Chapter 12 #2
Blue followed. “Sorry, buddy,” he said. “I promise extra treats as soon as I’m done here.”
He closed the door. The room was small but filled with warm colors, mismatched textiles, a stack of books on the nightstand with their spines facing different directions, and a cardigan thrown over the chair in the corner.
He sat her on the edge of her bed. She reached past him to turn on the lamp.
When she turned back, the openness in her expression caught him unprepared.
He’d expected some last wall, some reflex of self-protection.
Instead, she slid out of her pants and stood close enough that they were nearly touching, letting him see everything—the nervousness, the want, the bone-deep weariness.
She’d spent her whole life taking care of everyone around her, managing their fear, keeping everyone in her orbit steadier than she felt herself. He’d watched her do it when they were kids and again over the past few days. He hated that there was no one doing it for her.
He intended to fix that, starting now. He kissed her again, hard, taking his time and hoping to convey everything that was in his heart.
She returned the kiss, her hands roaming over him. When she finally broke away and lay down on the bed, she parted her knees to him, and it felt better than any of his courtroom wins.
He’d been half-afraid she might armor herself out of habit, that a woman who’d spent years being capable and careful might not remember how to be taken care of. But once she let go, all of that peeled away and she guided him in.
They moved together, their bodies remembering each other. To him, it felt as if no time had passed.
The rhythm built. She cried out his name, bucking under him, and he thrust into her again, over and over as she rode out the orgasm. His own followed swiftly. His vision whited out and his body molded against hers.
He made himself a quiet promise that he would spend whatever time she gave him making her call his name exactly like that again.
Afterward, they lay in the quiet of her bedroom with the lamp still on. He tucked her against his side, and she laid her head on his shoulder. Her hand rested on his chest. He could feel her heartbeat begin to slow.
He held her and stared at the ceiling and thought about that morning all those years ago—standing in a doorway with his boots in his hand and every reason he’d assembled for why leaving was the right thing to do in his head.
He’d spent years calling that decision honorable.
Standing in the kitchen tonight watching her hold her own arms against the refrigerator because there was nothing else to hold onto, he’d finally understood what it had actually been.
He’d been scared that she’d take a risk on him and he’d fail her.
He’d decided she didn’t deserve that possibility and called it protection.
She’d deserved the chance to decide for herself.
“You’re still here,” Holly said.
He turned his head. She was watching him, her cheek against his shoulder. “That was the plan,” he said.
“It’s a good plan.” She traced the edge of his collarbone with one finger, and he felt the warmth of it as if it had sunk clear to his chest. “I meant what I said earlier,” she said.
“About carrying everything alone?”
She nodded against his shoulder. “You didn’t fix that, and I don’t expect you to.” She let out a long breath. “But it helped. Being allowed to put it down for a minute.”
He pressed his mouth to her temple. “You can put it down as long as you need.”
She was quiet after that, and he let the silence settle around them without filling it.
She’d been teaching him that without intending to, just by being a person whose quiet held things worth waiting for.
He could feel the day unwinding through her body, the tension easing out of her in slow degrees, the way it did when someone finally stopped bracing for the next thing.
“Reid?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t go anywhere.”
He pulled her closer, until her head settled fully against his shoulder and her arm crossed his chest, and he felt her breathing even out into something slower. The lamp spread warm light across the wall. Blue’s snoring began a steady rhythm on the other side of the door.
“Not going anywhere,” he murmured in her hair.
He stayed awake longer than she did. Old habit, partly—he’d logged too many late watches to drop off easily in an unfamiliar bed—but mostly he didn’t want to miss this.
The way the apartment felt settled. The steady weight of her against him.
Her fingers had curled loosely into his side, holding on even in sleep with the same stubborn grip she brought to everything else.
Reid stared up at the ceiling and let the old fear about deserving things settle to a distance he could manage. He didn’t know if he’d earned this yet. He suspected he’d spend a long time working to make himself worthy of it.
But Holly was asleep against his shoulder in the apartment above the coffee shop she’d built from stubbornness and a faith in people that exhausted and humbled him in equal measure. More than that, she’d asked him to stay.
He’d come back to Blackridge for his grandfather. He’d taken the assignment because Claire needed someone inside the shop. He’d walked through Sanctuary’s door, and Holly had looked at him across the counter as if he had no right to exist in the life she’d built without him.
She hadn’t been wrong.
He was going to earn the right now.