Chapter 9 #2
Standing he kisses me, slow and deep. I taste myself.
“I want to be inside you.” He growls.
“Then, do it.” I whimper.
We don’t make it upstairs to the bed. He lifts me into his arms and carries me to the couch, lowering me down, and kneeling between my legs.
He drags his leaking tip through my folds, and I moan, arching against him, begging him to fill me.
“Please… please, Gruene.” He sinks inside with one long, aching thrust, filling me completely. My thighs widen to accommodate him.
No barriers between us. No distance. No pretending we don’t know exactly what this is.
I meet every thrust with a need that goes deeper than desire because this is how I survive. This is how he survives. By feeling something that’s only ours.
My back arches as he pounds into me over and over again. I wail and beg him to go harder and deeper. I want more. I want everything.
When we come, it’s together. I scream out his name, “Gruene… Ohhhhhh… ohhhhh, yes…” My climax triggers his and he grunts my name as he pumps into me once more, filling me.
It’s raw. It’s real. Everything we’re both feeling is unspoken. But he and I are hopelessly entangled. Together.
He collapses against me, his face buried in my neck, his breath shaking like something inside him just cracked open in our moment. I cherish it, wrapping my arms around him and holding on tight.
We’re not running anymore… and maybe that’s the scariest part of all.
Gruene
She’s asleep on my couch.
And I can’t look at her without feeling like my chest is caving in.
I’m not talking about guilt this time. I’m not talking about ghosts or grief.
I’m talking about her —this woman wrapped in a blanket, with trust in her breath, and fire in her bones. I keep trying to convince myself this is temporary, that we’re just colliding because it’s summer and it’s easy and I’m starved for something that hurts in a different way than memory.
She came to me tonight, after everything.
After Tyler.
After hearing that someone still out there wants to drag her back into a life she clawed her way out of. She came to me. Not to hide. To burn through it.
She used me to do it.
I let her.
I wanted her to.
But now she’s asleep beside me, safe for now, and all I can think is—I have no idea how to protect her without destroying both of us in the process.
Slipping out of my cabin just before sunrise, after dressing in silence, trying not to wake her, I walk down to the river with black coffee and the weight of my choices on my back.
The morning fog rolls off the water in thick waves, soft and gray and full of things I can’t name. My boots scuff against the rocks as I step onto the dock, and I sit at the edge with my feet hanging just above the current.
She swam this river.
Alone. Because she needed to take it back.
I just stood there, too locked in my own trauma to follow her in.
What kind of man does that?
By the time the sun clears the trees, I’ve made a decision.
I call someone I haven’t spoken to in years.
An old friend from my college days—now a PI who still owes me for keeping him out of jail on a drunk and disorderly when we were twenty-two.
He answers groggy. “Gruene. Jesus. Thought you died.”
“Need a favor.”
“Of course, you do.”
I give him what I know: Tyler’s full name. City. Old job. A couple of details Blakelyn let slip when she wasn’t watching her words.
“Find out what he’s doing. Where he is. And how he found her.”
“You serious?”
“Yup.”
There’s a pause on the line. “Alright. I’ll call you when I have something.”
“Soon.”
When I come back inside, she’s up. She’s not dressed. She’s not smiling. She’s just sitting on the edge of the couch with the blanket wrapped around her waist, her hair wild from sleep and her face bare and real and so damn beautiful it aches.
“You left,” she says, voice quiet.
“I had to make a call.”
She nods but doesn’t press.
That’s the thing about her—she never asks for more than I’m willing to give… which makes me want to give her everything.
“I’m trying,” I say.
She looks up. Meets my eyes. “I know.”
It should scare me, but it doesn’t.
It settles something in my chest I didn’t realize was loose.
We eat breakfast together. We don’t talk about the sex between us.
Or the note I left on the pillow when I couldn’t stay beside her.
Or the fact that though she’s in my bed, I’m not with her in it.
We don’t talk about the way she whimpered my name when I slid inside her without hesitation, like it wasn’t even a question if I belonged there.
We talk about the school year coming up. Supplies. The hallway she hopes she’ll get. Whether the kids call her Miss Walker or Miss Blakelyn.
She blushes when she says it, like she’s afraid it sounds silly.
It doesn’t. It sounds like a life she’s rebuilding one careful brick at a time. And I realize… I want to be part of it.
Later, I walk her across to her cabin.
She hesitates at the door. “Do you think he’s going to come back here for me?”
“I think he’s someone who doesn’t give up control easy. And you took yours back.”
She looks down at her hands. Her knuckles are white from gripping the towel looped around her wrist. “I don’t want him to take it, again.”
“He won’t.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“I’m not promising, Blakelyn. I’m ensuring. ”
She nods.
I don’t kiss her. Not this time. I just press my hand to her cheek and look her straight in the eye and say, “You’re not alone anymore.”
Closing her eyes, she leans into my touch and whispers, “Okay.”
I head into town, when the sun is touching the tops of the trees and the heat is so aggressive it feels like a punch in the face.
It’s the first time I’ve been into Juniper Falls for something other than gas, the library, or a supply run in months.
People notice. They nod. Wave. Some don’t even try to pretend they’re not surprised to see me on Main Street in daylight like a normal person.
At the general store, I pick up extra locks.
Motion lights. A set of battery-powered cameras.
At the hardware shop, I grab heavy-duty nails, anchors, and a second hammer.
When I get back to my truck, I double-check the tool bag and the crowbar, just in case.
If Tyler’s is stupid enough to show up, I’m going to be ready and I’m not waiting until she’s terrified, again, to act.
When I get back to the cabins, I install the lights and cameras around both. I don’t ask her. I just do it.
She comes out when I’m halfway through.
“You’re setting up security?” She asks with furrows between her brows.
“Yeah.” I reply.
Her face tightens. “You think he’s coming and I need all of this?” She waves at the lights and motion detectors.
“I think it’s better to be over-prepared than too late.”
She doesn’t argue.
Instead, she kneels down beside me and holds the ladder steadily while I mount the last sensor above her front door.
We don’t talk while I work but her hands don’t tremble when they grip the ladder frame. That’s progress. When I step down, she’s still there… not running… not hiding… just here.
I’m on my porch with a beer in one hand and my phone in the other listening to the night sounds when my contact calls.
“Got something.”
“Talk.”
“Your guy’s not working. Laid off. Filed for unemployment three weeks ago.”
My throat goes tight. “He has access to teacher records?” I ask.
He says, “It’s honestly not hard to find. Anyone with any kind of computer knowledge can get it if they look hard enough. It’s a public school.”
I grit my teeth. “Great. Where is he?”
“Still in Austin. But I’ll keep an eye out. If he moves, you’ll know.”
I thank him and sit in the dark for a long time, listening to the river move.
I have no doubt that fucker will be back. Especially since he’s now also got no employer and not a lot to lose.