"You still with me?" I ask quietly.
He nods against my chest. "Yeah. Just… floating a little."
"Good float or bad float?"
"Good float." His fingers trace the edge of my shoulder blade. "Really good. Like my whole body's humming, but quiet. Safe."
I press my lips to the top of his head. "That's exactly where I want you."
"I didn't think I could come like that. Not… not with someone else's hand. Not without—" He stops, swallows. "Not without it feeling like something was being taken from me."
My heart twists, but I keep my voice steady. "It wasn't taken. You gave it. And I'm so honored you trusted me with it."
He lifts his head enough to meet my eyes. His are still glassy, pupils wide, but clear. "I want to do it again. Not right now, but… soon. I want to learn what else feels good. With you."
Heat blooms under my ribs, tender and fierce at once. "Whenever you're ready. No rush. We've got time."
He settles back down, cheek over my heart. "Will you stay with me like this for a little while? Just holding me?"
"Try getting rid of me," I say, tightening my arms a fraction. "I'm not moving until you tell me to."
His laugh is small, sleepy, more air than sound. "Good. Because I'm not telling you to. I like being held in your arms. I thought I would like it and I do. I heard your heartbeat today.When I put my head on your chest. I heard it and it was the safest sound in the world."
I press my mouth to the top of his head and breathe him in.
"It beats for you," I say, because it's true and because I'm done holding things back. "Every beat. Every single one. Also, it beats significantly faster when you touch me, which is a fact my doctor would probably want to know about but I'm choosing not to tell him because he'll ruin it with medical advice."
I keep stroking his back. Long, slow passes from shoulder to lower spine, feeling the subtle knobs of his vertebrae, the way his muscles loosen under my palm. His breathing deepens, evens out. Not asleep yet, but drifting, safe in that soft space between awake and gone.
I kiss his forehead, barely a brush of lips. "You're safe," I whisper, more to myself than him, though I know he hears it. "You're safe, and you're wanted, Stormy, and you're mine. If you want to be."
His fingers curl against my chest. "I do," he murmurs. "I want to be yours. So much."
The words settle into me like warm water, filling every cracked place. I hold him tighter, close my eyes, and let the quiet wrap around us both.
We stay like that for a long time—skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat—until his breathing finally tips into the slow, even rhythm of someone who trusts enough to rest completely.
And I don't move an inch.
Chapter 17: Stormy
I wake up happy.
It takes me a minute to identify it because it's not an emotion I know. I lie there in the warm sheets with my head on Tex's chest and his arm heavy around my shoulders. I run through the catalog of emotions I know. Fear. Anxiety. Exhaustion. Hunger. None of those. This is different.
I'm happy. Just happy. That's the feeling. That's the whole thing.
Tex is still asleep. His breathing is deep under my ear, his chest rising and falling in that rhythm I fell asleep to. His arm is curled around me in a way that suggests he hasn't moved all night. He held me the same way for eight hours. Even in sleep, even unconscious, he held on.
I don't move. I lie there and I let the happiness exist without questioning it, without bracing for the moment it gets taken away. I just let it be. The sheets smell like him. The pillow smells like him. The entire room smells like his soap and warm skin, and I breathe it in.
Slowly, carefully, I lift my head just enough to look at him.
He's on his back, face turned slightly toward me, lips parted under the beard. His hair is messy from sleep and from my hands. His eyelashes make shadows on his cheekbones in the morning light. He looks younger when he sleeps. The linesaround his mouth smooth out and the permanent crinkles at his eyes relax.
Leaning over, I start with his tattoos. I've wanted to read them since the first week, since I stood in the bar kitchen and watched the ink move on his arms and wondered what stories were written on his skin. Now I trace them with my fingertip, light enough not to wake him.
The right arm has a compass rose on his inner forearm, detailed and beautiful, the north arrow pointing toward his hand. An anchor on his bicep wrapped in rope. Above it, dates in Roman numerals that I think are his father's birth and death. On his shoulder, the one I could never read from a distance, a line of numbers in clean black ink. I lean closer. Coordinates. Latitude and longitude, precise to the decimal.
