A broken laugh escapes me. “You mean when I bought you?”
She thumps my chest. “When you chose me.”
FBI boots crunch outside. Snow whips against the windows.
But inside our little world, everything is finally, beautifully still.
Chapter 19
Wyatt
I don’t remember the drive.
Not the roads, not the storm. Not Tank yelling out the window at an FBI blockade to move their city asses.
Not Tex promising to “debrief later, sweetheart.”
None of it sticks.
I remember only this: Sadie alive and warm beside me. Breathing.
Everything else is static.
We reach my cabin, and before the truck even stops, she’s unbuckling.
I’m out of my door, around the front, and yanking hers open just as she launches into me.
Her body slams into my chest, legs wrapping around my hips, arms around my neck, clinging as if she can’t get close enough. She’s trembling.
I don’t know if it’s cold, adrenaline, or the crash after terror, but I know exactly how to stop the shaking.
I grab her ass, lift her higher, and kiss her like I need oxygen from her mouth.
Because I do.
The door almost doesn’t open because I’m too busy kissing her, too busy letting her devour me back. But then it slams behind us, hard enough to shake the frame, and we’re alone.
No Clarissa. No guns. No fear.
Just us.
And the dam breaks.
I back her against the door, my palms braced beside her head, breath shaking out of me in uneven bursts.
“You scared the shit out of me.”
Sadie pulls me down by the collar, kissing me again—desperate, messy, perfect.
“I know. I know. I’m sorry, Wyatt, I’m so sorry?—”
“Don’t apologize,” I growl against her throat. “You survived. That’s all that matters.”
Her thighs tighten around my hips. She’s warm and alive and here, and that knowledge hits me so hard I almost drop.
“Wyatt,” she breathes, pupils blown wide.
I hold her still with my body, chest pressed to hers, our breaths crashing together. “Tell me you’re here. Tell me you’re real.”
