Warmth floods me, chasing some of the chill.
“So,” he says, inhaling like he’s about to jump off something high. “I’m not on one knee, and I don’t have a ring, and you’re in a hospital gown instead of somethin’ nice. But I’m askin’ anyway, because I don’t want there to be any doubt in your head or anybody else’s.”
He tightens his grip on my hand.
“Stay with me,” he says simply. “Here. In Lucy Falls. Or in Philly if you want. In whatever house we find that has enough room foryour books and my bad decisions. Marry me when you’re ready, if you want it to be that. Or don’t. I’m not askin’ for a date or a dress. I’m askin’ foryou. To be mine, and for me to be yours, in a way no one else gets to define.”
My heart cracks open. Terror and joy and disbelief all crash together.
“Bran,” I say, voice shaking. “I—I want that,” I say. “All of it. The coffee. The shoes. The…idiocy.” I swallow. “You.”
His shoulders drop like he’s just set down a load he’s been carrying for miles. “So…” he prompts, eyes too bright. “Is that a yes?”
“Yes,” I say. “Obviously yes. Have you met me?”
His laugh is half-choked. He leans in and kisses me, soft, careful of the wires.
The monitor blips a little faster. I don’t care. When he pulls back, I rest my forehead against his.
“I love you too, you know,” I murmur. “In case that wasn’t clear from the part where I yelled at a mob boss in a hospital gown.”
“It was strongly implied,” he says.
We breathe together for a minute. The world outside this room is still a mess.
Henry Thurston is still out there, somewhere, licking his wounds and sharpening his teeth.
Later, there will be more maps, more patrol schedules, more hard conversations about what it means to live with a shadow like Henry’s on the edge of town.
But right now, in this narrow bed with Bran’s hand wrapped around mine and my heart finally admitting what it’s known for weeks, I let myself have this.
Not as bait.
Not as decoration.
But as a girl who got chased and decided to stop running away and start choosing what she runstoward.
“I guess this means you live here now,” I say softly. “With me.”
He smiles, slow and sure. “Yeah,” he says. “I do.”
“Kael’s going to be insufferable about this at Christmas,” I add.
“He already is,” Bran says. “We’ll survive.”
I close my eyes, letting the beeping fade into the background, letting the weight of his love and mine settle into something that feels a lot like home.
Henry can keep running. We’ll be here when he circles back.
And next time, he’s not the only one writing the ending.
THIRTY-TWO
BRAN
Hospitalsatnightallfeel the same.
Doesn’t matter if you’re in Dublin, Belfast, or a small town in Virginia—there’s always that humming, too-bright limbo where time stops making sense and everything smells like bleach.
