Finally, he rolled us onto our sides, still connected, and wrapped an arm around my chest. His breath was warm on my neck, his hand splayed over my heart.
“You’re mine,” he said, soft enough to be a secret.
“Yeah,” I answered, not even pretending to argue.
We drifted, the room fading to black around us, the world outside nothing but storm and darkness.
Neither of us noticed the headlights parked at the edge of the property, far enough to be invisible to anyone inside, but close enough for someone to watch the house.
To see the single window glowing with lamplight.
To see, and to wait.
But inside, nothing touched us. Not yet.
We slept tangled together, safe in the heart of our new home.
And in the night, I dreamed of roots sinking deep, of hands building and shaping, of a future that might finally be ours.
Chapter Twelve
~ Rawley ~
The sound that yanked me from sleep wasn’t a whimper, or a sneeze, or even the ominous shuffle of a burglar—it was the wet, rasping retch of someone emptying their guts into porcelain.
I came awake already moving, my right hand reaching for the nightstand and the piece I always kept there. The bed beside me was cold and empty.
For one stuttering second, my brain tried to invent all manner of tactical scenarios: home invasion, chemical attack, Jojo missing and the house compromised.
It took another beat to process the more mundane possibility: food poisoning, flu, something with a benign civilian name and no need for body armor.
Still, I ghosted out of bed like a fucking panther, adrenaline hammering through me. My bare feet hit the cold hardwood with a whisper. I’d already cataloged every obstacle between the bed and the bathroom door, so it only took a half-blind, three-second sprint to cross the hallway and shoulder the door open.
The sight inside was less bloodbath, more gut-wrench: Jojo, shirtless, knelt with his forehead braced on his crossed arms, hugging the rim of the toilet as if it might offer him absolution. His back was hunched, every vertebra straining under the skin, his ribs showing in the harsh bathroom light.
I swept the room for threats anyway—old habits died slower than cockroaches—then advanced, stowing the pistol in the waistband of my boxers.
Jojo shuddered through another heave, dry by this point, the sound loose and pathetic and too much like the noise you hear in trauma wards from men who know they’re dying.
“Jesus, Jojo.” My voice came out more hoarse than I intended. “Why the fuck didn’t you wake me?”
He peeled one eye open, glazed blue, lashes clumped with tears. “Didn’t want to…bother,” he managed, mouth working around the taste of bile.
“Bother?” I dropped to my knees beside him, ignoring the hard tile biting into my scars. I pressed a hand to the nape of his neck. He was sweating so much his hair was sticking in wet ropes, skin clammy and gray. He trembled under my palm.
“I just—” Another shudder interrupted him. “Sorry. Think it’s just a bug. I’ll be fine—”
The phrase detonated something old and bad inside me, some memory of blood loss and failing pulses and the lie that it’s always just a scratch. “Don’t say fine unless you mean it,” I barked, and instantly hated myself for scaring him, but couldn’t stop. “How long, Jojo?”
His lips twisted in an apologetic smile. “Started after dinner. Thought it was nerves. Maybe that tinned clam chowder was—”
“I’m throwing that shit out,” I said, voice low. I ran my thumb over his feverish neck, counting the frantic drumbeat of his carotid pulse. “You got chills? Dizziness?”
He nodded, curling in tighter. “And my stomach hurts. Not, like, cramps—just…deep.” He opened his mouth to say more, then folded forward and gagged again, though there was nothing left but spit.
I moved with the focus of a bomb tech, one hand steadying him at the shoulder, the other snatching the washcloth from the towel bar. I soaked it in cold water and wiped his face, holding him upright when he tried to sink sideways.
“You’re gonna dehydrate. When’s the last time you kept anything down?” I asked, already calculating rehydration rates and how long we’d have before his electrolytes tanked.
