From the instinct burned into her bones.
“I told you I’d come back,” I murmur, leaning so close she can feel the words across her skin. “I told you you’d see me again.”
Her fingers cling to my shirt again—weakly, drunkenly—but they cling.
And something in my chest, something I thought prison had strangled to death, snarls awake.
“Noah thought he drugged you to keep you calm,” I say softly. “But all he did was deliver you straight into my hands.”
Her head tips, cheek brushing my jaw like a ghost of affection, sending a brutal pulse through my body.
I whisper it against her temple?—
“You’re exactly where you should be.”
Her breathing deepens again, the drug dragging her down, her body going heavier in my arms.
But her hand stays curled in my shirt.
And I stay perfectly still for a moment, letting myself feel that tiny desperate anchor.
“Yeah,” I murmur, voice vibrating against her skin, “I missed you too.”
Then I start walking again.
Slow.
Controlled.
Unhurried.
“This time,” I whisper, “I’m not letting you disappear.”
Her head falls against my neck.
Her breath warms my collarbone.
And I smile—feral, quiet, certain.
“She’s awake,” I murmur to the empty house. “She doesn’t know it yet.” A beat. “But she’s awake.”
I push her bedroom door open with my shoulder, slow and silent, like I’ve done it a thousand times in my head.
The room smells like her—not perfume, not lotion, but something warm and soft underneath it all.
The kind of scent that hits the back of my throat and lights every nerve that prison tried to freeze.
The kind of scent that makes me want to tear the whole fucking house apart.
Her bed is perfectly made.
Of course it is.
Noah probably straightens the sheets every morning like a ritual.
A little shrine to perfection.
I walk straight to it.
