“I want the mornings,” he says. “The stupid coffee arguments. The way you steal all the blankets. The nights when you cry and I hold you until you fall asleep. I want the hard days too, the ones where we fight about money or in-laws or whatever normal people fight about. I want to grow old with you here. Watch yourhair go gray. Watch mine fall out. Watch the mountain change around us while we stay the same.”
A tear slips free. It runs into my hair. “I want that too,” I whisper. “More than anything.”
He lowers his head. He kisses the tear track. Then my mouth, slow, deep, achingly tender. When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine. “Marry me,” he says. Not a question. A quiet, certain vow. “Not someday. Not when the dust settles. Soon. Before the snow melts completely. Before the world remembers we exist. Just us. Here. Forever.”
My heart stutters. “Yes,” I breathe. “God, yes.”
His mouth curves, small, crooked, radiant. He kisses me again, deeper this time, hungrier, like the word has unlocked something he has kept chained for years.
We move together slowly. No rush. No desperation. Just the quiet certainty of two people who have already survived the worst and are choosing each other anyway.
He slides inside me with a low groan. I arch beneath him, legs wrapping around his hips, pulling him closer until there is nothing between us but skin and heartbeat and promise.
We don’t speak after that.
We just move, slow rolls, deep presses, hands clasped above my head, eyes locked even when the pleasure makes it hard to focus.
When we come it is quiet, shuddering sighs, trembling limbs, his name on my lips like prayer, mine on his like gratitude.
Afterward he doesn’t pull away. He stays inside me. He covers me with his weight. He buries his face in my neck. “I love you,” he whispers against my skin. “So much it scares me sometimes.”
I thread my fingers through his hair. I hold him there. “I love you back,” I say. “And I’m not afraid anymore.”
The light shifts. Brighter now. Warmer.
Outside, the last of the snow slides from the roof in soft avalanches. Inside, something new settles into place. Not the end of pain. Not the erasure of yesterday.
Just the beginning of tomorrow.
Together.
Whole.
Home.
FIFTEEN
BECK
The bedroom smells like us—sweat, pine smoke from the dying fire in the next room, and the faint sweetness of her skin that always lingers on my sheets now.
Afternoon light cuts through the frost on the window in sharp golden streaks, painting her body in warm stripes where she lies beneath me. I brace on my forearms, hips rolling slow and deep, watching every flicker across her face. The way her lips part. The way her lashes flutter when I hit just right. The way she whispers my name like it is the only word she still trusts.
I will never get tired of that sound.
“Sabrina,” I rasp, voice already wrecked from holding back. “Say it again.”
“Beck.” Her fingers dig into my shoulders, nails biting skin, marking me the way I have marked her so many times already. “Please.”
That word—please—snaps something low in my gut.
I drive harder once. Twice. Then I force myself slower again, deliberate, drawing out every inch, every slide, making her feel me the way I need her to feel me: solid, permanent, hers. “You feel so fucking good,” I murmur against her ear, lips brushing the shell. “Tight. Wet. Perfect. Made for me. Made to take every drop I give you.”
She shudders beneath me, walls fluttering around my cock. “Beck—God—yes?—”
I press deeper, grinding slow circles at the end of each thrust so she feels me right against her cervix. “I’m going to fill you up, Sabrina. Gonna pump you so full you’ll feel me leaking out for days. Gonna breed this pretty pussy until it’s dripping with me. Until you’re swollen with what I put inside you.”
Her breath hitches. Her legs wrap tighter around my waist, heels digging into my ass like she wants to lock me there forever. “Please,” she whispers again, voice breaking. “I want it. I want you to come inside me. Want you to make me yours like that.”
