Page 224 of Bend

Wolfe changed both of us.

He taught Thorne that loving someone didn’t have to come with shame or panic attached to it, even if it took him forever to believe that.

He taught me that being wanted didn’t require constantly proving I deserved to stay.

Pieces of him are threaded through who we are now.

That doesn’t make losing him easier.

It just means death didn’t get everything.

I press my cheek back against Thorne’s chest.

His arm tightens around me automatically.

“This place is going to hurt for a while,” he murmurs.

“Yeah.”

“You still want it?”

I look toward the bedroom doorway, beyond it to the rest of the cabin that somehow belongs to me now.

The coffee.

The books.

The half-dead plant.

His boots.

All of it.

“I think I need it,” I reply, “I think we both do.”

Thorne nods against my hair and I close my eyes.

The cabin is quiet around us, but for once the silence doesn’t feel empty.

Wolfe isn’t here.

Nothing will make that less true.

But tonight I’m lying in the home he left behind with someone he loved, holding onto pieces of a life none of us were ready to lose.

And for the first time since we came home, being surrounded by Wolfe doesn’t only feel like grief.

It feels like love too.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Draygon

Three weeks later, the garage sounds almost normal again.

Engines run. Tools hit concrete. Andre has already threatened Revel twice before lunch, which is probably the closest thing this place has to a heartbeat. Talon and Sayshen are arguing over something neither of them will give a shit about tomorrow, Reign is complaining about his setup like the bike is literally out to get him, and Thorne has started talking more than he did the first week home.

If someone walked in off the street, they might think we were fine.