Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35443 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 177(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
He makes a low sound against my mouth.
"You're cold," he says.
"I'm not."
"Your hands are cold."
"Then warm them up."
He does. He pulls back just enough to take both my hands in his and press them flat against his chest, through his t-shirt, and I can feel his heartbeat. Fast. Not slow and steady like he always pretends he is. Fast, like mine.
That, right there, is worth everything.
He drops his forehead against mine and we just breathe for a second. His thumbs are moving in slow circles on the backs of my hands.
"You came," I say. I didn't mean to say it out loud.
"I always come."
"I know." My voice comes out quieter than I intended. "I know you do."
He tilts my chin up and kisses me again, softer this time but no less certain, and his hands move from mine to my waist, sliding under the hem of my hoodie to find the thin cotton of my t-shirt underneath, and the warmth of his palms against my ribs makes me exhale like I've been holding my breath since he rode away.
Maybe I have been.
He walks me back two steps until my back finds the silo wall. The metal is cold even through my jacket, even through every layer I'm wearing, but his body against mine is not cold and that's the only temperature that matters.
He ducks his head and drags his mouth down my jaw, to my throat, and I tip my head back and let him.
"Legion—"
"Mm."
That's all he says. Just that. And it lands in my chest like a whole sentence.
His hands are moving slow, deliberate, like he's taking inventory. Like he has all the time in the world and intends to use it. Up my sides, over the hoodie, back down to my hips. He grips them. Pulls me in.
I feel him, hard against me through both our jeans, and I press into it because I have no shame about this and never have and never will.
He groans quietly against my neck.
"I missed you," I tell him. My hands are fisted in the front of his jacket again. "I missed you every single day."
He lifts his head. Looks at me. In the low string-light dark of this place I can just barely make out his face—jaw tight, eyes searching mine with that particular intensity that he aims at no one else, that I would recognize in complete darkness, that I think I would recognize from another life.
He doesn't say it back.
But he kisses me like he means it. Like the words are in there somewhere and he's trying to push them out through his mouth and into mine, and I receive them, every single one.
His hands slide up under my jacket, up my back, hauling me against him, and I go.
I always go.
There is no version of this where I don't go.
CHAPTER 5
The whole ride here my heart's been beatin' like somethin' trapped behind my ribs, somethin' that wants out, somethin' that doesn't know the difference between runnin' toward and runnin' away.
Not panic.
Panic I know. Panic is cold, and it shuts you down, and it tastes like metal at the back of your throat.
This was the other thing. The manic thing. The thing that doesn't have a name I'm comfortable usin'. My hands were steady on the ape hangers but my chest wasn't, and the wind comin' off the flats didn't cool it none, and the whole way I kept tellin' myself to slow down, keep it at speed, don't do somethin' stupid on a straight road in the dark.
But now Savannah's in my arms.
Now I can taste her.
And I'm calm.
Not tired-calm. Not that. This is somethin' else. This is the kind of still that don't happen to men like me. The kind that costs somethin'. The kind that don't come free.
Life is fine.
It's perfect.
Thirty-six people didn't die last week. No lines were crossed, no sins committed, no forgiveness needed.
Nothin' happened that I gotta carry.
Nothin' happened at all.
The world is just this—her weight against my chest, her breath on my throat, the smell of her hair which is nothing like dirt, and nothing like cold, and nothing like anything I got words for in my particular fuckin' vocabulary.
Just this.
Just her.
Just calm.
Savannah's hand finds me before I'm ready for it, which is funny, ya know, 'cause I'm always ready for her. But there's ready and there's ready, and she slides her palm down my stomach and grabs me through my jeans and I just—
Stop.
Just stop everything.
Stop thinkin' about the compound, and the clay, and the way Havoc's boots looked when we wrapped him. Stop thinkin' about the FBI comin' and the silence that's worse than a siege. Stop countin' the dead.
Stop.
She's got me in her hand and she's not in a hurry. That's the thing. She squeezes slow and deliberate, like she's testin' the weight of me, like she's got all night and knows it, and I don't move, don't push into her, just let her do it. Let her have it. Let her take her time.