Then I remember her parents and almost want to kick my own ass for forgetting for a split second.
“Yeah, baby. Let’s get checked out by Patch so we can finally get the hell home.”
She turns slowly in my arms and lifts her blood-coated hands to gently rest against my face. “Thank you for coming for me.”
“I always will. No matter what the stakes are. No matter where you are. You go, I follow, little shadow. Even if that means we’re walking straight through hell together.”
“Really?” she breathes, and I swear to fuck, literal hearts fill her eyes.
“Fucking bet.”
I never wanted this.
That's the truth I would have told anyone who asked, right up until the moment it stopped being true. I wanted freedom. Needed it the way some men need air or motion or open road.
What I didn't understand, what I couldn't have known until Marigold walked into my life and refused to walk back out of it, was that I had the definition wrong.
Freedom isn't the absence of ties.
It's finding the one person who doesn't cage you. The one who blows the doors off every wall you built and stands in the wreckage grinning, ferocious and bright and entirely too much, and somehow makes the ruin feel like home.
I found what I was looking for.
I found it in the most unhinged woman I've ever known.
She is my stillness. My chaos. My liberation and my peace.
Marigold is the destination I never knew I was chasing all along.
Epilogue
Six Months Later
Mybarefeetsinkinto the soft earth as I run, the woods swallowing me whole, branches blurring past on either side. My breathing is loud in my own ears, and somewhere behind me, moving quieter than something that size has any right to, is the reason.
He'll catch me.
That's the point. That's always been the point. But I'm not going to make iteasyon him. Where would the fun in that be?
I yank his t-shirt over my head, the one I stole off the bedroom floor this morning, still warm, still him, and hook it over a low branch behind our house as I pass. A breadcrumb. A dare.
Come find me.
Ours.
Just thinking that specific word sends a massive wave of giddiness straight through me. I honestly didn’t think he’d accept my proposition to move in with me and be my lover for life. I really should have known better, though. That man has proven to me repeatedly how much he loves me. I couldn't mistake his intentions after he threw me over his thick shoulder and ravaged me long into the night.
The nightmares came back after Damon. That stupid man was still trying to fuck with my life even from the grave. A few weeks of waking up swinging, of Tomcat's hands finding me in the dark, steady and unhurried, bringing me back to the present. Snow turned out to be a better listener than I expected, which I'm choosing not to examine too hard because it might make me emotional, and I have a reputation to maintain.
A thick twig cracks to my right. I bolt left, wild laughter bursting from my lips. I hop on one foot as I swiftly lift one leg out of my underwear and then the other, tossing the lace onto the ground for him to track down.
Cool air glides over my bare skin, raising goosebumps in its wake and tightening my nipples as the wind teases every inch of me.
“I’m going to fuck your pretty little pussy so raw,” Tomcat says, his rough tone sounding a hell of a lot closer this time.
“Maybe,” I call back over my shoulder, teasing him. “You’re being kind of slow today, though, lover. I might just have to get Jack to do the job instead.”
Thick, heavy arms wrap around my waist in a split second, tossing me gently down into the moss and leaves. “What the fuck was that?”
