plaidamoosette

Eddie still remembers the day he first laid eyes on you. Summer, going into his third senior year at Hawkins, you walked into Larry’s Auto Body Repair looking like something pulled from the pages of a half-burnt gothic novel left to rot in an attic trunk.

The heat outside had been miserable; thick, wet Indiana air that made grease cling to skin and tempers run short, but you arrived untouched by it all. Draped in black despite the July sun, lace sleeves swallowing your wrists, silver rings glinting like tiny knives beneath the fluorescent lights. 

Your perfume smelled faintly of clove cigarettes, old paper, and rain. Long dark hair spilled down your back in soft waves, and your eyes, God, your eyes, looked mournful in the way stained glass saints did. Beautiful enough to make a man confess every awful thing he’s ever done, truth or not.

Eddie had nearly dropped an engine part directly on his foot.

You’d stepped into the garage like you belonged in another century entirely, gaze drifting slowly across the room with detached fascination, lingering on rusted tools and oil stains as if they were artifacts in a museum.

Then you smiled at him. Not sweet, not shy, but devastating. Like you already knew every terrible thing about him and adored him for it anyway. From that moment on, Eddie Munson was ruined.

Years later, the people of Hawkins still spoke about the two of you in hushed, bewildered voices. The Munsons of the Creel House. The strange family on the hill with wrought iron gates, tangled in dead vines and black roses that somehow bloomed year-round. 

Children swore candlelight moved through the windows at impossible hours. Neighbors whispered about organ music drifting through storms and the silhouettes dancing behind curtains long after midnight.

The truth was far less sinister, mostly. You simply loved beautiful things that others were too frightened to appreciate. And Eddie loved you enough to follow you anywhere, even the old Creel House.

At first, he’d refused to even step onto the property. Too many memories. Too much blood soaked into those walls. Vecna. Chrissy. The Upside Down. Every rotten thing Hawkins tried desperately to bury lived in the bones of that house.

But then you’d walked through the front doors for the first time, black dress trailing over dusty hardwood, staring up at the massive chandelier with wonder glowing across your face like moonlight.

“Eddie,” you’d whispered softly, almost reverently. “It’s perfect.”

And that had been it. Because you looked at the house the same way you looked at him, not with fear, but affection. Like ruined things deserved devotion too. So he rebuilt it for you.

Every creaking staircase. Every shattered window. Every rotted inch of wallpaper. Together, you turned the graveyard of Victor Creel’s legacy into something warm, strange, and terribly romantic. A home, your home.

Corvina, your eldest daughter, drifted through the manor like a tiny phantom in velvet dresses, all solemn eyes and unnerving intelligence. She collected moth wings in glass jars and read Poe beneath thunderstorms while Eddie watched with equal parts pride and concern.

Meanwhile, Edward Jr, though everyone called him Teddy, was chaos incarnate. Wild curls, scraped knees, and his father’s crooked grin. The poor kid had inherited Eddie’s dramatic flair and your complete lack of fear, which meant most afternoons ended with him attempting something mildly catastrophic somewhere on the property.

Eddie had been hesitant about naming him after himself. Truthfully, he was terrified.

He remembered sitting beside you in bed while rain battered the windows, your newborn son asleep against your chest. Candlelight flickered gold across your skin as Eddie stared at the tiny little thing wearing his name.

“What if he ends up like me?” he’d asked quietly. You’d looked at him then with that same devastating softness you’d always reserved for his ugliest thoughts.

“My darling,” you murmured, brushing your fingers through his curls, “I should certainly hope so.”

And just like that, the fear dissolved. Because in your eyes, Eddie Munson had never been something to outgrow or overcome. He had always been something to cherish.

The Creel House came alive slowly in the mornings. Rain tapped softly against the tall windows that morning, the sky outside painted silver and gloomy in the way you adored most.

Eddie stood at the stove in silk pajama pants and a black robe hanging open over his tattooed chest, swaying dramatically to the music while making pancakes shaped vaguely like bats.

“Darling,” you called from your place at the kitchen table, long black sleeves draped elegantly around your coffee cup, “I do believe those are becoming progressively less edible.”

Eddie pressed a hand to his heart in mock offense. “Cruel. Wounded before breakfast.”

“You married me for my cruelty.”

“I married you because you looked at me like a Victorian widow cursed by the sea.”

You smiled over the rim of your mug. “And you looked like trouble wrapped in leather.”

“Mm,” Eddie hummed proudly. “Still do.”

Before you could respond, Eddie appeared beside your chair suddenly, dramatically dropping to one knee like a man overcome with passion. He took your hand delicately, pressing a kiss to your knuckles. Then another to your wrist. Then another just beneath your sleeve.

You laughed softly, tilting your head as his curls brushed your skin. “Edward Munson,” you murmured. “The children are awake.”

“Good,” he replied against your hand. “They should witness devotion.”

Right on cue, Corvina entered the kitchen carrying three books against her chest, long dark braid hanging over one shoulder. She glanced once at the scene before deadpanning:

“You’re disgusting.”

“Thank you, my dove,” you said warmly.

Corvina moved to pour herself coffee like she hadn’t witnessed anything unusual at all. Then came the sound of slower footsteps, Teddy.

Edward Jr. appeared in the doorway wearing his Hawkins High hoodie, backpack hanging off one shoulder, curls sticking up wildly like he’d been running nervous hands through them for an hour.

And immediately, both you and Eddie noticed the expression on his face, and Eddie straightened a little. “Whoa. What’s with the funeral look, Theodore?”

Teddy hesitated, then slowly held up a folded yellow slip of paper. Your brows lifted slightly while Corvina sipped her coffee with the detached calm of someone witnessing an execution.

“It’s a summons,” Teddy muttered.

Eddie blinked once, then dramatically pointed the spatula toward him. “What’d you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“That’s exactly what I used to say,” Eddie nodded solemnly. “And I was usually innocent at least forty percent of the time.”

You extended your hand calmly. “May I see it, darling?”

Teddy crossed the kitchen and handed it over anxiously while Eddie abandoned the pancakes entirely to loom over your shoulder. His chin immediately dropped onto the top of your head while his arms wrapped around your shoulders from behind instinctively.

You unfolded the slip carefully:

REQUESTED PARENT CONFERENCE. PRINCIPAL HIGGINS. REGARDING: EDWARD MUNSON JR.

Eddie groaned immediately. “Jesus Christ. They started early this year.”

Teddy looked miserable. “Dad, I swear, I didn’t even do anything. It was those idiots from the basketball team—they kept messing with my stuff in gym, and one of them shoved me into a locker, and when I shoved him back, he started bleeding and—”

“Bleeding?” Corvina asked mildly.

“He ran into the trophy case!”

“Ah,” she nodded. “Natural selection.”

“Teddy,” you said softly, reaching for his hand. “Look at me.”

He did immediately.

And despite being nearly Eddie’s height now, despite the deepening voice and teenage awkwardness settling into his limbs, he still looked at you the same way he had as a child: like you could fix anything simply by speaking.

“You are not in trouble with us,” you assured gently.

Eddie nodded instantly. “Absolutely not.”

“But—”

“Nope.” Eddie waved him off. “Listen, kid, Hawkins High has been blaming Munsons for shit since before you were born. It’s practically a school tradition.”

Teddy huffed out a nervous laugh. You rose from your chair then, smoothing your hands over Eddie’s wrists where they rested around your waist. “We’ll attend the meeting.”

“Together,” Eddie added.

“And if your principal insists on being unreasonable,” you continued calmly, “your father does so enjoy making authority figures uncomfortable.”

Eddie grinned wickedly. “Baby, remember the vice principal in ‘89?”

You smiled faintly. “He looked moments from cardiac arrest.”

Teddy finally laughed properly at that, the tension melting from his shoulders almost instantly.

Without another word, Eddie reached over and grabbed one of the bat-shaped pancakes, shoving it onto Teddy’s plate. “Eat up, kid,” he said. “Nothing scarier than school administration on an empty stomach.”

Corvina glanced toward the stove. “Those are burnt.”

“They’re wonderful,” Eddie corrected.

You reached for his hand again, kissing his knuckles this time. “My talented husband,” you said softly.

Eddie practically preened under the affection, leaning down immediately to kiss you dramatically enough to make Corvina groan.

“Oh, my God.”

“Teddy,” Eddie said seriously against your mouth, “never settle for a love that doesn’t make your children physically ill.”

“Noted,” Teddy muttered through a mouthful of pancake.

By noon, rain had turned into a heavy mist that clung to Hawkins like a veil, which was the exact kind of weather you loved. The kind of weather Eddie insisted was “romantic as hell.”

The two of you walked through the halls of Hawkins High side by side like something entirely out of place amongst the fluorescent lighting and beige walls. Students slowed as you passed, conversations dipping into whispers almost immediately.

You floated through the hallway in a long black coat that brushed your calves, silver jewelry gleaming beneath the dim lights, while Eddie walked beside you in dark rings and leather, one hand firmly wrapped around yours, as if he physically couldn’t stand not touching you for more than a few seconds.

Which, truthfully, he couldn’t.

“Sweetheart,” Eddie murmured low enough only you could hear as you approached the office, “if Higgins pisses me off, are we thinking subtle psychological warfare or full public humiliation?”

You glanced at him calmly. “Let us see how brave he feels first.”

“God, I love when you threaten people poetically.”

The secretary barely looked up when you entered the office, though her expression tightened almost immediately at the sight of Eddie, still, after all these years. Eddie noticed too, squeezing your hand once before leaning casually against the counter.

“We’re here about Teddy,” he said.

The woman cleared her throat awkwardly. “Principal Higgins is expecting you.”

“Lucky him,” Eddie muttered.

You placed a gentle hand against his chest before he could continue, smoothing imaginary wrinkles from his jacket. “Behave, mon amour.”

Eddie looked down at you like you’d hung the moon itself in the sky. “For you?” he said softly. “Always.”

The secretary looked deeply uncomfortable. Good.

Principal Higgins’ office looked exactly the same as it had when Eddie sat in it at seventeen; stale coffee smell, ugly filing cabinets, school banners hanging crookedly on the walls.

Only now, Higgins himself had more gray hair and less patience. He didn’t stand when you entered. Instead, he leaned back slowly in his chair, eyes moving between you both with poorly concealed irritation.

“Mr. and Mrs. Munson.”

Eddie sat down across from him casually, slinging an arm immediately across the back of your chair. “Higgins,” he replied. “Still alive, huh?”

You rested one elegant hand atop Eddie’s knee beneath the desk, feeling him relax instantly under your touch.

Higgins ignored the comment. “Teddy was involved in an altercation yesterday afternoon.”

“Involved,” Eddie repeated. “Interesting wording.”

“He assaulted another student.”

“He defended himself,” you corrected smoothly.

Higgins finally looked directly at you then, expression tightening slightly. “And how exactly would you know that, Mrs. Munson?”

“Because, unlike this institution,” you replied calmly, “our son tells us the truth.”

Higgins folded his hands atop the desk. “Mrs. Munson, with all due respect, Edward Jr. has inherited certain… behavioral tendencies.”

There it was. Eddie’s jaw tightened instantly beneath the lazy posture he wore like armor. But you? You simply tilted your head slightly.

“What an unfortunate thing to say aloud,” you murmured.

Higgins shifted faintly. Eddie watched you carefully now, eyes practically sparkling because he knew that tone and knew it well. It was the same tone you used moments before verbally disemboweling someone.

“The Munson family,” Higgins continued carefully, “has had a difficult history with this school. Your husband, especially.”

Eddie gave a dry laugh. “Yeah, because this town treated me like I was carrying the plague.”

“You developed quite the reputation.”

“And your athletes didn’t?” Eddie shot back. “Interesting.”

“Eddie,” you said softly, not looking away from Higgins. You folded your hands neatly in your lap, expression serene enough to be unsettling.

“Our son,” you said carefully, “was cornered by three boys larger than him.”

Higgins opened his mouth, but you continued before he could speak.

“One shoved him into a locker repeatedly. Another destroyed his sketchbook. And when Theodore defended himself after being physically provoked, suddenly, he became the problem.”

Silence, and Higgins shifted again. You leaned forward slightly then, dark eyes steady on his.

“And now you sit before two former students who know exactly how Hawkins High operates and imply there is some sort of inherited defect in our child because his last name is Munson.”

Eddie looked dangerously proud beside you.

Higgins cleared his throat. “That isn’t what I meant.”

“No?” you asked gently. “Then perhaps choose your words more carefully.”

The office went quiet except for the rain tapping softly against the windows. Eddie finally leaned forward himself, rings clinking against the desk.

“Look,” he said flatly, “I know exactly what this place thinks about me. Fine. Whatever. But you do not get to stick that shit onto my son because some meathead couldn’t keep his hands to himself.”

Higgins sighed heavily. “No one is suspending Teddy.”

“Very generous,” Corvina’s voice drawled suddenly from the doorway.

All three of you turned. Corvina stood there holding a hall pass and looking deeply unimpressed.

“She followed us?” Higgins asked incredulously.

“She’s observant,” you replied.

“And nosy,” Eddie added proudly.

Corvina stepped inside without invitation. “Also, for the record, Tyler Bennett admitted in chemistry that he started it because Teddy wouldn’t let them make fun of that freshman girl.”

Eddie blinked. Then slowly turned toward his son’s principal with the most insufferably smug expression imaginable. “Huh,” he said. “Would you look at that?”

You reached over then, brushing your fingers lovingly along Eddie’s jaw.

“My darling,” you sighed softly. “It appears our son inherited your unfortunate tendency toward heroics.”

Eddie practically melted into your hand. “Baby,” he whispered dramatically, grabbing your wrist to kiss your palm, “you say the sexiest things to me.”

Corvina stood near the doorway with her arms crossed, entirely too pleased with herself. Eddie lounged back in his chair again, one boot hooked over his knee while he admired you with open, ridiculous affection.

Meanwhile, you remained perfectly composed, which somehow made you infinitely more terrifying.

“Well,” Higgins said stiffly after a long silence, “I believe this matter can be considered resolved.”

“How fortunate,” you replied smoothly.

Eddie snorted under his breath, and Higgins ignored him. “I’ll speak with the boys involved.”

“You should,” you said. “Especially if the school wishes to maintain the illusion of fairness.”

The principal’s jaw tightened faintly. Then, as though remembering something unpleasant, his eyes flicked briefly toward a framed flyer hanging beside his desk. 

Hawkins High Arts Expansion Fund: Sponsored by the Munson Mortuary. 

Eddie noticed immediately, as did you. A slow smile touched your lips. “You know,” you mused softly, rising from your chair, “Edward and I have always cared deeply about the arts.”

Eddie stood the second you did, naturally gravitating toward your side like a shadow stitched to your heels.

“The theater department,” you continued thoughtfully, smoothing the sleeve of your coat, “the music programs, student scholarships…”

Higgins straightened slightly.

“Hell,” Eddie added casually, “the new ceramics kiln was us.”

You turned your attention back to Higgins, expression warm enough to unsettle.

“It would simply devastate us,” you said gently, “if the environment here became hostile enough that we no longer felt comfortable continuing such generosity.”

Higgins cleared his throat quickly. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

“No,” you agreed pleasantly. “I imagine it won’t.”

Eddie grinned beside you like the devil himself. God, he loved you. Loved the way you could flay someone alive without ever raising your voice. Loved the way people underestimated your softness right until the moment they realized it had teeth.

You reached for his hand, and he took it instantly.

“Well,” Eddie sighed dramatically, “this has been deeply irritating.”

As the four of you started toward the office door, Higgins spoke again. “Mrs. Munson.”

You paused, turning slightly. “I assure you,” he said carefully, “Theodore will be treated fairly.”

You held his gaze for a long moment, then smiled faintly. “I should hope so.”

And with that, you left. The halls quieted again as your family walked through them together.

Eddie’s hand remained clasped tightly with yours while Corvina drifted ahead in a sea of black fabric, entirely unbothered by the stares surrounding her.

The second the front doors shut behind you, Eddie turned toward you with outright admiration burning in his expression.

