The cursor blinks at the end of a sentence I've written and rewritten a dozen times.
I delete it and start again.
She looked at him—this orc who was supposed to be a monster, who cooked her breakfast and cleaned her wounds and stood between her and every threat the world threw at them—and she knew.
She was finally his.
I sit back and read it again.
That's it. That's the one.
I type two more words.
THE END.
The cursor blinks after them, but there isn't more. This one is finished.
My first book since Atlanta. Since everything.
I want to scream. I want to call someone. I want to run outside and tackle Diesel into the dirt and make him read every page while I watch his face.
Instead, I just sit here, grinning at my laptop.
Marlene's going to lose her mind. My agent wasn't thrilled when I told her I was moving two hours outside Atlanta to live with an orc mechanic in a cottage that didn't have reliable WiFi. But after I sent her the first three chapters, she changed her tune. "Whatever he's doing," she said, "don't let him stop."
Through the kitchen window, I see Diesel working on the truck that's been "almost finished" for three months now. Tank top clinging to his back because it's August and the Georgia heat is brutal, and also because he knows exactly what it does to me. Sweat tracks down his back, catches the light—and so do the scars. Two of them, still pink and raised on his shoulder and side—six months old and mine. Healing faster than the graze on my shoulder, because of course they are. Orcs. His shoulders flex as he reaches for something under the hood, and I catch the hitch in the movement, the way he compensates without thinking. He doesn't complain about it, never has. But I see it every time.
I'm wearing his shirt, the gray one. I stopped pretending I was going to give it back around month two.
Since I moved in, he's been on a mission. Built-in bookshelves in the living room so I'd stop stacking paperbacks on the floor. New shutters on the bedroom window because I mentioned once—once—that the morning light woke me up too early. Last week he cleared the brush in the backyard, said I could plant a garden if I wanted.
I haven't told him I have no idea how to garden. I'll figure it out. Or I'll kill everything and he'll pretend not to notice.
The news called it a deal gone wrong. Dirty cop, drugs, debts—the kind of story that writes itself. Nova made sure my name stayed out of it.
The guilt over pulling the trigger never came, and I stopped waiting around month three.
***
The screen door bangs, pulling me back.
I hear heavy footsteps across the porch, then the kitchen. The smell of him hits me before I turn around—sweat and sawdust and skin.
He fills the doorway—too big for the frame, too big for the room, too big for this whole damn cottage.
His tank top is stretched across his chest, grease on his forearms, a dark smear across his jaw. He's looking at me the way he does when he's been thinking instead of working.
"You've been at that thing all day."
His voice is rough, low and worn.
"I know." I spin the laptop so he can see the screen. "Done."
He crosses the kitchen and stops behind my chair. The heat of him reaches me before his hands find my shoulders.
"You sure you don't mind that I'm dedicating it to Carver instead of you?"
His hands slide down over my collarbone, down my arms, then back up to settle on my hips.
