My throat locked hard.
“Not today,” I said, firm and sure. “Not ever like that. You hear me?”
She nodded just a little, tears spillin’ free now. I wiped them away gentle, my thumb rough against her cheek compared to how soft she was.
“I didn’t know if you’d find me,” she murmured.
My jaw clenched.
“I will always find you,” I told her.
Her eyes slid shut again as exhaustion pulled her back under, but her grip stayed tight, like sleep itself might steal me away if she loosened it.
I stayed right there, holding on.
Because saving her had only been the beginnin’.
Now came the part where I made damn sure she never had to survive alone again.
That is if she forgive me.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
MORNING HAD COMEand gone before I eventhought about getting out of bed. I’d woken up sore and half-dreaming, body aching like it had been dragged behind something mean and fast, and for a second, I thought maybe Chain had never found me. That maybe it had all been a fever dream cooked up by my own desperation.
But I’d blinked, and the room had stayed solid. The clothes I wore weren’t mine, the bruises were real, and the bed was warm—but empty.
Chain hadn’t been there when I woke.
And even as I missed him, even as I’d stared at the spot where his bodyshould’vebeen, I couldn’t ignore the twist in my chest. The ache wasn’t just physical. It was the weight of everything we’d left unsaid.
Now, hours later, the porch swing creaked beneath me, moving in a slow, easy rhythm like it had all the time in the world and nowhere it needed to be. The evening air wrapped around my skin, warm and heavy, carrying the scent of pine, oil, and the faintest thread of smoke drifting from somewhere behind the clubhouse. My muscles still throbbed from fear and flight and survival, and bruises bloomed beneath borrowed clothes in colors I hadn’t seen on my skin in years.
But I was upright. Breathing. Alive.
That alone felt like a victory I hadn’t been promised.
I pushed my bare foot against the porch post, setting the swing into another gentle arc. The chains rattled softly, a familiar sound, grounding in a way nothing else had been since the bunker.
Footsteps sounded behind me.
I didn’t turn. I knew who it was before the boards even creaked beneath his boots.
Chain stopped a few feet back, close enough that I could feel him without seeing him. Careful enough that it felt deliberate. He always did that with me now, like he was afraid one wrong move might send me running.
The silence stretched between us, not awkward, just heavy. Full.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “You mind if I sit, darlin’?”
I shrugged, my gaze fixed on the dark yard ahead. “It’s a free porch.”
He took the invitation and lowered himself onto the swing beside me, careful not to jostle it. His weight shifted the balance,changed the rhythm, steadied it. That felt like him in a nutshell. He didn’t try to take control. He just anchored.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
His knee hovered close to mine without touching, like he didn’t trust himself with even that.
“I been wantin’ to say this since the bunker,” he said finally, his voice rough with exhaustion and that familiar Southern drawl. “But I figured you needed space. Time. Hell, I probably don’t deserve either.”