“Jesus Christ,” he breathed. “Marry me again.”

You looked at him calmly. “I would a thousand times.”

Candles flickered low throughout the house, golden light dancing against dark wallpaper while thunder rolled softly somewhere in the distance.

Dinner had long since ended, dishes abandoned in favor of the far more important activity of Eddie dramatically sprawled across the velvet chaise in the sitting room with his head in your lap.

“Darling,” he sighed as you lazily combed your fingers through his curls, “if I die right now, know that I died fulfilled.”

“You’re forty years old,” Corvina deadpanned from the armchair across the room. “Not a dying Victorian poet.”

Eddie pointed accusingly toward her without lifting his head. “Your mother encourages this cruelty.”

You smiled softly down at him. “I find it endearing.”

“That’s because you worship me.”

“Correct.”

Corvina physically recoiled. “Can you two act normal for ten minutes?”

“No,” both of you answered immediately.

Teddy snorted from the floor where he sat building something suspiciously dangerous out of spare radio parts. Then, the doorbell rang, and everyone paused. Corvina moved first, way too fast for her character. 

You noticed immediately. Eddie noticed immediately. Teddy noticed immediately. The three of you slowly turned toward her as she stood abruptly from the chair, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from her black skirt.

“…Interesting,” you murmured.

Corvina narrowed her eyes. “Don’t.”

Eddie sat up slowly now, a grin already forming. “Oh, my God.”

“It’s probably nothing.”

“Corvina Lucille Munson,” Teddy gasped dramatically. “Are you nervous?”

“I will kill you.”

The bell rang again. Corvina moved toward the front door with all the rigid dignity of someone approaching their execution.

You and Eddie exchanged a look. Then, silently, both rose from your seats to follow.

The front door creaked open, and standing beneath the porch light was perhaps the least expected person imaginable. A boy. Tall, clean-cut, nervous beyond belief. Bright blue varsity jacket. Hair neatly combed. Holding flowers.

The poor thing looked like he’d wandered into the wrong horror movie. Corvina stared at him; the boy stared at Corvina. Then his eyes slowly lifted, and landed directly on you and Eddie looming behind her like two beautifully dressed vampires awaiting explanation.

His face drained completely of color. Eddie blinked once, then immediately leaned toward you and whispered with genuine awe:

“He looks like he says ‘yes ma’am’ unironically.”

You nodded thoughtfully. “How refreshing.”

“Mom,” Corvina warned.

The boy swallowed hard. “H-hi, Mr. and Mrs. Munson.”

Eddie lit up instantly. “Oh, I like him.”

Corvina closed her eyes briefly like she regretted ever being born. You stepped forward gracefully, gaze drifting over the bouquet in his trembling hands.

“How lovely,” you said softly. “Funeral lilies.”

“They’re her favorite,” he blurted.

Then you looked at Corvina slowly, while Corvina looked horrified. Eddie looked seconds from losing his mind entirely.

“Teddy,” he whispered sharply. “Your sister has a boyfriend.”

“I KNEW IT.”

“He is not my boyfriend,” Corvina snapped immediately. “He’s an experiment.”

The boy blinked. “An… experiment?”

“You’re studying social dynamics?” you guessed politely.

“Yes,” Corvina said quickly.

Eddie crossed his arms. “By holding hands with the quarterback?”

“Second-string quarterback,” Teddy corrected.

Everyone looked at the boy while he awkwardly raised one hand. “We lost regionals.”

Eddie burst out laughing. “Oh my God, sweetheart,” he wheezed to you. “She brought home a jock.”

“He’s not a jock.”

The boy tried to help. “I’m also on the debate team.”

You gasped softly. “How multifaceted.”

Corvina looked moments from throwing herself from the staircase.

Eddie grinned wickedly at her. “Baby bat’s got a crush.”

“I do not.”

“He knows your favorite flowers,” Teddy sang obnoxiously.

“I hate this family.”

The boy, still somehow standing there despite the obvious psychological warfare occurring around him, looked toward Corvina carefully. And to everyone’s shock, his expression softened.

“She talks about you guys a lot, actually.”

Corvina froze.

Eddie immediately clutched his chest dramatically. “Oh, my.”

“Dad.”

“She told me,” the boy continued nervously, “that her parents are… intense, but very in love.”

You smiled faintly. Corvina looked like she wanted the floorboards to consume her.

“And,” he added carefully, “that her dad still leaves dead roses on her mom’s pillow every morning.”

Eddie looked at you instantly, utterly smitten. “Baby,” he whispered emotionally, “our love is inspiring the youth.”

You reached up, smoothing your hand against his jaw affectionately. “We are deeply romantic.”

“You’re deeply weird,” Teddy corrected.

“Thank you.”

Corvina groaned. “Can we please go before they start kissing again?”

Too late. Eddie had already grabbed your hand dramatically.

“You wound me, little raven,” he said, pressing a theatrical kiss against your knuckles. “Your mother’s beauty simply overwhelms me.”

The boy stared. Teddy stared. Corvina pinched the bridge of her nose. And you, you simply looked at your husband with soft, endless devotion while thunder echoed gently overhead.

“Oh, mon amour,” you sighed lovingly. “You are still the most handsome thing this house has ever held.”

Eddie nearly died on the spot.

The house felt different when the children were gone. Corvina had vanished off to some poetry reading with her painfully polite almost-boyfriend, while Teddy was staying overnight at a friend’s house after aggressively insisting he was “old enough to survive one night without parental supervision.”

Eddie had looked personally offended by the statement. 

Now the evening rain had finally stopped, leaving the world outside soaked silver beneath the moonlight.

You stood in front of the bedroom mirror, fastening a pair of silver earrings, when Eddie appeared in the doorway, already staring at you like a man deeply unwell. His dark button-up hung half-open, curls still damp from the shower, rings glinting in the candlelight.

But his expression, my God. After all these years, he still looked at you like the first breath after drowning.

“Well,” he murmured, leaning against the doorframe, “there goes every coherent thought I’ve ever had.”

You smiled softly at his reflection. “You say that every time I wear black.”

“Because every time you wear black, I fall in love with you all over again.”

“You’re very dramatic.”

“You’re very beautiful. We all cope differently.” You laughed quietly as he crossed the room toward you.

The second he reached you, his hands found your waist instinctively, warm and familiar through the fabric of your dress. He buried his face briefly against your neck with a content sigh like “this—this right here—was the safest place in the universe.”

“Close your eyes,” he murmured.

You raised a brow. “Edward.”

“Please?”

Amused, you obeyed. You heard him moving around the room for a moment before something soft brushed across your palms.

Flowers. 

When you opened your eyes again, Eddie stood before you holding a bouquet of black dahlias and dead roses tied together with velvet ribbon, just like your first date.

“Oh,” you whispered.

Eddie suddenly looked shy beneath all the tattoos and bravado. “I know they’re a little wilted, but Gareth’s florist cousin said—”

“They’re perfect.”

The relief on his face was immediate. You reached up carefully, fingertips brushing his cheek while he melted into your touch on instinct.

“Do you remember,” you asked softly, “what you said to me the night you gave me flowers for the first time?”

Eddie grinned a little. “Yeah.” He leaned closer. “‘Most girls want roses. You looked like you’d appreciate something half-dead.’”

“And I nearly married you on the spot.”

“You definitely wanted me carnally.”

You laughed again and kissed him gently. Eddie hummed happily against your mouth, already chasing after another kiss before you’d fully pulled away.

“Come on,” he whispered. “I’ve got a surprise.”

The graveyard sat at the edge of Hawkins beneath enormous twisted trees, moonlight filtering silver across old headstones and damp grass. Most people found it unsettling, but you found it beautiful, especially tonight.

Your breath caught softly as Eddie led you through the cemetery gates hand in hand.

Because there, beneath the crooked oak tree where he’d taken you all those years ago, sat an entire picnic laid out atop black blankets and velvet pillows. Candles flickered inside lanterns. An old radio played something metal, low enough to blend with the wind.

Your favorite wine rested beside a basket overflowing with chocolate-covered strawberries and homemade pastries, which Eddie had very obviously burnt slightly. And in the center, a vase of black dahlias. Eddie rubbed the back of his neck suddenly, almost bashful. “I know it’s kinda stupid—”

“It isn’t.”

Your voice was so soft that it stopped him immediately. He watched as you stepped slowly into the little space he’d created, moonlight catching the emotion shimmering across your face.

“You remembered everything,” you whispered.

“Course I did.”

Eddie moved closer then, taking your hands carefully. “This is where I fell in love with you,” he admitted quietly. “Figured it deserved revisiting.”

Your chest ached. Because despite all his theatrics, despite the flirting and dramatics and endless teasing, Eddie loved with terrifying sincerity, always had.

You touched his face gently. “You never told me you loved me that night.”

“No,” he said softly. “But I knew.”

The wind moved through the cemetery trees around you, carrying the scent of rain and earth and candle smoke. Then Eddie suddenly dropped dramatically onto the blanket.

“Now,” he announced, patting the spot beside him, “come seduce your husband under the moonlight.”

You smiled helplessly and settled beside him. Immediately, he pulled you into his lap like gravity itself demanded it. You curled against him easily, fingers playing with the rings on his hand while his chin rested atop your shoulder.

For a while, neither of you spoke. You simply existed there together beneath the stars, wrapped in candlelight and old music and decades worth of devotion.

Eventually, Eddie pressed a slow kiss against your neck. “You know,” he murmured, “I was so scared to bring you here on our first date.”

You turned slightly. “You were?”

“Terrified.” He laughed softly against your skin. “Wayne told me if I took a girl to a graveyard, she’d think I was either a serial killer or possessed.”

“And instead?”

“You told me it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for you.”

“It still is.”

Eddie looked at you then. And suddenly he was twenty again; grease stains on his hands, heart beating too fast, staring at the most hauntingly beautiful girl he’d ever seen while wondering how someone so lovely could possibly want him back.

Only now, he knew, because you’d spent decades proving it.

His hand slid carefully against your cheek. “My sweet girl,” he whispered.

You kissed him before he could say anything else. Slow and loving, the kind of kiss built from years and years of choosing each other over and over again. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled softly again.

Eddie smiled against your mouth. “Think the kids are behaving themselves?”

You smoothed your fingers through his curls lazily. “Not our concern tonight.”

“God,” he sighed happily, pulling you impossibly closer, “I adore you.”

“Eddie,” you whispered, tilting your head as his lips brushed the side of your neck. “You’ve outdone yourself, mon amour.”

He hummed against your skin, the sound vibrating through you. “Only the best for you.”

You laughed softly, and the sound made him tighten his hold, one hand sliding reverently down your side, tracing the black silk of your dress. 

Eddie loved pleasing you more than anything, maybe even more than breathing. He lived for the way your breath would hitch when he touched you just right, for the way you looked at him like he was the only man in any world worth having.

His fingers found the hem of your dress and slipped beneath it, warm palm gliding up your thigh. “Let me worship you here,” he murmured, voice low and rough with devotion. 

You turned in his lap, straddling him, your long dark hair falling around you both like a curtain. The cemetery was empty, the night yours alone. You cupped his face, thumbs brushing his cheeks, silver rings cool against his skin.

“Then worship me, Edward,” you said softly, the command wrapped in velvet.

Eddie’s eyes darkened with hunger and endless love. He kissed you deeply, almost reverently at first, then with growing heat as your tongues met. His hands roamed, pushing your dress up around your hips. He groaned when he realized you’d worn nothing beneath it.

“Fuuuck me,” he breathed against your mouth, a crooked, adoring grin breaking through.

“Oh my love, I plan to.”

He laughed, the sound rich and warm, then lowered you gently onto your back atop the velvet pillows. The cool night air kissed your skin as he peeled the dress from your body, kissing every inch he revealed. Your collarbones, the swell of your breasts, the soft plane of your stomach. When he reached the apex of your thighs, he looked up at you with pure reverence.

He settled between your legs, curls brushing your inner thighs as he pressed open-mouthed kisses along your skin. His tongue found your center with devastating patience; slow, worshipful strokes that had your fingers tightening in his hair. 

He moaned into you like you were the finest thing he’d ever tasted, savoring every gasp and whisper of his name that left your lips.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” he murmured against your slick flesh, voice thick. “Let me hear how good I make you feel.”

Your back arched as pleasure coiled tight inside you, and Eddie watched it all unfold like a man witnessing divinity. When you came undone beneath his tongue, thighs trembling around his head, he held you through it, kissing you gently until the waves subsided.

Only then did he rise, shedding his shirt and pants with reverent haste. His cock was hard and aching for you, but he took his time, crawling over you, kissing you so deeply you tasted yourself on his tongue.

“I love you,” he whispered against your lips, lining himself up. “More than life. More than death. More than anything in this fucking universe.”

You wrapped your legs around his waist and pulled him inside you with one smooth thrust. Both of you moaned at the perfect fit; years together, and it still felt like coming home. 

Eddie moved with slow, deep rolls of his hips, savoring every clench of your walls around him. His forehead pressed to yours, curls falling around your faces as he gazed into your eyes.

“Look at me while I fuck you, baby,” he breathed, devotion dripping from every word. “Want to see those saintly eyes when you come on my cock again.”

The cemetery felt alive around you; the wind whispering through the trees, the distant hoot of an owl, the scent of earth and night-blooming flowers mixing with sweat and sex. Eddie’s pace gradually quickened, one hand sliding between you to circle your clit while the other pinned your wrist gently above your head.

You came again with a soft, broken cry of his name, pulling him over the edge with you. He buried himself deep, spilling inside you with a guttural groan, hips stuttering as pleasure wrecked him. Even then, he kept moving; lazy, loving thrusts to draw it out, kissing you through every aftershock.

Afterward, he collapsed beside you and immediately pulled you into his arms, tucking your head beneath his chin. His fingers traced lazy patterns along your spine while your leg draped over his hip.

Eddie pressed a kiss to your hair, voice hoarse with satisfaction. “I’d desecrate every grave in Hawkins if it meant making you feel like that.”

You smiled against his chest, fingertips playing with the silver strands beginning to thread through his dark curls. “If we keep this up, Corvina and Teddy may have a sibling.”

“Would that be so bad? Another mini-Munson running around, raising hell?”

You rolled your eyes lovingly, planting a few peppered kisses along his chest and jaw. “Poor Principal Higgins wouldn’t know what to do with himself with a third Munson.”

Dinner in the Creel-Munson House was rarely quiet. Not because anyone particularly tried to be loud, it was simply impossible for four Munsons to exist in the same room without the atmosphere becoming theatrical.

Thunder groaned outside while candlelight flickered across the dining room, illuminating velvet curtains, silver dishes, and the massive candelabra Teddy insisted made “every meal feel like a vampire intervention.”

Tonight, Eddie had been suspiciously smug since five o’clock, you noticed immediately. Corvina noticed immediately. Teddy noticed immediately. Which meant all three of you spent most of dinner staring at him with increasing suspicion while he fought a grin behind his wine glass.

Finally, Teddy pointed his fork accusingly. “You’re hiding something.”

Eddie gasped dramatically. “What a horrible accusation.”

“You’ve been smirking for an hour,” Corvina added.

“You also called the garlic bread ‘historic,’” Teddy said. “That means something’s wrong.”

You smiled faintly from your seat at the head of the table. “Darling,” you said gently to Eddie, “are you planning a crime?”

Eddie looked delighted by the question. “No,” he answered proudly. “Something better.”

Then, with all the ceremony of a man revealing the crown jewels, Eddie reached into his jacket and slapped four tickets dramatically onto the table. Silence.

Teddy squinted. Then his eyes widened so violently you thought they might leave his skull.

“No fucking way.”

“Language,” you corrected softly.

“No FUCKING way.”

Corvina leaned forward slightly now, dark eyes narrowing in interest. Eddie sat back in his chair with unbearable smugness. “Iron Maiden,” he announced grandly. “Indianapolis. Front section.”

Teddy SHRIEKED, like actually shrieked. The sound echoed through the dining room while Eddie burst into laughter.

