I follow her. Not hard, not violent. A slow, deep release that starts in my spine and rolls through me like a tide, and I press into her as deep as I can go and spill inside her and the warmth of it, the intimacy, the raw, unprotected reality of finishing inside her on the bed that's now ours, is the most complete thing I've ever felt.
We stay tangled. No rush. No need to move, no alarm, no exit to count, no highway to drive. Just two bodies cooling together in a dark room in a compound where a war is being won and a family is being rebuilt and a man who used to be a machine is learning how to be human.
Her fingers find the back of my neck. Press against my vertebrae. One. Two. Three.
"What are you doing?" I murmur.
"Checking. Making sure you're still here."
"I'm here."
"I know." She presses four. Five. "But I like to make sure."
I pull her closer. She settles against my chest. Her breathing slows. Counted again, but not from fear. From habit. The rhythmof a woman who found safety in numbers and is learning to find it in arms instead.
"Emilio's fucked," I say into her hair.
"The bartender?"
"He took her to a diner."
"On the way back?"
"Nothing is on the way from Delaware."
She laughs against my chest. "He's going to be worse than you."
"Nobody's worse than me."
"You cleaned a gun seventeen times in one night because you couldn't stop thinking about me."
"It was four times."
"Emilio said seventeen."
"Emilio is a liar and a gossip."
She tilts her face up. Kisses my neck. "He loves you."
"I know."
"And you love me."
"I know."
"And this is our bed."
"Yes."
She presses her face into my chest. Breathes deep. Exhales slow.
"Goodnight, Claudio."
"Goodnight, principessa."
She falls asleep in my arms. In our bed. In the compound. Home.
I hold her and I don't sleep, not because I can't but because I don't want to miss this. The weight of her against me. The sound of her breathing. The smell of her hair on my pillow.
