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My eyes widen and I shoot him a look. “Care to fucking enlighten me, then?”

“You love her.”

I take a step back and my mind goes blank. “I don’t…”

Fuck.

I couldn’t even finish the sentence.

I love her?

Blowing out a breath, I run my hand through my hair again, giving it a tug as I look up at him. “How do you know?”

“Dude,” he says, letting out a laugh. “How do you not know? You’ve been fucking gone over this girl since the moment you met her.”

“But love?” I ask, shaking my head.

“Oh, you poor, dumb man,” he goads, laughing at the look on my face. I level a glare at him.

“Shut the fuck up before I give you matching eyes, asshole.”

“Tell me something,” he says, sauntering down the steps of the porch, completely unfazed. “Who do you look for as soon as shit goes bad?”

“Lennon,” I answer without thought. He nods.

“And what stopped you from murdering old Owen back there?”

I suck in a breath. “Lennon.”

“Not even Lennon, just her name,” he adds. “Her name was enough to bring you back to yourself. It was more fucking important that anything else. She was more important than anything else.”

I nod. “I need her.”

“That is the whole goddamn point I’m trying to make, asshole,” he says, stopping in front of me and clapping a hand on my shoulders. “You need her because…”

“Because I love her,” I whisper and he nods.

“You love her,” he repeats, the words settling into my mind and my chest. “She’s your anchor. Your home. The one person who can pull you back when you’re so far gone that you can’t even see the way out anymore.”

I drop my head, staring at the ground in front of me as his words sink in, my mind chewing them over. I’ve never been in love before, didn’t feel it from my parents and have no fucking frame of reference for it.

Sure as hell don’t know what to do with it.

I love her.

For the first time in my life, those words don’t feel loaded or terrifying.

It just feels right.

She is my home.

She’s the person who pulls me back from the edge.

The one who makes me smile when no one else can.

A place where I don’t have to be Rooster, the Bayou Devil, or Hyde, the fierce protector who never loses.

With her, I can just be me.