“Oh my God,” Teddy gasped, grabbing the tickets with trembling hands. “Dad—Dad, are you serious?!”

“Your old man still has connections, baby.”

Teddy launched out of his chair instantly. 

You sighed knowingly. “Brace yourself, mon amour.”

A second later, Teddy practically tackled Eddie backward in a hug. “There he is,” Eddie wheezed dramatically as Teddy nearly crushed him. “My son. My flesh and blood.”

“You are the coolest person alive.”

“I know.”

Corvina, meanwhile, carefully picked up one of the tickets with much more restraint. But you noticed the tiny upward twitch at the corner of her mouth immediately.

“Dickinson is still performing?” she asked calmly.

Eddie clutched his chest. “That sounded almost excited.”

“It wasn’t.”

“She got the Munson concert gene,” Teddy informed you loudly.

“She absolutely did,” Eddie whispered emotionally. Corvina rolled her eyes, though there was the faintest flush creeping into her cheeks now. You watched your family fondly from your chair, chin resting against your hand.

This. This was your favorite thing.

Eddie glowing with happiness while the children inherited every loud, passionate, ridiculous piece of him without even realizing it. Teddy flopped back into his chair, grinning wildly.

“This is literally the greatest day of my life.”

Eddie pointed at him immediately. “That’s exactly what I said when your mother kissed me the first time.”

“You say that about everything Mom does,” Corvina muttered.

“Because your mother is extraordinary.”

You reached over and touched his hand gently, as Eddie looked at you like he’d been shot directly through the heart.

Then, Corvina cleared her throat, causing everyone to look at her immediately.

“…What,” she said flatly.

Eddie narrowed his eyes. “You’re about to ask for something.”

“I’m not.”

“You did the voice.”

Teddy gasped dramatically. “She DID do the voice.”

Corvina looked deeply regretful. “I hate all of you.”

You smiled softly. “What is it, little raven?”

A pause. Then, with visible reluctance: “…Could I possibly have one additional ticket?”

The room went silent, and Eddie blinked once. Then slowly lowered his wine glass.

“…For who?”

Corvina stared at her plate. “No one.”

“Corvina.”

Another pause.

“…Damien.”

Eddie’s entire body reacted as if he’d just been informed the government had finally collapsed.

“THE BOYFRIEND?”

“He is not—”

“The assistant quarterback?!” Teddy shouted.

“THE DEBATE CLUB ONE?” Eddie cried simultaneously.

Corvina groaned into her hands. You, meanwhile, were trying very hard not to smile.

“He likes Iron Maiden,” Corvina muttered.

Eddie looked genuinely betrayed. “The clean-cut child likes Maiden?”

“He listens to metal with me.”

Eddie stared at her for a long moment. Then suddenly leaned back in his chair, placing a hand dramatically over his heart. “Oh, my God.”

“What?”

“She likes him.”

“I do not.”

“She’s sharing music with him,” Eddie whispered hoarsely to you. “Baby, that’s intimate.”

Teddy looked horrified. “That’s like… sacred.”

“Exactly.”

Corvina looked ready to walk into traffic. You finally spoke, voice warm with amusement.

“Perhaps,” you said carefully, “she simply enjoys his company.”

Corvina nodded quickly. “Exactly.”

Eddie narrowed his eyes immediately. “Have you held hands?”

“Dad.”

“HAVE you?”

“No.” Too fast.

Teddy slammed both hands on the table. “THAT WAS A LIE.”

Corvina pointed at him. “You are dead to me.”

Eddie suddenly looked emotional again. “Oh, sweetheart,” he sighed dramatically, “your first love.”

“It’s not love!”

You stood then, gliding around the table toward your daughter. Corvina visibly braced herself for teasing. Instead, you simply smoothed a strand of dark hair behind her ear gently.

And very softly, you said: “If someone makes our little raven smile enough to frighten her this badly… we should like to know him.”

Corvina froze. Because despite all the drama and teasing, your family loved hard. Openly, and without shame, just like Eddie always had.

The house had long since gone quiet. Somewhere downstairs, the grandfather clock groaned past midnight while rain tapped softly against the windows of your bedroom. Eddie lay sprawled across your chest like an oversized cat, one arm wrapped tightly around your waist while you lazily played with his curls.

This had always been his favorite place to exist, right here, with you.

Even after all these years, he still sought you out instinctively. Every night, somehow ended the same way: his head in your lap, or tucked against your chest, or buried into your neck while he mumbled half-asleep nonsense against your skin. Tonight was no different.

“You know,” Eddie murmured sleepily, eyes closed, “I think Corvina gets scarier every day.”

You smiled softly, carefully winding one silver-threaded curl around your finger. “She is your daughter.”

“Exactly why I’m concerned.”

“You cried when she said she held his hand.”

“I did not cry.”

“You absolutely did.”

Eddie cracked one eye open. “I became emotional.”

“You gasped loud enough to frighten Teddy.”

“That was fatherly grief.”

Your laugh came soft and quiet in the dark. God, he loved that sound.

Eddie tilted his head slightly against you just to hear it again. Then your fingers paused suddenly in his curls, a tiny thing, barely noticeable. But Eddie felt it immediately.

“What?” he murmured.

You said nothing at first. Instead, your fingers carefully separated one curl from the rest, then another. Eddie finally looked up slightly, finding your expression softened by something achingly tender.

“My darling,” you whispered.

“Hm?”

You gently pulled something free: a silver strand, then another.

Eddie blinked once. “Oh,” he said.

There was no fear in his voice, just surprise. You held the strands delicately between your fingers, studying them beneath candlelight like they were precious threads of moonlight themselves.

Eddie suddenly looked sheepish. “Well,” he muttered, “guess I’m getting old.”

You looked almost offended by the statement. “Edward Munson,” you said softly, “you have survived.”

You slid from beneath him carefully, crossing toward the antique vanity near the window while Eddie watched you in sleepy confusion.

Then you reached for the little silver locket resting beside your jewelry tray, the one you wore nearly every day, etched with the letter ‘E’.

Eddie pushed himself upright slightly as you opened it carefully. Inside rested tiny fragments of your life together.

A pressed black rose petal from your wedding bouquet. A piece of the guitar pick Eddie used the first time he played guitar for you. A photograph so faded it barely showed two young people grinning in a cemetery beneath storm clouds.

Eddie went completely still.

You placed the silver strands gently beside them, like they were treasures. Then you closed the locket softly and climbed back into bed.

Eddie stared at you for a long moment after you settled beside him again. “…You kept all that?”

You looked genuinely puzzled. “Of course I did.”

“Baby, there’s literally a piece of an old guitar pick in there.”

“The broken corner because you were nervous while playing for me.”

His expression cracked instantly. “You remember that?”

“You dropped it three times before speaking to me,” you replied calmly. “You were adorable.”

Eddie let out a weak laugh, suddenly overwhelmed in the way only you could overwhelm him. Because no one had ever looked at the broken, embarrassing, vulnerable pieces of him and treated them like sacred things before you.

Your fingers slowly returned to his curls. “You know what I see,” you murmured softly, “when I look at these?”

Eddie shook his head once.

“A life.”

His eyes burned immediately, so you kissed his forehead gently.

“The silver only proves you stayed long enough to grow old with me,” you whispered.

And that nearly destroyed him. Eddie suddenly pulled himself over you completely, burying his face into your neck while holding you tight enough to make you laugh softly again.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled against your skin. “How are you real?”

You stroked your fingers through his curls carefully, silver strands and all. “I might ask you the same thing.”

“No, seriously,” Eddie groaned dramatically. “You put my gray hairs in a locket. That’s insane behavior.”

“You married me willingly.”

“I’d marry you in every lifetime.”

Your expression softened instantly. Eddie lifted his head, then just enough to look at you through the candlelight; older now, yes, lines at the corners of his eyes and silver threading through dark curls.

But still the same boy who fell hopelessly in love with a gothic girl in black lace all those years ago. Still yours, always yours.

“You know what the worst part is?” he murmured sleepily.

“What’s that, mon amour?”

“I still get nervous around you.”

You smiled. Then pulled him down into another kiss while rain whispered softly against the windows of your haunted little home.

AGH I HOPE YOU ALL LOVED ITTT:)))

Hell of a Summer pt.2 is currently in the works, GET EXCITEDDDD YUHHH

taglist:

Back in Black

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Reader

Summary: When Dean comes back from Hell, you quickly realize that his subconscious remembers more than his waking mouth admits.

Requested on Patreon! I’ve written a “back from Hell” piece before with an Omegaverse twist, called Make it Right. But here’s a more canon-rooted drabble. 💜

Sneak Peek:

The way Dean held you then had been so strong and fragile at the same time; you felt the shake in his arms, the tension embedded in his frame, even while he was burying his face in your hair. You’d blinked hot tears that clung to your lashes, cupped his face between your hands and kissed him just as hard and desperate.

He was alive, so you were alive. That was what that day felt like for you: coming back to life.

But this was a different kind of living.

⟢ Read now on Patreon!

⟢ Coming to Tumblr: May 31

Keep the Lights On

^ @justjensenanddean (post)

Pairing: Russell Shaw x Reader

Summary: He picked up the phone. He ignored the shake in his hand as his thumb pressed a series of digits he’d long ago memorized, just in case he ever had to call you from a phone that wasn’t his, on a line that couldn’t be traced. This was one of those times.

᯽ Inspired by 3x22 | This can be a stand-alone one-shot, but it fits well in the Every Second Counts-verse — between Bubbly and Breaking Point

Sneak Peek:

A labored breath escaped him, along with another rivulet seeping through his shirt. His free hand itched for the cell phone lying beside him on the cement. Backup was on the way, taking a bit long though.

Time was always the question and the challenge. The decisions in between were what he was usually good at, even in moments like these.

⟢ Read on Patreon: May 29

⟢ Coming to Tumblr: June 7

30 Days or Less

^ @losthavenmine (post)

Pairing: Mark Meachum x Reader

᯽ 'Til When Do Us Part-verse

Summary: The full story. The true story of how you met Mark, with every tantalizing shade of public humiliation. You knew better than to date a cop, let alone a detective in your father’s division. But Mark Meachum was exactly the kind of stubborn and reckless man that threatened to knock every responsible thought out of your head, if he could convince you to take a chance on him.

Sneak Peek:

Mark’s broad frame was blocking your way to your dad’s office—on purpose, you were beginning to think.

The man chuckled. “Interesting. I’d like to hear more about it, but I know you’re probably here to have lunch with your dad. How about you join me for a drink tonight? There’s this chill place near downtown. Not too loud. Good beer on tap. Unless you’re more of a martini kind of girl.”

You sighed in amusement. “More of a whiskey sour girl, actually.”

“Well, what do you know. A woman after my own heart,” Mark said, his brows raising along with his grin. 

He eyed you in a subtle way, yet you’d never read a clearer danger sign in your life. 

You glanced around his arm and caught the way your dad was frowning while sitting at his desk, his firm gaze planted on you and Mark. 

“Something tells me you’re severely lacking in self-preservation,” you said, more quietly. “Either that, or you’re just that fucking cocky.”

Mark’s lips quirked. “Maybe a little of both, I’m ‘a be honest.”

You bit your lip against a laugh. “Well, I’m sorry to tell you this, Detective, but I don’t date cops.”

⟢ Read now on Patreon!

⟢ Coming to Tumblr: June 14

One Good Try

Pairing: Mark Meachum x Reader

᯽ 'Til When Do Us Part-verse

Summary: You’ve opened the door. Mark has to decide if it’s worth walking through. But your father, his boss and division captain, isn’t making it any easier to date you.

⟢ Read on Patreon: June 5

⟢ Coming to Tumblr: June 21

Mutual Engagement

Pairing: CEO!Dean x Assistant!Reader

᯽ The Assistant (NEW mini series - masterlist coming soon)

Summary: Let’s take it back to Day 1. Here's how you got the job at HunterCorp as Dean Winchester’s Executive Assistant, how you kept it, and the day your professionalism with him finally broke.

This of course is in the same world as Pratt Fall, but it spans the year building up to that moment. 😉

Sneak Peek:

You’re not sure if you should do it.

You have a sensitive report in your hand, fresh off the printer. You really think Dean should see it before he gets any deeper into his negotiations with Roman Enterprises, but he’s meeting with them right now in the big conference room, with Dick Roman himself, as well as the rest of his sales and legal representatives.

This isn’t the first meeting Sam and Dean have undergone with the company; Roman Enterprises has been courting HunterCorp into a partnership on a new product, but this could be the day that makes the big swinging dicks in the room shake hands (even if that little visual almost makes you snort).

Dean’s never expressly warned you about entering a meeting uninvited, but it’s still nerve wracking as you stand outside the door. You can hear familiar voices, including the nasally tone of Alastair, the one who gives you the creeps whenever he slithers through the office and gives you a “charming” once-over.

But you also hear Dean. His voice is deep and smooth and confident, and maybe, it gives you the little confidence boost you need to twist the knob and push the door open.

⟢ Read on Patreon: June 19

⟢ Coming to Tumblr: June 28

To be followed closely by Nothing by Halves 🌆

I'm saving this summary/sneak peek for now (spoilers~) 😘

Read on Patreon: June 26 || Tumblr: July 5

Jackles Characters Tag List (Part 1):

@luci-in-trenchcoats @waynes-multiverse @lamentationsofalonelypotato @chevroletdean @deans-spinster-witch

@jollyhunter @bettystonewell @supernotnatural2005 @roseblue373 @rizlowwritessortof

@wvffles @lyarr24 @ladysparkles78 @spnfamily-j2 @pieandmonsters

@hobby27 @kazsrm67 @foxyjwls007 @mostlymarvelgirl @jensensswthrt

@winchestergirl2 @spnbabe67 @stoneyggirl2 @my-stories-vault @this-is-me19

@tofics @artemys-ackles @mrsjenniferwinchester @charmed-asylum @flawlesslyspellbound

@k-slla @jackles010378 @deanbrainrotwritings @alwaystiredandconfused @rachiem4-blog

@leigh70 @aylacavebear @midnightmadwoman @twinkleinadiamondsky @kmc1989

@siampie @masked-lost-girl @suckitands33 @cheynovak @spnaquakindgdom

@megara0224 @globetrotter28 @illicithallways @castielscaplan @gabavaldman

The knowledge moved through you slowly, almost soundlessly, and with it came the memory of the night before in scattered flashes: the nightmare; the panic; the terrible, breathless feeling of falling apart inside your own skin; his voice cutting through it; his arms gathering you in before your body even knew how badly it needed somewhere to go. And then afterwards, the half-spoken apology, the confession you hadn’t meant to make, the certainty in his voice when he told you none of it was your fault and your father would never touch you here again.

Then this.

You were in your own bed. Morning had not fully arrived yet. The room was still washed in that thin, gray light that comes before the world commits to day, enough to shape the furniture and the curtains and the edge of the dresser, but not enough to burn away softness. Scout was somewhere near the foot of the bed, you realized dimly, because every so often you could hear the faint jingle of his tags when he shifted in sleep.

And Joel was still here. You became aware of him in pieces after that, each one gentler and more undoing than the last. The rasp of his shirt beneath your fingers. The warmth of his throat near your temple. The line of his forearm where it curved around you. The solid breadth of his chest under your cheek, broad enough that you could feel your own breathing slowly beginning to match his without meaning to.

He was asleep still, or close enough to it. You could tell by the heaviness of him, by the way his breathing remained deep and even. By the fact that he was holding you not with the alert caution he used when you were hurt and watching him, but with the loose instinct of a body that had kept its promise even after the mind had given in to exhaustion.

For one long, strange moment you only lay there and let yourself feel it. Then, because your mind had always been cruelest at the edges of tenderness, another memory slipped in beside the first.

The wedding night. Then, your whole skin had flinched from the fact of him touching you. Now, waking inside the shape of that touch unsettled you for an entirely different reaso: Because you liked it.

