Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
YOU CAN’T HAVE HIM
HENRY
After that wild, messy paint session last night, we crashed hard—blue streaks smeared across our skin like war paint from a battle we fought and won together.
The sheets were drenched, ruined beyond saving, but I didn’t give a damn.
Once we woke, we slipped into the shower, the hot water pounding down like a drum, steam curling thick and heavy, swallowing us whole.
I pressed her back against the cold tile, hands gripping the curve of her hips, holding her like I was afraid she’d slip through my fingers.
No frantic hunger this time—just a slow-burning heat that wrapped around us, raw and honest. Her skin was slick and warm beneath my palms, breath hitching in that perfect way that always made my heart slam against my ribs.
She tilted her head, eyes dark and shimmering, lips parting in a fragile, trembling whisper: “I love you, Henny.”
God damn. That confession hit me like a punch to the gut and a firestorm all at once—tender and fierce, breaking down every wall I thought I’d built. I kissed her then, slow and searing, like I was trying to carve her into me, memorize the way her mouth tasted before the world tore us apart.
Walking through the station doors now, that heat still roars beneath my skin, a fierce promise I can’t shake. I see the way she loves Dallas—every fierce, wild, unrelenting part of her—and I’m damn proud she said it aloud.
Most don’t see it—how she’s wrapped tight in family, soaked in love, yet still haunted by those relentless whispers telling her she’s not enough.
How her worth got tangled in a body that betrayed her, and worse, how she let herself become her own worst enemy.
She owns every brutal truth—the mistakes, the doubts, the self-sabotage.
When she stumbles, she doesn’t hide; she stands taller, fiercer, raw and real.
Was I pissed at her for wasting all those years?
Hell yeah, I’m only fucking human. Watching her flinch away from the good, sabotage the soft things, bury every God damn feeling under grit and fear—it made me want to shake her and hold her in the same breath.
But how could I stay mad at the girl life kept knocking flat, the one who had love yanked from her hands every time she got close to it, and still. .. still she got up swinging?
That kind of strength? That kind of fight? You don’t punish it—you honor it.
So yeah, fuck all that resentment. I choose to see what matters—that she finally looked up and saw what had been standing in front of her all along.
Me. Us. This messy, hard-won thing we built.
Am I still a little bitter she wouldn’t let me drag her down to the Justice of the Peace and make it official?
Sure. I’d have married her a thousand times over if she let me.
But I understood. It isn’t just about her and me anymore.
It’s Dallas too. He deserves more than a quick fix. He deserves roots. A foundation.
If I’m being honest? I don’t need a judge to tell me what I already know. She’s mine. In every fight, every kiss, every God damn breath—we chose each other. No paper in the world can make that feel more real.
Dallas bitching about bait while I pretend not to let him win on the lake.
Lou barefoot in the kitchen, paint smudged on her cheek, humming under her breath like she forgot how to be guarded.
Evenings spent tangled up at that scratched-up table—her sketching, Dallas scribbling, and me pretending to do paperwork while really just soaking it all in. Her laugh. His smart-ass grin.
I’ve never belonged to anyone like I do them. Not just in the heat of things, not just when it’s easy. In the quiet. In the grit. In the life we’re building from the ashes.
I don’t want anything else. This—her, Dallas, the smell of home and the weight of it in my chest—is enough.
More than enough.
Sometimes when shit feels too good to be true, it’s because it is.
I’m sitting here half-arguing with Cece about finally remodeling the damn time warp of a sheriff station—her rolling her eyes, me pretending I give a shit about backsplash—when the bell above the front door chimes.
Just that soft jingle, the one I’ve heard a thousand times, and suddenly my whole body goes still.
Rue walks in.
Whoomph! Just like that, it’s like someone sucks all the air right out of the room.
The words stall on my tongue. Cece’s voice fades out. Because I know. I fucking know.
The way her face is set, the tension in her jaw, the hesitation in her steps—it’s all written there, plain as day.
It’s the same one I’ve seen on parents too late to stop the wreck, on witnesses before they testify, on people who’ve carried bad news in their guts so long they don’t know where they end and the grief begins.
Whatever she’s carrying, whatever the hell’s about to come out of her mouth, it’s not just going to shift the ground beneath me. It’s going to rip my entire world apart at the seams.
My heart stutters, chest tightening like a vise. I meet Rue’s eyes, desperate for anything but the truth I already feel crawling beneath my skin.
“Tell me.”
She swallows, voice fragile as she finally says it, “Dallas’s father…he’s been found. He’s petitioned for custody.”
The room feels like it’s closing in, my breath shallow and ragged, the walls pressing closer with every heartbeat. The air thickens with dread until I can’t hold it in anymore. I snap, voice raw and fierce, “Well, he can’t fucking have him.”
I dig my nails into the edge of the desk, the rough wood biting into my skin as hot tears sting the back of my eyes, blurring the world. This isn’t just a fight over custody—it’s a reckoning, an exposed wound that bleeds straight through to my soul.
“I’m so sorry, Henry,” Rue whispers, her voice barely audible, heavy with the weight of a truth no one wanted to hear.
All I want is to scream it—to shout that Dallas belongs here, that he’s mine, now and always. But the silence is a crushing weight, swallowing every word before it even forms.
Because sometimes the hardest battle isn’t in claiming what you want—it’s in facing the shattering loss you never saw coming.