He kneels, hands trembling just a little as he reaches for my face.
“You’re hands.You’re bleeding.Fuck.Are you okay?”
For a second, I can’t speak.
The only sound that comes out of me is a broken sob before I throw myself at him, wrapping my arms around his neck like if I let go, I’ll stop breathing.
“Sawyer,” I whisper, shaking.“Oh, thank God.Oh my God.You came for me.”
He pulls me tight, one arm banded around my waist, the other buried in my hair.I can feel his heartbeat—fast and strong—pounding against mine.
“I’ll always come for you,” he murmurs into my hair.“I’m sorry it took so long.”
“Hush,” I breathe, pressing my face into his neck.“You came.That’s all that matters.”
He nods once, jaw tight.“Alright.It’s gonna be alright now.Let’s get you home.”
And when he lifts me into his arms—solid, steady, safe—it feels like the whole world exhales with me.
“Don’t look,” he says as we cross the threshold.
And I don’t.
The night air hits my face as we step outside.I catch sight of the scene behind him—the broken bikers, the flashing lights of a drone overhead, Benji and Micah moving with silent, practiced precision for one instant before I squeeze my eyes shut.
I don’t want to see.I don’t need to.
Because he came for me, and he’s taking me home.
And for the first time in my life I know that home isn’t the house, or even a ranch, or the safe, quiet waiting back in Dry Creek.
Home is this—his heartbeat under my ear, his arms around me, and the soft, trembling way he says my name like it’s the only one that’s ever mattered.
We’re squeezed into the back of his SUV, the cab warm from the engine and from him.
The seatbelt presses into my hip.The leather smells like sweat and gun oil and the faint sweetness of the shampoo he wears.He’s got one arm hooked under my knees, the other around my shoulders, a human brace.
Every time I breathe, I feel him move—steady, alive, unbelievably solid.
“Hurry up, girl,” Roach had laughed earlier, an ugly sound that still crawls under my skin.
I scrub that memory away with Sawyer’s hands—callused, careful—tilting my face up so I can look at him.
“Hey, cowboy?”I whisper when he eases me down until I’m half-lying, half-sitting in the back seat.
“Yeah?”
His voice is rough from yelling and the chase and all the things night made him do.
There’s a fleck of dark on his cheek—dried blood?—I don’t care.
I want to memorize the shape of him.
I hook my thumbs under the ragged stubble at his jaw and lift his face.He flinches like he wasn’t planning on gentleness, but when his eyes find mine they’re all nighttime and thunder and something I can’t name without my chest going tight.
I swallow hard because the words have been building like pressure in my ribs.I never planned to say them first.
I never planned to say them like a woman whose world just tilted and was put back together by one brutal, steady hand.But the truth wants out.