Not liked in the easy way stories make it seem. Not simple, not free of everything that had happened between you. The memory of the wedding bed still lived where it lived, but alongside it now was this impossible second thing: your body registering the warmth of him, the masculinity of him, the sheer physical comfort of waking held against the length of him, and not wanting to move away.

You shifted only slightly, trying to ease the ache in your shoulder, but even that small movement was enough. Joel’s hand at your back tightened by a fraction and his breath changed. Then he woke in the quiet, unstartled way some men do, as if consciousness rose up through him rather than taking him by surprise.

You felt the exact moment he became aware of where he was. Of who you were. Of the fact that you were awake and lying against him exactly as he had fallen asleep holding you. Then his hand stilled completely.

You lifted your head just enough to see his face. His eyes were open now, still darkened by sleep and that gray half-light, his hair slightly disordered, his expression caught for a beat in something unguarded, like caution.

“Hey,” he said at last, his voice low and rough from sleep.

“Hi,” you whispered back.

Neither of you moved. Joel’s gaze flicked over your face once, quickly and thoroughly in the old instinctive way he had developed over the last days.

“How’re you feelin’?”

You considered the question honestly. Your head still ached, though not with the same blinding force as before. Your ribs were sore. Your shoulder was a heavy, persistent reminder of itself. But beneath all of that, or maybe around it, there was something else now, something calmer.

“Better,” you said softly. “A little.”

His mouth shifted. “I’ll take a little.”

The quiet that followed was not awkward exactly. Or maybe it was, but only in the gentlest way. Not because either of you wanted out of it. More because neither of you seemed to know how to step forward without disturbing what had somehow settled between you in the night.

Joel looked at you for another second, then lowered his voice even further. “Did I hurt your shoulder?”

It took you a moment to understand what he meant. Then you realized he was asking about this.  About the way you were folded into him, about the fact that at some point in the night he had climbed fully into bed and held you there until sleep took you both.

“No,” you said quickly. Too quickly, almost. You swallowed and tried again, softer this time. “No. You didn’t.”

His hand, still resting warm and broad at your back, did not move. “I wasn’t sure if you’d remember any of it,” he said.

“I remember enough.”

His eyes searched yours once, as if checking whether that was a good thing or a bad one. You had no idea what your face gave away. Perhaps more than you meant it to, because his gaze dropped briefly. To your hair against his shoulder, maybe, or to the hand of yours still curled loosely in the front of his shirt, and when it came back to you there was a so much care in it, one that seemed to understand exactly how precarious this morning was.

“`S your head bad?” he asked.

“Not as bad.”

He nodded once. There was another pause. Then, very carefully, “You want me to let go?”

The question should have made the answer easy, except it didn’t. Because now that he had asked it, you were suddenly aware of everything at once: how close you were, how your leg lay caught along the line of his, how easy it would be for him to move away, how different the room would feel the second he did. And underneath that, deeper and harder to admit, the truth you had already discovered before he woke: you did not want him to.

Your hesitation must have lasted only a second or two, but it felt like enough to fill the whole room. Joel`s eyes held yours and you saw the exact moment understanding flickered there, followed immediately by restraint.

You lowered your gaze because looking at him had become suddenly too much. “You can stay,” you murmured. Then, because the words felt too bare on their own, “If you want.”

When you looked back up, something in his face had softened into a kind of disbelief so controlled it almost wasn’t visible at all.

“Yeah,” he said, voice rougher now. “I want.”

The admission was simple, barely above a murmur, but it changed the air anyway.

Joel’s hand moved then, but only enough to settle a little more securely at your back, not drawing you closer so much as answering the permission you had given. 

For another few breaths neither of you spoke. The light in the room had begun to shift, soft gray turning slowly toward morning. Scout made a low sound in his sleep and resettled himself at the foot of the bed.

You could not think of anything safe to do with your eyes after that, so you let them drift toward the collar of his shirt instead. The fabric was rumpled from sleep and your own grip. One of the buttons near his throat had come loose at some point, enough that you could see a narrow glimpse of skin there, warm in the morning dimness. The sight of it sent something small and startled through you, an unmistakable pulse of physical awareness sharpened by closeness and the knowledge that you were allowed, at least for this moment, to remain here.

It must have shown somewhere in your face, or maybe your silence had changed shape, because Joel’s voice gentled further still.

“What is it?”

You almost laughed from nerves alone. “Nothing.”

He gave you a look that said he believed that about as much as Marta ever did. “You’ve got a real bad habit of sayin’ ‘nothing’ when it’s clearly somethin’.”

Despite everything, a breath of amusement escaped you. “Marta says the same thing.”

The corner of his mouth lifted properly then, enough to alter his whole face. “Then maybe you oughta start listenin’ to the both of us.”

You looked at him. At how different he was here, unarmed by daylight and this bed and the fragile intimacy of a morning neither of you had planned. And because the memory of the wedding night still existed somewhere inside you — because you could remember exactly how hard and unreadable he had seemed then, how unreachable — seeing him like this now felt almost disorienting.

The same man. The same breadth of him. But everything else was different now. So different that the contrast struck you almost harder than the warmth itself.

Then, you had lain rigid as wire beneath his hands, every inch of your body braced for whatever would come next. Now, you were already folded into him before your mind had even fully surfaced.

Then, silence had felt unbearable, sharp enough to cut. Now, the quiet between you seemed almost sacred, full rather than empty.

Then, his size had been a threat you measured in instinctive fear. Now, the same size made your body understand something it had never known how to trust before: shelter.

Now, lying here with his arm around you and sleep still low in his voice, he felt dangerously close to becoming a place.

Joel seemed to sense the shift in you. He did not ask for more. Instead, after a moment, he said, “You want breakfast up here?”

You blinked, startled by the simple practicality of it. He went on in that same low tone, as if easing the both of you toward safer ground. “Marta’ll bring it up if I ask. Or coffee first, if that’s all your head can stand.”

The image was so ordinary, so domestic — breakfast in bed, coffee, morning — that for one ridiculous moment it felt stranger than anything else that had happened between you. 

“I don’t know if I can eat much.”

“That’s alright,” he said. “You don’t have to eat much. Just enough not to make the doc start yellin’ at me.”

This time your laugh came easier and Joel’s gaze changed when he heard it. “There you are,” he murmured, almost to himself.

The words caught somewhere low in you. You dared to look back at him. “I didn’t know you were funny.”

“Wasn’t aware I’d ever claimed otherwise.”

“You definitely implied otherwise.”

“That so?”

“Yes.”

He considered that with an expression so grave it was almost absurd. “Sounds like a serious misunderstanding.”

You smiled despite yourself. And because the moment had somehow become even softer for the small absurdity of it, Joel lifted one hand from where it had rested near your shoulder and, very slowly, brushed his thumb once beneath your eye.

You went still. The touch was barely there, just enough to catch what must have been the dried trace of an old tear at the edge of your lashes, but it burned through you with the force of something much larger.

Joel seemed to realize what he had done in the same instant you did. His hand paused. His eyes searched yours, ready to stop if he had overstepped. You did not pull away, though. 

He eventually let his hand fall back quietly to the blanket between you, and whatever passed in that silence after was too delicate to be named without damaging it.

At last he said, “I can get up, if you need a minute.”

You knew what he meant. Not only the practical fact of it — the awkwardness of getting out of bed, of needing the bathroom, of facing the day — but the wider permission inside it. Space, and distance. The chance to retreat from whatever this morning had become.

And yet when you imagined the bed without him in it, the room seemed immediately colder.

You shook your head. “Not yet,” you said slowly.

Joel held your gaze for one long second. Then he nodded once, very gently. “Alright,” he said.

He did not move away, he did not pull you any closer either. He simply stayed where he was, one arm still warm around your back, both of you suspended for a few more borrowed minutes in the strange, tender quiet of morning.

He moved first in the end, though with such care it hardly felt like movement at all.

“Let me get Marta before she decides we’ve both died in here,” he said softly.

You let out a deep breath. “That would probably upset her.”

“Deeply,” he agreed.

Still, even then, he didn’t simply pull away. His hand stayed at your back as he eased himself up onto one elbow, watching your face the entire time as if measuring whether the loss of his warmth hurt you in some new way. Only when he was certain you were steady did he slowly uncurl from around you and sit up at the edge of the bed.

The absence of him came all at once after that. Cool air where there had been heat. Space where there had been a solid, reassuring line of him. You became absurdly aware of the shape your body had been holding against his and no longer was.

Joel stood and dragged one hand back through his hair, still rumpled with sleep, then looked down at you with that same quiet, searching attention he seemed no longer capable of hiding.

He studied you one moment longer, then crossed to the door and opened it just enough to speak into the hall in a voice kept deliberately low. You couldn’t hear every word, only the rough cadence of it, familiar now in a way it had not been before. A moment later the door shut again and he came back into the room.

“Marta’s sending coffee,” he said. “And breakfast.”

You shifted carefully against the pillows, testing how much your body objected to the simple act of being more upright. Everything still ached, your ribs most of all, but the sharpest edges had dulled, replaced by that deep, bruised heaviness that belonged to healing more than fresh damage.

“I think I can manage a little,” you said softly.

Joel reached for the pillows behind you before you had to ask. “Hold on.”

He moved them with the same deliberate care, one hand braced lightly near your shoulder while the other adjusted the stack until you were angled more comfortably. When he was done, he paused, looking at your face rather than the pillows, as though the arrangement only counted if your breathing told him it did.

“Better?”

“Yes.”

His hand lingered for half a second near your shoulder before he let it fall. Then he sat on the edge of the mattress again, one knee turned slightly toward you. 

The room had brightened while you weren’t looking. Morning was no longer gray but pale gold at the curtains. Dust moved lazily in the light. Somewhere below, the house had begun its quieter daytime life. Scout had raised his head at some point and was now watching the two of you with the grave suspicion of a dog who feared breakfast might be happening without him.

You followed Joel’s gaze to him.

“He’s judging us,” you murmured.

Joel glanced at the dog, then back at you. “He’s judgin’ me,” he corrected. “He knows I’m the one between him and any possible scraps.”

The answer made you smile again.

There was a knock a minute later, gentle but efficient. Joel stood before you could, before you could even think about wanting to. Marta came in carrying a tray large enough to suggest she’d ignored every instruction to keep things light. Coffee. Tea. Toast. Soft eggs. Fruit. And something that smelled faintly buttery and warm beneath a folded napkin.

Joel took the tray from her before she crossed too far into the room and set it across your lap with such care that you became newly conscious of how intimate even that was: the simple domestic fact of a man arranging breakfast for you in bed as though it were nothing worth remarking on. He tested the angle, adjusted it once, then handed you the tea first rather than the coffee.

“This one first,” he said.  

“Bossy,” you murmured.

One corner of his mouth lifted. “Only with you,” he said quietly, and there was the faintest thread of teasing in it. “Somebody’s gotta make sure you don’t pretend you’re stronger than you are.”

You felt heat creep up your neck and quickly took the tea then, your fingers brushing his only briefly. Still, the contact sent a small, involuntary awareness through you. You took a small sip.

“Too hot?”

“No.” You lowered your eyes to the cup. “It’s fine.”

He said nothing to press you, only poured his own coffee and sat back down in the chair now, though he dragged it close enough to the bed that it still felt as though he hadn’t really left.

For a while, the scene held itself in small things. The clink of a spoon against china, steam lifting between you, Scout settling with a dramatic sigh. You managed half a slice of toast, then a little egg, then more tea than you would have thought possible.

The whole scene was so quiet, so ordinary, that it made something in you ache as it felt real enough to want. Joel seemed content to let the quiet do its work until he caught you pausing too long over the tray, your attention no longer on the food at all.

“You alright?”

The question was gentle. You looked down at the toast in your hand and then set it back onto the plate. 

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he asked gently.

“For all of this,” you said, carefully. “I know you already told me it isn’t my fault, but it was my father, Joel.” Your fingers twisted harder in your lap. “It was his name. His people. His plan. He used me to get to you, to get into your house, to hurt people here —.”

“No,” he said. The word was quiet, but absolute.

You tried to make him understand, though you barely understood yourself. “Joel—”

“No. What the hell are you sorry for?”

The roughness in the question wasn’t anger at you. It was anger for you, which was somehow harder to bear. You opened your mouth and found too many possible answers crowding there at once: the blood, the house, the breach, your father’s name, your own.

He saw you searching and leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees, close enough now that his voice dropped to something almost private.

“You didn’t do a damn thing wrong.”

“You don’t know that,” you said, too softly, your gaze lowering to your hands in your lap.

His gaze sharpened. “Yeah,” he said firmly. “I do.”

The room seemed to narrow around the two of you. Your throat tightened, but now that it had begun you could not seem to force it back down.

“When you moved me back to my room…” You broke off, breathing unevenly. “I thought—” Your eyes dropped somewhere to the hollow of his throat. “I thought maybe you just didn’t know how to tell me you didn’t want me near you anymore. That you were being kind because I was hurt. But that once I was better enough, you wanted the distance.” A breath shuddered through you. “Because of what he did. Because of what I brought here.”

“Sweetheart,” he said softly, and there was something almost disbelieving in it, “is that what you thought?”

You tried for a shrug and failed halfway through because your shoulder reminded you of itself.

“I didn’t know what else to think.”

For a second he only looked at you. Then he set the coffee down and rose from the chair. He moved the tray carefully and sat on the edge of the bed again, facing you fully now. He then reached across the bed, not abruptly, not as though he assumed the right, but slowly enough that you could have pulled away if you wanted to. His hand came to rest lightly over yours.

“Look at me.”

You did. His face was tired, yes. And marked through with the last days in ways sleep had not mended. But there was no hesitation in him now.

“What Victor Moretti chooses to do,” he said, each word measured and low, “belongs to him. Not to you. I don’t care whose blood you’ve got. I don’t care what name you were born under. None of this is on you.”

Your eyes burned suddenly. He saw that too, and some of the steel in him eased just enough to keep the words from cutting where they meant to heal.

“You were used,” he said, quieter now. “That is not the same thing as guilty.”

“But I —“

“No, honey. Listen to me. I moved you back because I thought it was what you’d want,” he said. “Your own room. Your own space. I thought keeping you with me any longer, after…” He stopped, his jaw tightening briefly before he found the shape of the sentence again. “After everything, might’ve felt like I was making the choice for you.”

Your eyes lifted to his.

“It never had a damn thing to do with wanting you gone.” Joel’s thumb moved once, a small stroke over your knuckles, a touch so careful it undid something in you all over again. “What Victor did is on Victor. Not on you.” His voice roughened, but never lost its steadiness. “You did not ask for this. You did not bring this on anybody. And you sure as hell do not answer for the choices that man made.”

Your breath caught again. Joel’s gaze did not leave your face.

“No father,” he said, slower now, “should ever use his daughter that way.”

You shook your head once, almost instinctively, as if you still could not bear the tenderness of it. Something in your face must have changed, because his expression softened in answer.

“I was tryin’ to do right by you,” he said quietly. “That’s all.”

Your fingers trembled where they were still underneath his.

“I thought…” you began, and had to stop to steady your voice. “I thought maybe that once you knew, you’d—”

“What?” he asked gently.

The word barely made it out. “Regret me.”

For one second Joel only looked at you, as if he could not quite believe those words had been living inside you. Then his hand slid fully to your cheek, his rough palm impossibly gentle against bruised skin.

“No,” he said again, and this time the word felt almost like a vow. “No. Never you.”

You nodded, though the movement was small and uncertain against him. His hand stayed on your cheek only a moment longer before slipping away again, giving you back the space to breathe. You missed his warmth on your skin instantly.

“I’m sorry you ever thought otherwise,” he said.

For one moment neither of you spoke. Then, because the morning had already changed too many things to go on pretending none of them had happened, you asked the question that had been pressing against your ribs since before breakfast.

“What happens now?”

He didn’t lie to you. You saw that decision pass through him before he answered.

“Now,” he said carefully, “you keep getting better.”

That was not an answer, and the fact that he knew it showed in the way his thumb moved again, almost absently, over your knuckles.

“Joel—”

“I know.” His voice gentled again. “I know that’s not what you meant.”

