and irreversibly, to stay.
My back meets the hallway wall. His thigh presses between mine. Every point of contact ignites. His hand slides up my shirt, palm spreading across my ribcage, thumb brushing the underside of my breast.
"Bed," I whisper.
"Yours or mine?"
"Ours."
The word transforms his face. Jaw softening, eyes going dark, a look of such raw want my knees almost give. He lifts me. My legs wrap around his waist. Three steps and we're through his door. Our door.
He lays me on the sheets that still smell like both of us. Pulls my shirt over my head. Stops.
"What?"
"Looking at you." His thumb traces along my collarbone. Down between my breasts. Over the soft curve of my stomach. "Making sure this is real."
"It's real. Get down here."
He grins. Then drops his mouth to my nipple, sucking hard enough to make my back arch while his hand works my shorts down my hips. Two fingers slide through the wetness between my thighs. My whole body jerks.
"Missed this." His mouth moves to my other breast. "Missed the way you sound when I touch you."
"It's been twelve hours."
"Longest twelve hours of my life."
Those fingers push inside me. Slow, deep, curling against the spot that makes my toes curl. His thumb circles my clit with a pressure so precise it borders on cruel. He knows my body already. Knows the rhythm, the angle, the exact moment when building becomes breaking.
"Sully. Please."
"Yeah." He strips his jeans. Rolls on a condom. Settles between my thighs with his weight braced on his forearms. Pushes inside with one slow, devastating stroke.
Full. Stretched. Connected in a way that goes past physical and straight into something I've never had before. His forehead drops to mine. Both of us breathing hard.
Then he moves. Deep, steady strokes that build in intensity. My nails drag down his back. His hand grips my thigh, pulling my leg higher, changing the angle until every thrust drags across my clit. The pressure coils tighter. Tighter.
"Look at me." Low. Commanding.
My eyes open. His are right there. Storm-gray, blown dark, locked on mine. Watching my face as he fucks me slow and thorough and intentional.
"I love you," he says again, punctuated by a thrust that sends sparks up my spine.
The orgasm rolls through me in a long, shuddering wave. He follows with a groan that shakes his whole body, hips grinding deep as he comes.
We lie tangled afterward. His arm heavy across my waist. My head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow.
"The suitcase," he says after a while.
"What about it?"
"Unpack it. For real this time. And leave it in the closet."
Smiling against his skin, I press a kiss to his sternum. "First thing in the morning."
"Good." A pause. "And Naomi?"
"Hmm?"
"Gerald is a terrible name for a bull."
"Gerald is a distinguished name for a bull."
His chest shakes with laughter. The cabin settles around us, warm, and alive in contrast to the still mountains outside under a sky full of stars.
Down the hall, my suitcase sits packed. Ready to go.
Tomorrow, for the first time in two years, I'm going to unpack it. All the way. Every drawer. Every shelf. And then I'm going to shove it so deep in the back of that closet it never sees daylight again.
Because I'm done running.