A couple hours later, Coin whispers in my ear. "Walk with me."
We drift to the edge of the parking lot where gravel meets the tree line.
The mountains are burning with the last November color—reds and golds holding on before winter strips them bare.
The party noise fades behind us until it's just our boots on gravel and the wind in the trees.
"Garrett and I talked in the garage," he says.
"I noticed you two disappear. I figured it was either an engine or a conversation."
"Both. He was elbow-deep in that Dyna, again." A pause. The coin turns. "He said, 'You take care of her.' And I said, 'I've been waiting ten years to take care of someone who'd let me.'"
I stop walking.
He's standing with his hands in his pockets, the coin between his fingers, the last of the sunlight catching the scar through his eyebrow.
He looks like he did the first night I saw him—compact, solid, those blue-gray eyes holding more than he's willing to say.
Except now I know what's behind them.
I've seen it.
All of it—the tender parts and the violent parts and the quiet, lonely places underneath. And I'm still here.
"I love you," he says. Low, certain, like the words cost him something and he's choosing to spend them.
My eyes burn. I don't cry except right now, standing at the edge of a parking lot with the mountains turning gold behind a man who just said the three words he hasn't said in over a decade, I'm closer than I've ever been.
"I love you too." Steady. Clear. True. The truest thing I've ever said.
He pulls me into him.
Arms around me, chin on my head, my face against his cut.
I breathe in leather and cedar and him, and the world goes quiet in the good way. The warm way, the full way, the way that means the silence is holding something instead of missing it.
I don’t know where the rest of the day goes, but Ellie takes the girls for a sleepover and suddenly we’re alone in his house.
He finds me on the edge of the bed, wearing the flannel I stole from him a lifetime ago.
"You still have that."
"You never asked for it back."
"I was never going to."
He sits beside me. "I meant what I said. I love you, Leah. Not just what you do for my girls, or how you make the house feel. You. The woman who makes terrible pancakes and told my ex-wife she wasn't afraid to get blood on her hands."
"That's a lot of words for a man who rations them."
"I've been saving up."
I put my hand on his face—the scarred side, thumb tracing the line through his eyebrow. "I love you, Colton Adkins. And you can put it down with me. All of it."
He kisses me. Slow. Deep.
Lays me back and pulls the flannel off my shoulders, setting it on the chair like it matters.