He looked down at your joined hands for a moment, then back up.

“There are things being dealt with,” he said. “Tommy and Elias are on it. I’m on it. But I’m not putting any more of that on you right now.” His expression changed, just slightly. “You want the truth, I’ll tell you the truth. But not all at once, and not while you still look like you oughta be sleepin’ another six hours.”

You should have bristled at that. But the rest of you heard what lay beneath it too clearly: not dismissal, not condescension, but an almost stubborn need to protect what little steadiness this morning had managed to create.

“You keep deciding what I can bear,” you said dryly.

Joel took that without flinching. “Maybe. And maybe I’m gettin’ that wrong,” he went on. “But I’d rather have you angry at me than watch you wear yourself bloody trying to carry all of it at once.”

The words sat between you. Then, because he had given you honesty, you gave him some too.

“I’m not angry.”

His eyes searched your face curiously. “No?”

You shook your head. “No. Just… afraid, I think.”

His hand tightened once over yours, then eased. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I know.”

For a while after that, you said nothing, and Joel didn’t rush to fill the silence. He left his hand where it was. The tea cooled beside you. Outside, light moved slowly across the floorboards. Scout, having determined no food would be forthcoming from grief or tenderness, laid his head back down with the air of a martyr.

At last Joel glanced toward the tray and then back at you. “You think you can manage a little more?”

The abrupt practicality of it, the way he turned the room back toward something survivable, made something warm and fragile twist under your ribs. You picked up the toast again. And while you ate, Joel stayed on the edge of the bed and his hand still warm over yours.

He was still carrying the warmth of her when he stepped into the office.

Not physically anymore, that had gone the moment he’d straightened from her bed and forced himself out of the room before he could stay there longer than was wise. But the memory of it remained in a way he could not seem to shake: The weight of her against him in the dark. The weak clutch of her hand in his shirt even half-asleep. The way she had looked at him over breakfast, bruised and worn through and trying, still trying, to apologize for damage done to her.

The lamp in his office on the desk burned low over open files and route sheets. Coffee sat cold in two mugs. An ashtray had been filled and emptied and filled again. Tommy stood by the desk with one hand braced against the wood, jaw rough with a night he hadn’t slept through. Elias was at the window, sleeves rolled, face set hard enough to crack stone.

Both of them looked up when Joel came in.

He shut the door behind him. “Tell me.”

Tommy didn’t waste time. “We’ve got the whole of it now.”

Joel crossed to the desk but didn’t sit. His eyes skimmed the open pages, then lifted again. “From Alvarez?”

Elias gave a short nod that held no satisfaction at all. “From Alvarez. From the burners. From the shell accounts Carter pulled apart. And from one old ledger he thought nobody’d ever think to connect.”

Tommy pushed a page toward him. “He didn’t start as Miller,” he said. “Not really. Years back, before he ever came over, he was workin’ under Moretti-adjacent crews on the Gulf side. Logistics. Quiet runs. Dirty money, basically. Bodies maybe, though he’s still duckin’ that part.”

Joel’s eyes moved once across the page. Over the dates. The names. Fragments of a life that should have stayed buried and had not.

Tommy went on. “When he left that side and came over, everybody figured he’d cut clean enough to be useful. And he was useful, a long time. Kept his head down, worked hard, made himself valuable.” He tapped the file once. “But Victor never really let go of him.”

Joel’s gaze lifted. “How?”

Elias answered this time, voice flat. “Debt first. Then family.”

Tommy drew a slow breath through his nose. “Alvarez has a sister outside Naples. Her husband is dead. Two kids. Victor’s had people near them for years, looks like. Not close enough to draw attention, just close enough that Alvarez knew he could reach them if he felt like it.”

Joel looked back down at the page again. There was a photograph clipped there. Alvarez coming out of a side office three years ago, younger in the face, more whole. Harmless-looking, if a man didn’t know better.

Tommy said, “Victor also kept old books on him. Jobs from before. Names, transfers, some things that’d bury him if they ever surfaced in the wrong rooms. He didn’t need much. Just enough to remind Alvarez the past wasn’t dead.”

Joel let the silence sit. Outside the office, the house went on in muffled sounds. A door somewhere downstairs. Footsteps crossing stone. Life, continuing. His jaw tightened once and he swallowed hard. Tommy must have seen something in his face, because his voice altered slightly when he went on. 

“It started small. Victor didn’t ask for blood first,” Tommy said. “He asked for timing. Route windows. Stagger sheets, things like that. Enough so trucks wouldn’t cross wrong people and cause ‘misunderstandings.’ That’s how Alvarez tells it anyway. First thing he handed over was West Lake.”

Joel’s hand settled flat on the desk. Tommy nodded toward the papers. “He told himself it was just scheduling. Just avoiding conflict. No hits were ordered, not directly. But Victor took those windows and built from there.”

Elias pushed off the window and came closer, anger riding close under his skin now. “Then Riverside. Exact route, exact hour, where the detail thinned. After that, he gave them the garden timing too.”

Joel’s eyes snapped to him. Elias held the look. “Enough to know when she was out there lighter guarded with the dog.” His mouth hardened. 

“And Alvarez knew what it was becoming?”

Tommy answered carefully. “Not all at once. But he knew enough.”

Joel looked at him. There was a long beat in which no one moved.

Then Joel asked, “When could he still have come to us?”

Tommy glanced once at Elias, then back. “After West Lake, maybe he could still lie to himself. After Riverside, no.” He tapped the desk again. “By then he knew what Victor was building. Knew these weren’t harmless timings. Knew people could die. Knew the house might get touched next.”

Joel’s voice stayed level. “And he still said nothing.”

“No,” Tommy said simply.

Elias’s answer came over the top of it, sharper. “Not one damn word.”

Joel looked down at the spread of documents again.

A compromised man. A frightened man. A weak man. There were plenty of those in the world.

But fear had never been the true dividing line. Plenty of men were afraid and still came forward before the blood dried. Plenty of men were threatened and still chose to be honest while there was time to save something. Alvarez had not.

He had watched each step become uglier than the last and kept trading silence for one more day of safety. One more excuse. One more lie. And upstairs, because of that silence, she had woken in his arms apologizing for the sins of a father who should have died before ever laying claim to the word.

Joel’s hand curled once against the edge of the desk.

Elias saw it. “We should end him.”

Tommy shot him a look but didn’t deny the instinct. “Eventually, maybe.”

“No,” Elias said. “Now. Everybody who hears what happened is gonna want to know what it buys a man to hand over the house.”

Joel lifted his head. Elias met his eyes and kept going, because he knew better than to back off now. 

“He can have reasons. Fine. I don’t care. Men are always scared. Men always got somebody they wanna save. He still watched it happen. He still let her get taken. If that doesn’t end in blood, what exactly are we teachin’ the rest of them?”

Tommy straightened from the desk. “And if you kill him now, what exactly do you learn from a corpse? He’s still got names we don’t have. Intermediaries. Moretti side crews. Safe routes. Old hooks Victor’s still holdin’ in other men.”

Elias’s jaw flexed. “Then use him fast.”

“That’s the idea,” Tommy said calmly.

Joel still said nothing. His gaze drifted once, involuntarily, to the far corner of the office where nothing waited for him at all. He saw instead the shape of her under the blanket this morning. Hair mussed from sleep. Eyes still shadowed with the night before, but clear enough to search his face when she asked what came next. He had wanted, with an intensity that made no sense, to put his hand back against her cheek and keep the question away from her a little longer.

Wanted her room, her bed, the tray across her lap, the domestic quiet of it to stay untouched by the rest of this. Wanted her back under his arm where fear stopped shaking her bones.

It was getting harder to pretend that what he felt was only protectiveness. Harder still to pretend the attraction wasn’t there too, woven through all of it. The feel of her fitting against him in the dark. The awareness of her in the morning when the room first warmed with light. The way he had to make himself stop looking at her mouth over breakfast when she spoke softly and then apologized again for things that had never been hers to bear.

It made him meaner here.

His voice, when he finally spoke, was calm enough to make Tommy go still. “The first time Victor leaned on him, Alvarez was compromised.”

Neither man interrupted.

“The second time he kept quiet, he was a coward,” Joel said. “By the third, he was a traitor.”

Elias’s expression darkened in something like grim satisfaction. Tommy only listened.

Joel went on. “Fear explains him. But it doesn’t clear him.”

“No,” Tommy said quietly. “It doesn’t.”

Joel sighed. “But he’s worth more breathing for the next few days than dead in the dirt this morning.”

Elias exhaled through his nose, angry but not stupid enough to argue the point before it was finished. Joel looked between them. 

“Here’s what happens. Alvarez is done. Rank gone. Protection gone. He speaks when we ask, and if he holds back anything at all, he learns very quickly what the difference is between me being strategic and me being angry.”

Tommy nodded once. Joel tapped a finger against the documents. 

“Carter keeps pulling every payment chain. Every shell, every side account. I want every name he touched in the last eighteen months. Victor used him because he thought the seam was old and quiet. I want to know how many more quiet seams he thinks he still has.”

“Done,” Tommy was watching him closely now. “And Victor?”

The name sat in the room like a blade laid flat on a table.

Joel did not answer immediately. Because the truth of it was simple enough in one direction: Victor Moretti had reached into his house, into his peace, into the body of his own daughter, and used all three like they were pieces to be moved. There were ten ways to answer that kind of insult. Most of them final.

But none of those ways mattered as much as the fact that she was upstairs, alive, healing, and just barely beginning to trust that being held did not have to end in harm.

He would not tear the world open around her again unless he had to.

When he spoke, his voice was low. “Victor doesn’t get touched until I know exactly where every one of his hands is.”

Tommy gave a short nod. “Understood.”

Elias’s answer came a beat later. “Yes, sir.”

Joel looked back to the files. “When I move on Victor, I want it clean. I want every weak edge sealed before he realizes the line’s closed.”

Tommy folded his arms. “And Alvarez?”

Joel’s expression did not shift. “He keeps breathing until he stops being useful.”

No one in the room misunderstood what came after that sentence, even if it wasn’t spoken aloud.

Tommy let out a slow breath and reached for one of the route sheets. “Then we’ve got work.”

Joel nodded once. When the first wave of orders had been given and the next set of names parceled out, Tommy glanced up from the desk. “Is she feelin` better?”

Joel didn’t answer at once. He remembered her voice in the dark. I’m sorry, Joel.

He remembered the way she had looked at him this morning when she finally found the courage to say she thought he wanted distance from her because of what Victor had done. He remembered her body softening by degrees when he told her no father should do that to his child.

“Yeah,” he said.

Tommy’s mouth twitched once, not quite a smile. “`m glad.”

Joel reached for the top page, scanned it once more, then set it down. “If Alvarez gives you anything new, I want it immediately.”

By the time Maria came to fetch you, the light had shifted again.

It was later in the day, though not yet evening. The house had settled into that quieter middle stretch when the loudest work had already been done elsewhere and only the softer movements remained. You had slept for an hour after Joel left the office. Enough to wake with less weight in your limbs than before, less of that bruised, underwater feeling that had made every thought seem slower than it ought to be.

Marta had helped you dress before she left you to rest again, muttering the whole time about how recovery was not a race and you were not to behave as though upright posture itself were a moral achievement. The result was a soft sweater, a long skirt, and a shawl Maria now insisted on adjusting once more around your shoulders the second you stepped into the corridor.

“You’re starting to act like Marta,” you murmured.

Maria smiled faintly. “That should worry you more than it worries me.”

Maria walked at your pace without comment. Not slowing in a way that would insult you. Not hurrying you either. Just matching the rhythm your body could bear. The stairs were taken carefully. The hall below opened into pale afternoon light, and when the front door was opened for you the air outside felt cooler than you expected, carrying the clean scent of earth and hay.

The stables were not far, but even the walk there forced a new awareness of your body. You were healing, that much was true. But healing was not grace. It was measured, awkward, slightly humiliating work. Your ribs reminded you of themselves when you breathed too deeply. Your shoulder still ached if you let it swing naturally for too long. By the time you reached the stable yard, a little of the early steadiness had already begun to thin.

Maria noticed, of course, and without making a fuss, she steered you toward the sun-warmed bench beside the open stable door instead of farther in. The horses shifted in their stalls with quiet sounds of breath and movement. Somewhere deeper inside, one hoof struck wood softly. The place smelled of leather and hay and warm animal sleep. 

Maria sat beside you. For a while neither of you said anything. You watched a shaft of light slide slowly across the stable floor. A groom crossed the far end of the yard, nodded once when he saw Maria, then vanished again around the side gate. Somewhere nearby, a horse snorted and settled.

At last Maria said, “You look better.”

You kept your gaze ahead. “Benji told me I looked less dead.”

That got a laugh out of her, brief and genuine. “Well. From him, that’s practically poetry.”

You smiled. The quiet returned after it, softer now, and because Maria did not rush to fill it, the thing you had been carrying came back as soon as there was room for it.

“What is he going to do?” you asked carefully.

Maria did not pretend not to understand who you meant. She folded her hands in her lap and looked out toward the yard. “About Victor?”

You nodded. The name sat badly in your mouth even unspoken.

Maria drew one slow breath. “I don’t know exactly.“

Your eyes lifted slightly toward her then.

“But,” she added, “I do know Joel.”

She was looking ahead still, expression thoughtful rather than stern. “He’s angrier than I’ve seen him in a very long time,” she said. “That much is true. And Tommy is too, though he hides it differently. Men like that do not take breaches of trust lightly to begin with. This…” She paused. “This was personal in a way none of them can pretend otherwise.”

Your hands tightened a little in the folds of your skirt.

“I don’t know what I’m afraid of most,” you admitted suddenly. “That he’ll do something irreversible. That my father will push until there’s no space left for anything but blood. That this will turn into a war neither of them can step back from.” Your throat tightened. “Or that Joel looks at me now and only sees where the weak point was.”

Maria was quiet for one beat too long, and in that beat you regretted saying any of it aloud.

Then she said, very evenly, “No. He does not.”

The certainty of it made you look at her again. Maria’s face had softened, but only slightly. Her kindness was never vague. It always arrived with bone beneath it.

“Victor using you does not make any of this yours to answer for,” she said. “And whatever Joel sees when he looks at you, it is not a weak point. If anything, you’re the reason he’s holding himself together at all.”

You wanted to believe her. That was the humiliating part. How badly you wanted to.

You lowered your eyes to your own hands. “He says that too.”

“Yes,” Maria said firmly. “And perhaps you should try the radical experiment of believing him.”

A breath of something almost like amusement touched her voice, enough to keep the words from becoming scolding.

You shook your head faintly. “It’s not that simple.”

“No,” she agreed. “It usually isn’t.”

The yard shimmered a little in the pale light. A horse shifted behind you, leather creaking softly somewhere in the dim. Maria adjusted the shawl where it had started to slip from one shoulder, the gesture so automatic it felt almost familial.

You let yourself look out into the yard again before speaking. When you spoke again, your voice had gone smaller. 

“I’m afraid of a lot of things.”

“I know.”

You swallowed. “I’m afraid that my father will never stop using me as leverage. That this is all I’ll ever be to him. Something to place where it hurts most.” The next part came harder. “And I’m afraid that Joel will have to become someone worse because of it.”

“Joel has always been capable of being terrible,” she said quietly. “That isn’t new.”

You looked at her sharply, but she didn’t take the words back.

“I don’t mean cruel for the sake of it,” she said. “I mean decisive. Dangerous. Sometimes frightening. Men do not get to where he is by being made of softness.” Then, after a pause, “He can be ruthless. But ruthless is not the same thing as reckless. And whatever he does next, he won’t do it blindly where you’re concerned.”

The afternoon air had cooled further by then, just enough that you pulled the shawl closer around yourself.

“I keep thinking that once everything is said plainly, whatever this is”—you stopped, because even now you could not quite define it without feeling foolish—“will be gone.”

Maris gave you a curious look, but said nothing.

