It ain’t just survival.
It’s choice.
I’m finally choosing Oaks.
The married biker with dirt under his nails and blood loyalty in his bones. The man who dove into dark water without thinking. The man who warned me and tried to walk away and failed.
When it finally breaks, when the tension snaps and my body feels like it’s exploding behind my closed eyes, I bury my face in his shoulder and hold on like I’m falling. My whole body shakes. My legs lock around him. My mouth is full of his skin and my own ragged breath.
He stills against me, breath torn, forehead pressed to mine as he pulls out but stays close enough I feel him quake warm goo against my stomach.
For a long moment neither of us speaks. His hands soften where they hold me, but he doesn’t let go. Like he can’t.
“You okay?” he asks, voice rough.
I nod. Then I laugh softly because the absurdity of life always finds a way in. “You tore my underwear. The only panties I have here.”
He huffs a breath that might be a laugh. “You don’t need them no more.”
“Really?”
“Really.” He brushes his thumb across my cheek, suddenly gentler like the softness is an accident. Like it scares him more than the sex did.
“Brit…” he starts.
I look at him.
Whatever he was about to say dies in his throat. Maybe he was going to apologize. Maybe he was going to warn me. Maybe he was going to tell me this changes everything again.
Instead, he kisses me once more, slower, deeper, and sets me back on my feet. My legs feel weak. My skin feels too alive. My mouth is swollen from him. That ain’t the only place where I’m swollen. I’m sore there too. But it feels earned.
The woods don’t look any different. The camp doesn’t sound any different.
But everything inside me is.
I pull his shirt down over my thighs and follow him back toward the cabin, still shaking, not from cold.
From him.
From the way he looked at me when I said I was his.
From the way it didn’t feel like a line.
It felt like a truth.
And as the screen door slaps behind us, one thought settles deep and terrifying in my chest.
I’m not just falling for him.
I’m already there.
Chapter 27
Oaks
I don’t trust quiet.
Not at camp. Not after somebody put a hole in my boat. Not after we saw blood in a stranger’s tin fishing rig and drag marks in the mud like the lake was spitting warnings at our feet.
