I don’t move, not even when my muscles start to ache, because she needs this, she needs the steady rise and fall of my chest beneath her cheek, the quiet proof that I’m here, that I’m breathing, that I’m not slipping through her fingers the way I didbefore, and all I can give her—when I can’t tear Gideon out of the world yet, when I can’t reach into her mind and rip out what he’s left behind—is this, is presence, is the silent promise that I’m not going anywhere.
Even though I want to scream, split my fucking knuckles, fracture bones.
Trauma.
That’s what it is, and I feel it now in a way I didn’t fully grasp in the moment. In the way her body refused to let go even after her eyes opened, in the way her breath came sharp and uneven against my throat. In the way she looked at me like she was trying to convince herself I was real.
I can’t even put the whole blame on that fucking piece of shit either, because her father was also guilty of being a motherfucker… My jaw tightens as I stare up at the ceiling, a slow, simmering rage settling low in my chest, Gideon is still out there, still breathing, still capable of reaching for her in ways I can’t intercept, and the thought alone is enough to make something violent burn in my veins.
I shift slightly, just enough to press my lips to the top of her head, breathing her in, grounding myself in her warmth, in her softness, in the quiet trust of the way she’s wrapped around me now, and for a moment the world narrows to just this bed, this room, this woman who owns every fractured, brutal piece of me.
Then my phone vibrates against the bedside unit, the sharp buzz cutting through the stillness like a blade.
I go still.
Seraphina stirs faintly against me, her fingers tightening briefly at my side, and I instinctively pull her closer, my hand sliding up her back in a slow, soothing motion until she settles again, her breathing evening out as she sinks deeper into sleep.
Only then do I reach for the phone, careful, deliberate, every movement measured so I don’t disturb her.
A group chat notification lights up the screen.
Chace: Everyone needs to meet asap. Trey’s suite.
Trey: What’s happened.
Logan: Gimme five minutes.
Sam: He only needs two.
Mac: Don’t be too generous, Sammy.
Trey: 30 seconds?
Logan: Might not want to comment, Baker. You got caught with your wife by TMZ on the balcony last night.
Chace: FFS. This is not the time.
Mac: Shared the link
Logan: Might not want to let your wife click that.
A cold, sharp edge slices straight through the haze in my head.
I tap the link.
Then I wish I hadn’t.
Images load one after the other, each one a violation so precise it feels surgical, like someone reached into a moment that belonged only to us and tore it open for the world to consume.
“Motherfuckers,” I breathe, the word a low against the quiet of the room. Picture quality is shit… but I can make it out.
There she is.
My wife.
Her head thrown back, her body arched in a way that speaks of trust and abandon, her hands gripping the railing as though it’s the only thing anchoring her to the earth, while I stand behind her, completely focused on her, every line of my body angled toward hers, my hands on bare skin that should never have been seen by anyone else.
My jaw clenches so hard it aches.