“I`m worried,” you continued quietly. “That my father won’t stop now that he’s crossed this line. That Joel will answer it, and that one day someone will come through a door and tell me he didn’t come back.”

Maria turned her head then. “So that’s the fear,” she said softly. “Not only what Joel might do. What might be done to him.”

The words should have embarrassed you. Instead they only made your eyes sting unexpectedly. You laughed once under your breath, though there was no real humor in it. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Maria was quiet for a moment. “No,” she said at last. “But I don’t think Joel does either.” 

That startled you enough to pull your gaze back to hers. You saw one corner of her mouth lifted.

“What do you mean?” you asked softly.

“Do you really think that man has been sleeping in chairs and reading novels at your bedside because he feels inconvenienced?”

You didn`t know what to say. Maria went on, still calm, still almost conversational. 

“Do you think he carried a breakfast tray into your room this morning because he was looking for a graceful way out? That man has been half out of his mind for days, and not because any of this means little to him.”

Heat rose quickly into your face, and you looked away. “That isn’t what I said.”

“No,” Maria said plainly. “It’s what you are afraid of.”

The stable seemed quieter after that. You watched a loose strand of hay lift and settle again on the breeze. Somewhere inside the stable, one of the horses stamped once and then went still.

At last Maria said, “Whatever this began as, it isn’t only that anymore.”

You stared ahead at the pale shape of the yard beyond the stable doors.

“I don’t know what to do with that either,” you admitted.

Maria’s answer came almost at once. “You don’t have to do anything with it today.”

It was such a small mercy, such an ordinary one. You did not have to solve it now. You did not have to be wiser than your own fear by dusk. 

You turned toward her then and managed the faintest, most exhausted smile. “You’re very good at this.”

Maria smiled back, but hers held a touch of sadness in it too. “No. I’m just old enough to know that people usually make things harder by demanding clarity too soon.”

She reached over then and squeezed your hand briefly. Not tenderly in the way Joel touched you. More firmly. More matter-of-fact. A woman’s reassurance.

After another minute, Maria stood and offered you her hand.

“Come on,” she said. “Before Marta comes looking and decides I’ve overexerted you on purpose.”

You let her help you up. The walk back was slow again, but easier somehow than the way out had been, because something in you had unknotted by a degree or two.

As you crossed the yard, Maria glanced sideways at you once.

“For what it’s worth,” she said, almost lightly, “he’ll be insufferable if he finds out you made it all the way to the stables without him.”

You looked at her, and she gave a tiny shrug. “Men like to imagine they are indispensable. It keeps them busy.”

The image of Joel hearing that and trying not to show the exact shape of his reaction was so immediate that you smiled again. Maria saw it and, wisely, said nothing more.

The front hall held the last pale stretch of daylight through the long windows, turning the floorboards gold in strips. You had barely stepped inside before Tommy looked up from where he stood near the console table, one hand braced around a coffee mug gone half-cold.

“Well,” he said, taking you in with a glance that tried for casual and only half-managed it, “look at you. Out here takin’ tours now.”

Maria unwrapped her gloves with calm precision. “Yes, Thomas. I took her to the stables. Not across enemy lines.”

Tommy snorted. “Marta’s gonna say I let you overdo it.”

“Marta says a great many things,” Maria replied. “Most of them with conviction.”

“That woman’s gonna bury me one day.”

“She’ll be right to.”

The exchange was so dry, so practiced, that for one small second it startled a laugh out of you. Maria glanced sideways at you with quiet satisfaction.

And then Joel stepped into the hall from the study. He stopped the moment he saw you. His eyes moved over you once, taking in the shawl around your shoulders, the faint flush in your face from the cool air outside, the careful way you were still holding one side of yourself.

“How was it?” he asked gently.

The question was simple enough. Still, the way he asked it made it feel like he meant something larger than the walk alone.

“Fine,” you said quietly.

Joel’s gaze rested on you for one second longer, warm and unconvinced. Maria spared him the effort of arguing. “She did well,” she said. “Which means she is now going upstairs before someone starts pretending she isn’t tired.”

Joel almost smiled at that, though his attention never really left you. “You need help upstairs?”

The answer rose automatically. “No, I’m alright.”

His eyes flicked once to the stairs, then back to your face. There was no challenge in him, no insistence. 

“Alright,” he said at last. But he stayed where he was until you had made it to the landing.

The bath helped more than you expected. It did not wash the ache out of your ribs or undo the heaviness in your shoulder, but the water was hot, and heat reached places gentleness alone could not. By the time you had sunk carefully down into it, the whole room had gone softly blurred at the edges from steam.

For a little while, you let yourself simply exist there. No one watching, no questions waiting. No carefulness except your own. The bruises looked darker in warm light. At your jaw. At your throat. Steam had blurred the mirror by the time you reached for the soap. You were grateful for that. You did not particularly want to study yourself tonight. Only to feel clean, and warm. More human than you had an hour ago.

You moved carefully, washed slowly. You let the heat do what it could.

Victor crossed your mind once, sharp and ugly as a pulled thread. Joel followed after, quieter. Not as a thought you meant to have, only as a presence your body seemed already to expect by evening now. The contrast between the two men sat in you without asking to be named. One had made use of your fear. The other had made room for it.

You closed your eyes and tipped your head back against the tub. You thought of Maria’s voice in the stable yard. Whatever this began as, it isn’t only that anymore.

You thought of Joel at breakfast, his hand over yours, the quiet force with which he had said Never you.

That did not make anything simple. It did not undo the wedding night, and it did not answer what Joel was to you now, or what you were meant to do with the fact that his presence steadied you in ways that still felt dangerous to admit.

But it did quiet one thing. The old instinct to turn every wound inward, to make yourself answer for what had been done to you. To carry it as if guilt were the same thing as control.

You were tired of that. 

You eventually dried off and changed into a fresh nightgown, your hair damp at the ends and the room beginning to cool around you again. you were sitting at the dressing table, brushing slowly through the ends of your hair, when the knock came. Soft and familiar now. 

You set the brush down. “Come in.”

Joel had meant only to check on you before he left. That was what he told himself on the way up the stairs. That and the fact that Tommy was waiting downstairs, and Carter would be there within the hour, and there were three separate problems still bleeding into one another beyond the walls of this house.

He told himself all of that. Then he opened the door. And forgot, for one dangerous second, every useful thought he’d had on the stairs.

You were turned half-away from him at the dressing table, one candle lit beside the mirror though there was still a little evening light left at the curtains. Your hair was damp, darker at the ends. The room smelled faintly of soap and warm water. You had changed into something soft and pale that left your throat bare and made the bruising there look even more delicate, more wrong.

You looked soft. So soft. 

He saw the bath had eased some of the strain out of your body. He saw, too, that you were still moving carefully, as if each gesture had to be negotiated before it was made. Vulnerable, yes. But also very quietly beautiful. Enough so that he had to push the thought down before it showed anywhere on his face.

He had no business feeling weak for you while you still looked like this. No business noticing the damp curve of your hair against your neck, or the way the candlelight gentled your skin, or the unbearable domestic intimacy of finding you in your room at dusk, fresh from a bath, as if this were any kind of ordinary marriage.

But his body noticed, that was the trouble. His body noticed, and whatever had been shifting in him these last days made the noticing harder to dismiss than it ought to have been.

You turned then and saw him fully. Whatever was in your face at first — tiredness, maybe surprise — softened by a fraction when you realized it was him.

Joel shut the door behind him more carefully than he needed to.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said.

“You didn’t.”

Your voice was quieter in the evening. Sleepier maybe. His gaze flicked once to the brush on the table, the dampness at your hair, the line of your shoulders beneath the fabric. Then he made himself look only at your face.

“How’re you feelin’?”

“Better,” you said. Then, because you knew enough by now to head off the look he was about to give you, you added, “Tired, a little. But not in a terrible way.”

One corner of his mouth moved. “That sounds like progress.”

You turned a little more toward him on the stool. “Maria took that as proof she could bully me into fresh air.”

“She usually takes everything as proof of that.”

That won a faint smile from you, and God, he was in trouble, because he felt that smile like relief.

He stayed near the door a second too long, aware now of the way the room had narrowed around the simple fact of the two of you in it. A husband in his wife’s room. Evening. Candlelight. Her hair damp from a bath. Nothing improper in it. Too much intimacy in it anyway.

“I need to step out for a while,” he said at last, almost reluctantly.

Something changed in your face.

“Business,” he added, quieter. “A few things that can’t wait till mornin’.”

You nodded once. “Alright.”

Joel glanced once toward the window, where the last of the light had gone thinner still. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

The answer was gentle, but it didn’t ease him the way it should have. He realized, standing there in the growing quiet of your room, that leaving felt wrong in a way it hadn’t a week ago. Not because he doubted your strength. Not because he thought you incapable of a few hours alone.

Because he did not want to.

He stepped a little farther in instead, eyes catching for one brief second on the towel you’d left folded near the washstand, the brush at the table, all the small signs of your presence settling into the room again. Signs he wanted, absurdly, to remain near.

“You can send for me if you need anything,” he said.

Your gaze dropped once, then rose back to him. “Thank you.”

The room went quiet after that. Only full of things neither of you had yet decided how to say. Joel was already beginning to step back toward the door when your voice stopped him.

“Will you come back?”

He turned at once. You seemed to realize, a second too late, how many things that question could mean. Your fingers tightened slightly in the fabric at your lap.

“I just meant—” You looked toward the bed, then the book resting on the bedside table. “Will you come back later? To read.”

For one suspended beat, something in his chest gave way so completely it almost hurt. He looked at the book, then at you. And because he knew better than to let too much of what that question did to him show, he answered in the gentlest voice he had.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll come back, sweetheart.”

The tension in your shoulders eased, barely, but enough for him to see it.

Joel’s hand tightened once around the doorknob, then loosened again. “Try to rest till then,” he said gently. You gave the smallest nod.

He left before he could stand there any longer and make a mess of the restraint that was still, for now, the only thing keeping him steady.

But all the way down the stairs, and all the way back into the harder shape of the evening waiting for him, he carried the image of you exactly as you had looked when he opened the door: damp-haired, candlelit, soft with sleep and recovery and something more dangerous than either of those —

wanting him to come back.

You were awake when he knocked.

“Come in,” you said, your voice already softened by drowsiness.

Joel stepped inside with the book in one hand and paused just past the threshold, as though he needed the first second only to look at you and make sure you were still there exactly as he had left you.

You were propped against the pillows, the lamp turned low beside the bed. A certain tiredness had seemed to have settled back into you. Scout had claimed his usual place at the foot of the bed, one eye opening briefly at Joel’s entrance before closing again with the absolute confidence of a dog who had already decided this ritual was permanent.

He paused just inside the door, the book still in one hand.

“You’re still awake.”

You looked up at him. “Did it take long?”

“Long enough,” he said.

Only then did you really take him in: the loosened collar, the tiredness at the corners of his eyes, the way the evening still seemed to cling to hi.

“You look tired,” you said softly.

One corner of his mouth moved. “That bad?”

You shook your head faintly. “No. Just…” Your eyes dropped for a second, then lifted again. “A little worn.”

Something in his face shifted at that, just enough to show the words had landed somewhere warmer than either of you expected. 

He closed the door behind him quietly. “You askin’ after me now?”

There was a thread of teasing in it, but light. Easy. It made your heartbeat stumble anyway. You looked down at the blanket, suddenly aware of yourself. 

“I only meant—”

“I know what you meant,” he said, and his voice had gentled before the sentence was done.

You glanced back up at him, and before you could stop yourself, you said, almost under your breath, “You came back.”

Joel went still for one brief second. Then the faintest hint of something — surprise, maybe? — passed over his face.

“Yeah,” he said. “I told you I would.”

You nodded, though the motion felt smaller than you intended. “I know.”

For a second neither of you moved. Then, because the moment had gone soft enough to frighten you both a little, you looked toward the book and said quietly, “Are you going to read?”

That won a real smile from him, brief and unmistakable.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he said softly. “I’m gonna read.”

So he did. His voice filled the room once more in that low, measured way of his, never trying too hard. He read as though the words mattered, and the space between one sentence and the next mattered too.

You lay back and let it happen. The fire had burned low enough now that the room held more glow than flame. Scout breathed in slow, contented rhythm at your feet. Every now and then Joel turned a page, and each time the sound seemed to mark another small degree of the day loosening its grip on you.

You watched him for longer than you followed the book. The line of his wrist where it rested against the open pages. The tiredness still gathered at the edges of his eyes. The way his voice changed slightly when he forgot himself and sank too far into the rhythm of reading, becoming softer without seeming to mean to. There was something almost unbearably intimate in it now. Because he had said he would come back, and then he had.

For a while, that was all there was. The low cadence of his voice. The room gone still around it. The familiar comfort of him beside you.

Then he stopped.

You opened your eyes just enough to find him looking at you over the top edge of the page.

“You’re driftin’,” he said softly.

“Maybe.”

He smiled and closed the book carefully, keeping his hand inside it to hold the place.

“Joel.”

He looked at you at once. “Yeah, sweetheart?”

You pushed yourself a little more awake, not enough to sit up fully, only enough that your eyes stayed properly on his face. The lamplight caught at the tired lines of him, the loosened collar, the broad shape of his hand still resting over the book.

For one second you almost let it go. The question. The need of it. You could have chosen the easier thing, the softer thing, and let the evening end here.

But a quieter, harder instinct not to be moved around in the dark anymore lived somewhere inside you.

“I need you to tell me what happens next,” you said.

Joel went very still. You held his gaze, even while your heart began to beat harder.

“I know you think you’re sparing me,” you said, your voice quieter now but steadier for it. “And maybe you are. But I can’t keep being handled around this like it has nothing to do with me.” Your fingers tightened slightly in the blanket. 

For a long moment, Joel said nothing. You could feel him weighing your words, weighing you, weighing perhaps all the things he would rather carry himself if he thought he could spare you the weight of them.

At last he set the book down on the bedside table.

When he looked back at you, his face had changed into a kind of grave attention that told you he had heard exactly what you meant.

“You want the truth?” he asked quietly.

“Yes.”

Joel let out one slow breath through his nose and leaned back slightly in the chair, not away from you, only enough to gather himself before speaking.

“Alright,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you this much.”

His voice had gone lower now. It was the voice of a man laying out something he would not dress up to make it easier.

“Your father had a hand in it.”

Even expecting it, hearing it aloud made something cold move under your ribs. Joel saw it immediately while his gaze stayed fixed on your face, as if measuring exactly how hard each word landed.

“We traced the leak back to one of my man,” he went on. “He’s the one who fed them what they needed. Route timings. Windows in security, things like that. Enough to build the thing in layers and make it look like separate hits instead of one plan.”

Your throat tightened. “Because of my father?”

Joel’s jaw shifted once. “Because Victor kept hooks in him. Old ones. Debt, loyalty, fear — it doesn’t much matter which part he hought excused it. He still made the choice.” A beat. “And your father made use of that.”

The room had gone very quiet. Even Scout, impossibly, seemed not to move. You looked down at the blanket for one second, then back at him. “And now?”

“Now,” he said at last, “he doesn’t get near you again.”

Joel leaned forward then, forearms braced lightly on his knees, his eyes never leaving yours.

“I’m still deciding the rest,” he said. “But I’m not gonna lie to you, and I’m not gonna shut you out of it anymore. You asked me straight, so I’m answerin’ you straight.” His voice roughened slightly, but never lost that hard steadiness. “Whatever I do next, the first thing I’m doing is making sure Victor Moretti never gets another chance to use you against anybody again. Least of all me.”

You swallowed once. “Alright.”

Joel’s face changed at that, just barely. “That enough for tonight?” he asked.

You looked at him for a long moment. No, not really. Nothing about any of this was enough. Not the answers. Not the grief. Not the relief. But its was something. So you nodded.

Joel stood then, slowly, as though unwilling to startle the moment into breaking.

“Get some sleep,” he said softly.

His hand rested for one brief second on the bed near yours. Not touching. Just there.

