The orgasm ripped through me, spilling hot across his stomach, clenching tight around his cock. His pleasure answered mine. He was coming too, flooding me with heat, arching off the mattress as he cried out my name.
We collapsed together, breathing hard, slick with sweat and come and the evidence of what we'd built. I lay draped across his chest, his softening cock still inside me, his arms wrapped tight around my back.
"I never stopped loving you," he said against my hair. "Not for a single day."
The words hung in the air. I opened my mouth to respond, to say it back, to give him the confession he deserved.
Nothing came out.
I wanted to say it. Felt the truth of it pulsing in my chest, undeniable and overwhelming. But years with Vernon had broken something in me, had made words of love feeldangerous, weaponized, a vulnerability that could be used against me.
I pressed my forehead to his chest and let him feel what I couldn't speak. The depth of my feeling, the gratitude, the desperate hope that someday the words would come.
Min-ho's arms tightened around me. He pressed a kiss to the top of my head.
"I know," he murmured. "It's okay. I can wait."
I closed my eyes and let the silence hold us both.
***
Epilogue: Eight Months Later
Min-ho
I stood on the porch with a cup of coffee cooling in my hands and watched my family play in the yard.
Dalvin was teaching Eli to throw a football. Neither of them was particularly good at it. The ball wobbled through the air in ungainly spirals, and more often than not, Eli missed the catch entirely, dissolving into giggles as the ball bounced off his chest or rolled between his legs. But Dalvin kept throwing, kept encouraging, kept celebrating every accidental success with the enthusiasm of a man who had learned to find joy in small things.
Eight months. It had been eight months since The Chase, since the claiming, since I'd brought them home to the house I'd built for a family I'd only dreamed of having. Eight months of learning to share space, to build routines, to become something more than two broken people trying to heal.
The progress with Eli had been slow. Painfully slow, in those first weeks.
It took three months before he would stay in the same room with me without pressing himself against Dalvin's legs. Three months of keeping my voice soft, my movements slow, my presence as unthreatening as I could make it. Three months of sitting on the opposite side of the living room while he played,of eating meals at the far end of the table, of existing in his periphery without ever pushing into his space.
At four months, he accepted a toy from my hand. A small wooden horse I'd carved in the workshop, sanded smooth so there were no splinters to hurt small fingers. He'd stared at it for a long moment, then at me, then back at the horse. Finally, he'd reached out and taken it, clutching it to his chest before running to show Dalvin.
I'd gone to my workshop after dinner that night and cried for twenty minutes.
At six months, he called me Dad by accident.
We'd been in the kitchen, Dalvin making pancakes while Eli sat at the table with his crayons. He'd wanted the purple crayon, which had rolled off the table and under my chair. Without thinking, he'd looked at me and said, "Dad, can you get it?"
The moment he realized what he'd said, his face went white with terror. He'd burst into tears, shaking, apologizing, clearly expecting punishment for the slip.
I'd gotten down on one knee, slow and careful, and handed him the purple crayon. "Here you go, buddy," I'd said, keeping my voice steady even though my heart was breaking. "Purple's a good color."
He'd taken the crayon with trembling fingers. Looked at me with those amber eyes, still wet with tears. And then, so quietly I almost missed it, he'd whispered, "Thank you, Dad."
Now he called me Dad on purpose. Ran to me when he was scared. Asked for bedtime stories about dragons who protected their treasure. I always made the dragons gentle. I always made the treasure a family.
The purple metal dinosaur I'd promised him sat on his bookshelf, ugly and lopsided and absolutely perfect. He'd named it Chompers Junior.
In the yard, Eli finally caught a throw, the football landing squarely in his small arms. He let out a shriek of triumph that sent birds scattering from the nearby trees.
"Did you see that?" he yelled toward the porch. "Dad, did you see? I caught it!"
"I saw," I called back. "Great job, buddy."
