I was smoothing the blanket when Gabriel’s voice came from behind me.“What are you doing?”
I turned and found him propped on one elbow, hair mussed, eyes heavy with sleep.The harsh gray cast had left his face, replaced by a more natural pallor that still looked worn but no longer brushed up against death.The bandages wrapped around his torso had dark stains but no fresh bloom of red.When he shifted, pain etched around his mouth, although his jaw clenched through it, determined not to show more than he had to.
“Making us somewhere better to rest,” I said.I gestured toward the nest of cushions and blanket.“The pews have terrible bedside manners.”
He glanced from the arrangement back to my face.Something softened in his expression, a small shift that felt larger than it looked.“You did not have to do that.”
“I know.”I lowered myself onto the edge of the cushions and watched him, watched the way he studied me like he still could not quite believe I was there.“I wanted to.”
He pushed himself upright slowly, one hand braced against the pew, every movement careful.Crossing the distance between us cost him, I could see that in the tightness around his eyes, but he never paused.When he sank down beside me on the cushions, the relief that crossed his face told me the pain had been worth it.We sat shoulder to shoulder in the colored light, not touching at first, the silence between us full but not heavy.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.“For yesterday.For keeping me here when my body wanted to quit.”
“I could not let you go.”The admission came without effort now.The fight against it had burned out somewhere during the night.“Not after everything.”
His hand found mine on the blanket, fingers lacing through my fingers in a way that felt both new and oddly familiar.We sat like that while dust motes drifted through blue and gold, while the church settled and creaked around us in slow, tired sounds.No speeches, no apologies.Just shared warmth and steady breathing, small proof that we were both still alive.
When I looked over, he was already watching me.Gone was the professional mask, the killer’s distance, the blank obedience Vincent had carved into him.Vulnerability sat openly in his eyes, chosen instead of forced.He looked at me as if my presence hurt and healed at the same time.No one had ever watched me like that before, not with that combination of hunger and reverence and quiet fear.
I leaned in and kissed him.Gentle, careful, my palm braced against his chest to avoid the worst of his wounds.His lips pressed back with equal care, his hand coming up to cradle my jaw, thumb stroking lightly along my cheekbone.When we separated, breath mingling in the narrow space between us, words felt unnecessary.The truth had already been spoken the night before.This kiss was agreement, not confession.
When we touched again, the pace changed.The cabin had been all edges and urgency, the sense that every moment might be our last pushing us to grasp hard and fast.Here the movements took on a different weight.Choice rather than desperation.Deliberate tenderness instead of frantic need.I helped him unwrap the outer bandages so I could assess the wound beneath, fingers working carefully around scabbed edges.The injuries looked ugly but cleaner, the skin less inflamed.He winced but did not stop me, eyes on my face instead of his own pain.
“These will leave scars,” I murmured, tracing the uninjured skin near one wound.
“Everything worth remembering does,” he said, his hand following the line of my jaw.“We carry it or we break.”
I kissed him again, deeper this time, letting the warmth of his mouth wash away the chill lingering in my bones.We undressed each other slowly, careful where his stitches and bruises hid, learning when to pause and when to press forward.The cushions gave under our weight, the blanket wrapping around our bodies when we lay down.The world outside the church fell away until there was only breath and skin and the quiet rush of blood in my ears.
Making love in that ruined sanctuary felt like an act of defiance and grace at once.Every touch said we were still here, still capable of gentleness in a life built on violence.The colored light turned our bodies into shifting mosaics, blue and red sliding over the curve of his shoulder, gold catching along my ribs where his fingers traced idle patterns.His hands were careful, reverent in a way that made my throat tighten, as if he tried to memorize each reaction, each small sound I made.When he whispered my name against my throat, it sounded like something sacred rather than something broken.
Our bodies moved together in a rhythm that had nothing to do with survival and everything to do with choosing to live.Each kiss felt like a promise we had no idea how to keep, although we offered it anyway.For a little while there was no family, no blood on his hands, no hit squads carving paths through snow to finish what Vincent had started.Just warmth where there had been cold, softness where there had been rope and fear, shelter in a place long abandoned by the people who had built it.
Afterward we stayed wrapped around each other, neither of us eager to face whatever waited outside our small circle of stolen peace.The light crept slowly across our skin, shifting from deep colors to paler shades as the sun climbed.Gabriel’s fingers threaded through my hair in slow strokes, steady enough that I knew he did it on purpose rather than out of habit.I rested my head carefully against his chest, above uninjured ribs, listening to the strong, even beat beneath my ear.
“When my ribs knit,” he said eventually, voice low and rough, “I will send you away.Somewhere far from Vincent.Somewhere he cannot reach.I have money hidden and contacts who owe me favors.You can take a new name, disappear, start over.”
“No.”I lifted my head, the word out before he finished.Surprise flickered across his features, then confusion.“I am not leaving you.”
“Mia, think for a minute.”His brow furrowed, frustration mixing with concern.“The family will not stop.Running with me paints a target on you that never fades.If you go on your own, you have a chance to disappear.If you stay, they will use you to get to me.Vincent will—”
“I know exactly what Vincent will do.”My voice sharpened, steadier than I felt inside.“I know the smart move.Take your money, vanish, pretend this never happened.I know that is what anyone else would tell me to do.I know it would be safer.”I held his gaze and refused to look away.“I am still not leaving.”
His mouth opened and closed once, arguments forming and dissolving.I watched him search for words strong enough to push me away for my own good, saw each one die before reaching his lips.“Why?”he finally asked.
“Because I love you,” I said, and this time the words settled instead of cracking something open.“Because you chose me when every part of your life told you to pull the trigger.Because you walked into a storm with me and bled through the snow rather than let go.Because whatever comes next, I would rather face it with you than build a safer life without you.”
Whatever wall he had left crumbled at that.I saw it happen, saw control give way to something raw and honest.His arms came around me and he pulled me in, not careful now, not measured.Just holding.His face pressed into my hair and his shoulders shook, small tremors that betrayed tears I could not see but felt against my scalp.
“Together then,” he said, voice muffled.“No matter what we run from.”
“Together,” I repeated, the word lodging deep inside my chest like a stake I had chosen on purpose.
The church around us groaned softly as the day settled over its roof.Stained glass spilled color over broken pews and flaking plaster, proof that beauty did not vanish when people stopped showing up to look at it.The crooked cross on the altar still stood, even if not at the proper angle, stubborn in its refusal to fall completely.Our sanctuary was damaged, forgotten, half-ruined.So were we.
I thought of my parents and my brother, my poor cousin who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, of the life I had lost in one violent night.I thought of the girl who had walked into her childhood home expecting cocoa and Christmas lights, who had hidden in a closet and listened to her world end one gunshot at a time.She could not exist alongside the woman lying here now, tangled in the arms of the man who had pulled the trigger.One life had replaced another.No return possible.
Maybe that did not have to mean I was lost.Maybe people could grow in the cracks that violence left behind.Maybe love born in ruin did not cancel out grief, but could stand beside it without shame.I did not know if I believed in redemption in the way religion taught, but I believed in the choice I had made.In the choice Gabriel had made.In the stubborn insistence that we could be more than the worst moments that had shaped us.
