“When that flash-bang went off, and everything went white...” His voice was thick and raspy. “When I pushed through the smoke and saw him with the gun near you...”
The memory punched through her.
The concussive explosion. The blinding burst of light. The ringing in her ears that had swallowed every other sound. Smoke and dust hanging in the air. The gunshot followed by Diego’s body hitting the floor.
Brian swallowed, and his arm tightened around her. “I thought that day I was almost shot was the worst fear I would ever feel.” His voice dropped. “I was wrong.”
Her chest ached for a different reason now.
She hadn’t thought about what it looked like from where he stood—coming through haze and chaos and seeing her on the ground with a gun inches from her head.
Her fingers curled into his shirt. “I thought you might not get there in time.”
“I will always get there in time,” he said quietly. “I love you.”
Her heart stuttered, and the words seemed to hang between them.
“I never thought I’d say those words to a woman who wasn’t family. But you...” His mouth curved faintly. “I didn’t know I was looking for someone until I found you. I can’t imagine my future without you in it. I don’t want to imagine it.”
A shaky laugh slipped out of her before she could stop it. Not disbelief. Just the overwhelming weight of everything settling at once.
“You’re sure?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Completely.”
The certainty in his voice steadied something deep inside her. She lifted her hand and traced the line of his jaw, her fingers brushing over the faint stubble there, memorizing the feel of him. This man. The one who somehow became her safe place.
“I love you too.”
The words didn’t feel dramatic. They weren’t forced, rushed, or born out of chaos, but inevitable and true.
Brian’s gaze searched hers for a long second, like he was in awe of the fact she’d said the words back to him. Then his hand slid to the back of her neck, and he kissed her like a man who understood how close he’dcome to losing her—and had no intention of ever standing on that edge again.
His mouth moved against hers with quiet reverence. She melted into him, one hand fisting in his shirt, the other sliding up into his hair. The kiss deepened, warm and unhurried, sealing something that had already been decided long before either of them admitted it out loud.
When they finally broke apart, their foreheads rested together, breaths mingling.
Yesterday, she had been certain her story might end in violence and darkness.
Now, as he cuddled her to him, she rested her cheek against his chest and listened to the steady rhythm beneath her ear, knowing that sound was the beginning of everything that came next.
What lay ahead wasn’t something to survive.
It was something to live.
With him.
Epilogue
The last of the fire burned low, embers glowing deep orange against the dark sand as the ocean rolled in steadily and endlessly behind him. Waves broke and pulled back again, the rhythm settling somewhere deep in Brian’s chest while the after-party lingered in pockets along the beach. Laughter drifted from those sitting around the fire, music low and off-key came from someone’s phone, and a few couples still danced barefoot in the sand.
Overhead, a crescent moon hung low, its pale light stretching across the water while stars scattered wide against the dark.
It had been a perfect late-September day.
The caterers had already packed up and left, and Sean and Grace had disappeared an hour ago. The couple was spending their wedding night at a hotelhalfway between Whisper and Norfolk before flying out to Cancun the next day for their honeymoon.
Brian stood just beyond the edge of the light, an empty bottle of beer loose in his hand, watching it all wind down. Nights like this were usually his kind of scene, with a crowd that knew how to have a good time. He’d spent plenty of them right in the middle of it. But tonight, it didn’t hold him the same way. Not when his attention was already somewhere else.