“Whatever happens,” you murmured, the words soft and catching slightly at the edges, “with him…” You swallowed once. “I know you’ll do what you think is right, And I’ll understand.”

For a second he could not answer. He didn`t know what to do with that much trust, offered like that, without ceremony, without bargaining, without any protection around it. It was a heavier thing than anger. A heavier thing than permission. You were not asking for blood. You were not telling him what kind of man to be.

You were placing the choice in his hands and telling him you would still see him after.

Joel looked at you for a long moment, at the bruised softness of your face against the pillow, at the exhaustion pulling you under even now, at the fact that after everything Victor Moretti had put into the world, his daughter was still capable of something this defenseless.

“You don’t need to think about any of that tonight,” he said at last, his voice so low it barely seemed to disturb the room. He reached out then, only to smooth the blanket a little higher where it had slipped from your shoulder. His knuckles brushed your skin in the smallest pass. 

“Just sleep.”

Your lashes trembled once, but you didn’t argue.

Joel stood there a second longer, his hand still resting lightly over the blanket near your arm. Then he brushed one damp strand of hair back from your temple. The gesture was brief and carefu, gone almost as soon as it was there.

“I’ve got it,” he murmured, though whether he meant Victor, the night, or you, he couldn’t have said.

You nodded.

Joel picked the book up again but did not open it. He stood there a second longer, then turned quietly toward the door, carrying with him the unbearable knowledge that something between you had shifted, and would not shift back.

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The digital numbers on the nightstand clock read 02:46 AM, casting a faint, pale glow over a tiny, discarded pair of baby socks and a small bottle of lavender lotion. Beside them, the baby monitor pulsed with a steady, reassuring emerald heartbeat. Maya was finally asleep in the nursery down the hall—warmly bathed, thoroughly nursed, and completely surrendered to a deep, milk-drunk slumber.

The house had become a sanctuary of silver and silence, bathed entirely in the soft glow of the Texas moon. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the universe had narrowed down to just the two of you.

It had been roughly twenty minutes since you both finally collapsed into bed. You lay in the center of the mattress, swallowed up by one of Joel’s old, faded Carhartt t-shirts. The cotton was worn incredibly soft from years of his labor, stopping midway down your thighs and smelling faintly of cedar, laundry detergent, and his skin.

Resting your head against his bare chest, you were wrapped safely in the familiar, grounding fortress of his arms. Joel’s rough fingers moved rhythmically through your hair, his large hand gently massaging your scalp in slow, soothing circles. The deep, lingering tension of the long day was slowly melting away under his touch. The white threads running through your dark hair had multiplied significantly over the last year—a physical, beautiful tapestry of the stress, the grief you had carried, and the exhausting war you had just won to bring Maya into the world. To Joel, every single silver strand was a badge of your survival, something he adored with a quiet, fierce reverence.

Your own hand rested over his heart, your fingertips tracing slow, feather-light circles across the warm, heavy muscle of his chest.

At first, it was just a lazy, comforting touch. But as the quiet minutes ticked by, the soothing domestic peace of his embrace wasn't quite enough anymore. A different, much heavier kind of gravity was pulling at you. For the last few weeks, your body had belonged entirely to the trauma of the birth, the agonizing recovery, and the endless, beautiful demands of keeping your daughter alive.

But right now, in the shadowed quiet of your bedroom, you desperately wanted to shed the fragile shell of the recovering patient. You wanted to be his woman again. A wicked, thrilling spark ignited in your chest—a sudden, desperate urge to revive the naughty, demanding professor who used to drive this rugged man absolutely out of his mind. You needed to feel the rough friction of his skin against yours, to bridge the physical gap, and become one single, breathing entity with him again in the dark.

Yielding entirely to the thought, you shifted your weight, pressing the soft, heavy curve of your body flush against his side.

Joel let out a ragged, involuntary intake of air. The rhythmic massage of his fingers faltered. His hand slid from your silver-streaked hair down to the nape of your neck, his grip suddenly tightening just a fraction. When he leaned down to capture your lips, the dam finally broke.

It was a hungry devourment that tasted of pure desperation. You opened your mouth with a soft moan, your hands flying up from his chest to grip his broad shoulders. He kissed you like a starving man finding water, his heavy body shifting to press you deeper into the mattress.

A sudden, violent stillness overtook him just as his rough knuckles grazed the bare skin of your stomach beneath the t-shirt.

Tearing his lips away, he pushed himself up onto his forearms, his broad chest heaving. His hazel eyes were dark with lust, yet completely overshadowed by a sudden, paralyzing panic.

"Joel?" you breathed, dazed by the sudden loss of his heat.

"I can't," Joel rasped, his voice cracking with a painful restraint. He pulled his hand out from under your shirt, clenching it into a tight, white-knuckled fist against the sheets. "God, sweetheart, I want you so damn much... but I can't."

Reaching up, you threaded your fingers through his silver-streaked hair. "Why? Dr. Abbott cleared me two weeks ago. I'm healed, Joel."

He let out a shaky exhale, opening his eyes to reveal a raw vulnerability that made your heart ache. "Because I'm terrified," he whispered, the hardened man stripping away his armor. "I look at you, and all I can see is that hospital room. I see you in agonizing pain for thirty-two hours. I see that fresh scar."

He brought a knuckle up to trace your cheekbone, his touch terrifyingly light. "I can't bear the thought of causing you even a fraction of an ounce of pain. Not after everything you endured to bring Maya to me. If I hurt you... it would destroy me."

His selfless devotion brought a rush of tears to your eyes. He wasn't just a man wanting a woman; he was your husband, the partner who had held your hand through the most brutal hours of your life, fiercely protecting you even from his own desires.

"Oh, my sweet, stubborn man," you murmured, a watery, fiercely loving smile blossoming on your lips.

Moving with deliberate confidence, you reached up and cupped his jaw, forcing his red-rimmed eyes to lock onto yours.

"I am not broken, Joel," you whispered fiercely, your voice a steady anchor. "I am healed. And I am yours."

Refusing to let his hesitation take root, you guided his face down, capturing his lips in a slow, deep kiss. Simultaneously, you took his trembling hand and pressed it flat against your bare stomach, right over the faint ridge of your C-section scar.

Joel sucked in a sharp breath against your lips, his body going rigid as stone, bracing for you to flinch. You merely arched into his touch with a soft, encouraging sigh.

Before his fear could build another wall, your hands moved down to your hips. Keeping your gaze locked on his, you hooked your fingers into the waistband of your underwear. With a smooth, deliberate motion, you slid the fabric down your thighs, kicking it into the shadows, and slowly parted your legs.

"Feel me," you whispered, thumbs stroking the tense line of his jaw. "I want my husband..."

That single sentence severed whatever fraying thread of control he had left.

Before he could pull you flush against him, your hands slid into the waistband of his boxers. You pushed the cotton down his thighs, letting Joel urgently kick them the rest of the way off.

Freed from the fabric, the reality of his arousal was exposed in the moonlight. You looked down, your breath hitching at the slick evidence of the months of starvation he had endured.

Oh, he was absolutely dying for you.

Your gaze flicked back up to his flushed face. Maintaining that burning eye contact, you brought your fingers to your lips, sliding them into your mouth to wet them thoroughly. You pulled your hand back, the slickness glistening in the moonlight, and reached down.

Wrapping your slick fingers around him, you gave him one long, agonizingly tight stroke.

His eyes rolled back, and a broken groan ripped from his throat. His body shuddered, hips instinctively bucking forward into your grip. You stroked him again, relishing the power you held, making him unravel in the palm of your hand.

"Jesus, sweetheart..." Joel choked out, his voice a wrecked, breathless rasp.

He reached down, his hand wrapping like a vise around your wrist to halt your movements. His chest was heaving, his heart hammering against his ribs.

"Stop," he begged, his voice cracking with raw desperation. "Stop, or I'm gonna cum, baby. I swear to God."

Pacing the feral hunger threatening to consume him, Joel reached blindly toward the headboard. His hand closed around a plush pillow, bringing it down to the mattress before he gently nudged your thighs.

"Up, up," Joel murmured, a low, commanding rumble in the quiet room.

You instantly obeyed, lifting your hips. He slid the soft pillow directly beneath your pelvis, settling your weight back down onto it. It was a perfectly calculated adjustment—elevating you to make the angle entirely comfortable and taking the strain off your healing abdomen.

"Good girl," he praised, his voice a dark, vibrating purr that sent a shiver straight down your spine.

His hands grasped the hem of the faded t-shirt. With a slow pull, he bunched the cotton up, dragging it over your stomach and ribs, pushing it all the way up to bare your chest. The careful protector fractured for a second. Seeing your heavy, milk-swollen breasts entirely exposed to the moonlight summoned the starving, primal man he had been trying to suppress.

A low growl vibrated deep in his chest. His hands covered you completely, his long fingers squeezing and kneading your soft, full flesh with a rough, possessive hunger. He stroked the sensitive peaks with his thumbs, making your back arch off the pillow as a breathless, needy gasp tore from your lips.

He looked down at you—completely laid bare, shivering under his heavy touch—and let out a wrecked exhale.

"I worship you," he whispered against your skin, his breath hot and shaking as he pressed a religious, tender kiss just above your scar. "You are my smart girl, you hear me?"

Reaching blindly for the nightstand drawer, the quiet slide of the wood and the soft click of the lubricant bottle opening felt like a profound act of marital intimacy. He poured the cool gel into his palm, rubbing his hands together to warm it before he touched you.

Moving seamlessly between your parted thighs, his broad shoulders caging you in, he refused to rush. The contrast of his rough hands coated in the warm, slick liquid against your sensitive core made you gasp.

His thick fingers slid through the wetness, gently parting you. Slowly, he began to prepare you with a devastating patience. One large, slick finger slipped inside, testing the tight walls of your body.

A breathy whimper tumbled from your lips, your hips jerking involuntarily off the pillow.

"Shh, I got you," Joel murmured, his eyes scanning your face for any sign of discomfort. He added a second finger, pressing the warm gel deep into your heat, stretching you with a slow, rhythmic massage. "You're so damn tight, baby. Tell me how this feels. Am I hurting you?"

"No," you gasped, your head tossing back against the mattress as he curled his fingers upward, hitting a bundle of nerves that made your vision blur. "Oh god, Joel... no. It feels so good."

"Good," he praised, a low, satisfied rumble vibrating in his chest as he massaged the lubricant deeper into your slick folds. "Just relax for me. Let me get you ready."

The agonizingly slow, wet slide of his fingers coaxed a continuous stream of sweet, broken moans from your throat. He kept his gaze locked flawlessly onto yours, reading your body's physical reactions like a sacred text. Only when your inner walls were melting around his knuckles, completely flushed and yielding to his touch, did he finally withdraw his hand.

Hovering at the very precipice of claiming you, Joel anchored his weight. He allowed his own slick length to settle directly against your most sensitive nerves, initiating a slow, agonizingly deliberate friction. He rubbed against your wet core—a heavy, shallow tease that sent a violent shockwave of heat straight to your brain.

"You like that, my beautiful girl?" Joel growled softly, maintaining that slick, torturous friction just on the outside.

You whimpered, your hips instinctively tilting upward off the pillow to chase the maddening contact. "Joel, please..." you gasped, your nails digging crescent moons into the heavy muscles of his shoulders. "I need you..."

"I know, baby, I know," he murmured. His eyes darkened with profound relief and raw lust, reflecting only the pure, unadulterated pleasure written across your face. "I'm right here."

Driven by ravenous need, he finally pressed forward, breaking the threshold. He sank into your slick, pooling heat, burying himself deep, and took you.

The physical shock of it stole the very air from your lungs. A sharp, dizzying gasp caught painfully in the back of your throat as the sheer, impossible fullness of him stretched you. It had been months of abstinence, months of healing, and now, the sensation of his heavy girth filling you completely felt almost catastrophic. It was a beautiful, overwhelming pressure, as if every single organ inside your body was physically shifting, rearranging itself just to make room for his massive weight.

You went breathlessly rigid, your fingers knotting frantically into the thick muscles of his shoulders.

A profound stillness immediately overtook his frame. Feeling the sudden, tight panic in your muscles, Joel froze, refusing to push even a millimeter deeper.

"Look at me," he commanded softly, his voice a gravelly, panicked rasp. His large hands instantly framed your face, his thumbs stroking your flushed cheeks. "Baby, look at me. Am I hurting you?"

You squeezed your eyes shut, overwhelmed by the stinging, exquisite ache of being opened so thoroughly.

"Hey," he whispered, pressing a desperate kiss to the corner of your mouth. "Tell me. I'll pull out right now, I swear to God. Just say the word."

"No," you whimpered, forcing your heavy eyelids open to meet his terrified hazel gaze. You shook your head frantically, arching your spine to press yourself even closer to him. "No, don't you dare move. It's just... you're so big, Joel. I can feel it everywhere."

A ragged sigh of relief tore through his chest. "I know, I know," he murmured, resting his forehead against yours. "I'm sorry. I'll stay right here. Take all the time you need, sweetheart."

Holding himself perfectly rigid, he granted your healing body the quiet seconds it desperately needed to yield.

"I'm okay," you breathed out, your inner walls naturally softening, blooming, and relaxing around him. "Oh god, you feel so good."

"You're so perfect," he praised in a dark murmur, watching the tension melt from your flushed face with absolute adoration. "My beautiful, perfect wife."

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he began to move. Keeping the rhythm incredibly gentle at first, he pulled almost entirely out before sinking back into your heat with a deliberate, smooth glide.

The feeling of him—completely bare, warm, and heavy inside you—was intoxicating. You let out a moan that echoed against the walls of the quiet bedroom, your control shattering as the fullness of him stretched you. The pleasure was an undertow dragging you deep, and your cries were only getting louder.

Joel glanced at the glowing emerald light of the baby monitor. Before you could let out another moan, he gently pressed his fingers against your lips, slipping two of them past your teeth.

"Shh," Joel rumbled, a dark, velvet warning vibrating against your skin. "You're gonna wake our daughter, sweet girl. You gotta be a little quiet for me."

You clamped your lips around his fingers, letting out a muffled whimper as he rolled his hips, hitting that perfect, devastating spot with deliberate precision.

"I want to love you a little longer..." he whispered, his breath hot against your neck as he pressed himself impossibly deep. "I want to savor every inch of my wife."

The sheer, overwhelming friction of his movements felt too good. With every deep, careful thrust, you let out a breathless, approving whimper. Arching your spine, you pushed your hips up off the pillow to meet his weight, wordlessly begging him for more.

"There you go," Joel grunted, his jaw clenching as he felt you pressing back against him. "Take it, baby."

The undeniable proof that you were completely unraveling for him acted like gasoline on a fire. Joel's restraint shattered.

His rhythm abandoned the slow, careful tease, escalating into something relentless, deep, and beautifully brutal. He began to pound into you, the heavy, wet sound of your bodies colliding echoing loudly in the quiet bedroom.

Letting out a high-pitched moan, your control disintegrated as the fullness of him stretched you. The pleasure was an undertow dragging you deep, your approving cries only growing louder as his hips snapped forward with increasing, dizzying speed.

Looking at you—laid bare, flushed, and writhing beneath him—he was struck by a profound truth. Motherhood, healing, and desire had transformed you. In the dim light, you were exactly his kind of woman.

His hand slid from the crown of your head down to the nape of your neck, his fingers tangling in the roots of your hair to anchor you to the pillows. The careful protector vanished, leaving behind a dominant man hopelessly addicted to his wife.

"Would you give me another one, sweetheart?" Joel growled, the filthy question vibrating into your bones as he drove you deeper into the mattress. "Will you birth your husband another beautiful baby? Huh? Will you open your legs for me and give me another one?"

The sheer, unprotected reality of his words sent a shockwave of heat through your veins. The prescription Dr. Abbott had written for your birth control pills sat untouched in your purse. The raw, beautiful danger of his request completely short-circuited your brain.

Your body responded instantly to his possessive demand. A fresh rush of your own wetness flooded your core.

"Fuck, yes..." he ground out, the last thread of his sanity annihilated by the sensation of you wringing him out.

"Then make me," you moaned, a breathless challenge stuttering on your lips as he angled his hips. A tearful smile played on your flushed face despite the overwhelming pleasure. "Make me... if you love me so much..."

That wicked challenge sent a feral thrill straight through him. Joel’s eyes went completely dark, consumed by a possessive fire. He didn't hesitate; he leaned into the challenge, his hips snapping forward with a heavy, devastating rhythm that shattered your thoughts entirely.

"You missed this, didn't you, sweetheart?" Joel growled, his voice dropping to a dark, vibrating purr as he drove you deeper into the mattress. He braced his forearms beside your head, completely caging you in. "Huh? Missed being mine?"

"Joel..." you whimpered, your head tossing blindly against the pillows. The unbearable heat was pooling in your core, pulling you violently toward the edge. "Oh god..."

"Tell me," he demanded softly, rolling his hips with deliberate, punishing precision. He watched you unravel beneath him, his hazel eyes burning with absolute authority. "Tell me how much you missed your husband."

"So much," you sobbed out, the confession breaking past your lips in a breathless, needy rush. You arched your spine, pushing desperately against his heavy weight, completely surrendering to his dominance. "I missed you so much... Please..."

"I'm right here. And you're all mine," he praised, a low, incredibly satisfied groan rumbling in his chest as he felt your inner walls fluttering frantically around him. He leaned down, his lips brushing against your sweat-dampened temple. "Show me, sweetheart," he commanded, a wicked, thrilling edge to his gravelly voice. "Show me exactly how good it feels."

You gasped, a high-pitched, broken sound escaping your lips as his hips snapped forward, hitting that devastating spot over and over. Your nails dug crescent moons into the heavy muscles of his back as you completely gave yourself over to the pleasure.

"That's it," Joel growled, his eyes darkening with pure worship as he watched your absolute surrender. "Good girl. That's my smart girl. Come for me, baby. Let go."

The climax hit you like a world-ending crescendo. Terrified of waking Maya, you violently ripped your hand away from his shoulder, pressing the back of your hand hard against your mouth to muffle your own scream. Your teeth sank into your own skin as your entire body seized.

For a suspended, breathless eternity, you completely forgot where you were. The quiet bedroom, the heavy weight of your husband above you, the lingering ache of your recovery—it all dissolved into a blinding, warm white light. You were floating inside it, completely recharged, vibrating with a pure, celestial electricity as your inner walls clenched spasmodically around his bare length, milking him relentlessly.

Joel’s eyes rolled back. A guttural roar tore from his chest as his own climax surged forward, violent and unstoppable.

Yet, poised at the sheer precipice of no return, the fierce, unwavering instinct of a protector brutally overrode his lust. He had begged for another baby in the heat of the moment, but he would rather die than put your recovering body through another pregnancy so soon.

With a desperate, agonizing curse, Joel wrenched his hips back.

Pulling completely out of you at the very last second, he rocked back onto his heels, kneeling tall between your parted thighs. His massive frame shuddered violently, his broad chest heaving as he poured his scalding, explosive release entirely over the warm, bare skin of your stomach.

He stayed kneeling there, fighting to catch his breath. His thick shoulders rose and fell heavily in the quiet room.

As the chaotic, blinding haze of pleasure slowly began to clear, you lowered your trembling hand from your mouth. You let out a long, shaky exhale, your eyes fluttering open to look down at yourself.

The oversized t-shirt remained bunched up just above your chest. Right over the apex of your breasts, two distinct, dark circles of moisture had bloomed through the worn, faded cotton. The sheer intensity of the climax and the overwhelming rush of oxytocin had triggered a let-down. Your milk had soaked right through his old shirt.

Joel’s warm hand gently stroked your sweat-dampened cheek, pulling your consciousness entirely back into the dim bedroom.

"Hey," he murmured, his voice a thick, gravelly whisper. He shifted his weight forward, leaning down to press a soft, grounding kiss to your forehead, then to your swollen lips. His thumb brushed affectionately over the faint teeth marks on the back of your hand. "I got you, beautiful. You did so damn good for me. You okay?"

"Yeah," you whispered, a tear of pure, unadulterated peace slipping from your lashes into the dark. "I'm perfectly fine."

A profound, breathtaking softness washed over his rugged features. He smiled, his heavy gaze dropping to the wet spots staining the cotton—the ultimate, beautiful proof of your motherhood seamlessly bleeding into your passion.

Reaching over to the nightstand, he grabbed wet wipes he kept in the drawer. Moving with incredible gentleness, he carefully wiped away his own mess from your warm stomach, making sure your skin was perfectly clean.

Once he was done, he shifted back down onto the mattress. He gently pulled the bunched-up fabric of the Carhartt shirt down over your breasts, completely indifferent to the dampness of the cotton, and gathered your exhausted body flush against his chest.

Wrapping your arms tightly around his broad shoulders, you buried your face into his neck, threading your fingers through his silver hair as the heavy warmth of his body enveloped you.

"Sleep, sweetheart," Joel whispered into your curls, his arms locking securely around your waist as he pulled the heavy blankets up over your shoulders. "I got you."

For exactly fifteen minutes, the world was perfectly still.

You drifted into a deep, heavy slumber, given just enough time for the sweet, milk-warm exhaustion of the orgasm to settle deep into your bones. The steady, rumbling rhythm of Joel's heartbeat beneath your cheek was the ultimate lullaby, lulling you into a state of absolute, untroubled peace.

But your daughter had other plans.

At exactly 03:42 AM, the quiet sanctuary of the bedroom was abruptly pierced. On the nightstand, the baby monitor flared from a steady emerald, to yellow, and then straight to an angry, flashing red. A sharp, demanding wail crackled through the speaker. Maya was awake, and she was letting the whole house know it.

You let out a soft, defeated groan, your heavy eyelids fluttering open as the undeniable reality of motherhood dragged you back from your dreams. You instinctively moved to push the tangled blankets aside, preparing to drag your exhausted body out of bed.

But Joel’s heavy arm tightened around your waist, securely anchoring you to the mattress.

He let out a low, sleep-rough chuckle, the warm sound vibrating beautifully against your cheek. He pressed a long, lingering kiss to the crown of your head before reluctantly pulling away from the warmth of your body.

"Nuh-uh, don't move, baby," Joel murmured, his voice a thick, gravelly rasp as he sat up, his massive silhouette cutting through the moonlight. He reached down to grab his boxers from the floor, pulling them on before leaning back over you. He braced his hands on either side of your head and pressed one last, deeply adoring kiss to your swollen lips. "I'll go change her diaper and bring our girl in. You just stay put and rest."

Watching his broad, scarred back disappear into the dark hallway to tend to your daughter, you pulled the collar of his old t-shirt a little closer around your neck.

A soft, tired smile touched your flushed lips. The night was far from over, but as you listened to the low, soothing rumble of your husband's voice greeting your daughter from down the hall, you realized you had never felt more perfectly, entirely loved.

While Tommy and Maria are deep in conversation right next to him, their words barely reach Joel’s consciousness. His thoughts are focused on something else —as obsessive and unsettling as those of a chain-smoker trying not to think about his next cigarette.

He's way too close.

That guy you've been dancing with since you let the alcohol and light mood drag you onto the dance floor. That stupid, idiotic moron. Dave, if he recalls his name right, has the physique of those boy band stars back in the days, young and charismatic and "pretty". But God, he's as smart as a bag of rocks, and as moral as a corrupt cop.

And it's unbearable. The way his hands linger, his eyes too, on places of your body one could only fantasize about. Joel can see it as bright as day, that little piece of shit had only one thing in mind.

He grabs his glass and sips on his beer, trying to think about something else. Anything else. Tommy's speech about next year's goals for the town. Ellie apparently talking with Jesse on the other side of the room, both of them leaning against the wooden counter. But nothing could do the trick, his thoughts would always come back to your inflamed dance session with that moron, his muscles tensing and heart racing as if he was about to beat the shit out of a herd of clickers.

Couldn't you see it? Were you that blind? He just wanted to have his way with you and would break your heart the next morning.

What a way to start the year.

Joel shifts from one foot to the other, his stare back on you as his fingers grip his pint way too strongly.

You're only his partner during patrols. That's all you two are supposed to be. He has no right into even thinking about those things about you. God he knows that. And he really, really shouldn't be feeling this tight twisting in his stomach right now.

The song suddenly comes to a flamboyant end as the rhythm stops, everyone clapping, some guys throwing their partner in the air. But not Dave. Oh no, Dave pulls you closer. He's holding your waist as you're bowing backward, and is downright devouring you with a hungry stare, eyes half-lidded, lips bitten.

Joel's finger joints are turning white. His feet are itching. That clenching sensation in his guts becomes unbearable. It's a turmoil, savage and dark and unstoppable.

You lil' piece o' shit.

Dave's lifting you back up all against him. Your chest is pressed against his.

Let go of her.

You're laughing, the sound so pleasant to his ears, but discordant, tainted, next to that asshole.

She's…

Dave's lips smoothly take advantage of the movement to get closer; and you don't fucking pull away.

Mine.

He puts his beer down so powerfully that a dead silence cuts through the others' discussion. Tommy calls out his brother's name, but he doesn't even look at him. His whole body is turned toward one precise direction. Like a lethal weapon launching.

His legs finally move on their own. He rips through the crowd as if crossing a field of grass bending in his wake. Each step he takes worsens his state, as nails being hammered into Dave’s coffin.

"Hey, get away from her."

You both snap your heads to him. You instantly pull away from Dave's embrace, more from surprise than anything else.

Joel's voice is insanely calm. But not that quiet, peaceful calm, more like a barely contained anger, that blankness that holds threats and hatred and violence underneath.

"Joel?" You ask dumbly, confused, as your eyes search his face for answers.

"What's wrong, man?"

The oldest doesn't even listen to him. His eyes are fixated on you. The soft tones of his hazel pupils are all gone, leaving only a green so dark they almost look entirely black. Like an ancient, dense forest at night, where the leaves and trunks merge into one in a heavy, menacing darkness. The young boy takes a step back, his eyes jumping from you to him in an awkward manner.

"Dude, there's no problem here…" He tries to stand his ground, but his stare falls to the ground, hands fidgeting with something on his jacket.

Joel is as silent as a tombstone.

Dave gives in, stiffly walking away, praying this mountain of a man won't come and find him in his nightmares.

You, on the other hand, don't move.

"What the actual Hell was that, Joel?"

"He's bad business."

"Wh- so what?" "Since when are you interested in what I'm doing, uh?"

No answer.

"I don't know what you're trying to do. But I do what I want, and sorry if ya don't like it."

You get out of the Church. The air inside was too thick to breathe, and you didn't like how everyone had suddenly seemed so interested in this little play you two were displaying.

You're not able to walk two meters away from the building before feeling a large hand grab your wrist.

"Hey, let fukcing go of me!"

Your patrol partner drags you away from the crows, behind the back of the church. Words of explanation do not seem to be part of this man's DNA.

He lets go of you, your boots slipping a bit across the layer of ice, and you find yourself facing him, with your back to the wall, while he stands stiff as a board in front of you.

You're trapped.

"Just- Shit." Joel's concerned voice sounds almost too loud in the quiet atmosphere. The light of the party looks so far away in the distance, barely illuminating the thick layer of snow covering the entire town. "Listen t'me. Dave's a real jerk to girls, I know him. He just want to..."

"He just wants to what, Joel?"

His mouth stays shut as he looks at you with harsh eyes. He has a hand on his hip, the other is waving the air in defeat, his camel jacket waving along. You won't make him the pleasure to help with any of it. He has the audacity to come and bark on your date? Pull you aside like a child being grounded? Well, he sure as better spill the beans.

Your eyebrows move up in a half-annoyed and half-interrogative expression, watching him sigh and struggle. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, he explodes:

"He -He just wanna lay with ya!"

"And you don't?"

There's another tense silence. Frozen, he's genuinely surprised you're being so upfront about it, scowl still deep on his eyebrows.

"Come on, I'm a woman, dumbass. I know how you guys look at us. You really think you were discreet? Watching over me all the time when we're out patrolling. Jesus if I wanted a pair of eyes sticking to me 24/7 I would have glued a pair of googles on my ass."

"You're always so smart uh? You think you know everything, you don't need anyone or anything-

"I sure as hell been doing fine without you, Joel. So yeah, I don't need you to be my fuckin' watchdog and bite every man I'm seeing." You spit, taking a few steps towards him.

"What the hell did you just call me-" His threatening tone do nothing to stop you.

"Why don't you fucking admit the truth for once in your life, mh?" He brought you down with him into the fire pit of anger now, throat tight and muscles tensed. "You don't want anyone else to dance with me? To sleep with me?" You walk closer to him, pointing an accusing finger upward. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you're just jealous."

His scowl worsens at that last word. You're bot a few meters away from each other.

You're suprised to snow isn't starting to melt from the rage you're radiating.

Joel's voice drops again, so low now it's almost a menacing growl,

"Take one more step and I'm done playing nice."

Oh, yeah? You don't even think about it twice.

Of course, you take that step. Feet stomping on the ground as your fiery eyes stay stuck on his. Because that's what you always do.

Pushing his buttons, testing his limits, driving him insane.

Enough of this.

It's quick, almost instantaneous. The moment you're chest to chest, his hands are on you, one grabbing your neck, the other holding the side of your waist. You hitch at this sudden grip, and almost as a late realisation, it hits you;

If he really wanted to, this man could break you.

"You know what? Maybe you're right." The same tone as before inside the church. Except this time, you can feel this isn't anger that's hiding beneath the flat blankness of his raspy voice. It's another raw, physical kind of urge.

With every word, he pushes you back against the wall, annihilating in the blink of an eye the steps you had taken toward him.

"I"

He traps you between the wall. His chest hard and warm, pleasantly warm in the cold air.

"Want ya,"

The words seem to sting his lips and intoxicate him with freedom all at once.

"For myself."

You sigh, rewarding his confession by reaching for his jacket, keeping him close, encouraging, daring him to continue. The leather feels nice. His face is only a few inches away from yours.

"So when a lil' piece of shit like David Mathews puts his disgusting hands on you," His fingers grip your neck tighter, "Ya can't expect me to stay god damn seated!"

He's a bow bent to the maximum, ready to snap any second. His words come out loud and deep, rumbling like thunder that had been held back for too long. And in his soul, too, his tired eyes almost crushing you under his stare.

"I wouldn't have it any other way." You lift a hand up to his face, caressing his skin from cheek to jaw. His beard is softer than you had expected. "Joel…"

It's as if whispering his name had just cut him loose; a sign that you really wanted him. His lips collide with yours instantly, unable to wait for just a second more. It's wild and hot and messy, just like you needed him to be. His hair scratches pleasantly against your mouth, and you slip your tongue between his teeth, earning a low growl. His other hand on your hip is losing patience, pressing you more against him, as if he needs your two bodies to merge.

His breathing gets more labored, his movements urgent. The hand you had on his face smoothly travels to his hair, long and curling on his neck. Brushing, touching, discovering. And then, tugging. He groans louder at it, internally swearing, losing his usual composure with every new touch from you.

Of course, you notice.

"Y'know, you're not as controlled as you think." You tease with a cheeky grin, between two heated kisses.

"Eh, maybe I ain't." He concedes with a small smile of his own, probably the first of his entire day. "You… Y' wanna do it here?" He asks in a hopeful and almost disbelieving tone, scanning your face, his body stilling for a few seconds.

"God, fuck yes." You pull his waist against yours, a finger looped around his belt. "Here, anywhere —I don't fucking care."

A deep chuckle shakes his chest, "Well ma'am, might as well please ya as I can."

He unbuckles his belt, movements controlled but eager. His hands then reach for your own pants, pulling them down as well as your panties all at once, and he spins you face against the wall, ass bared for him. The stinging cold surprises your skin, but your head can't focus on that information, too troubled by what's coming next.

"Lord, I've been waiting for this." You can't help but whisper as he places himself behind you.

"Definitely should have done that sooner," He agrees, starting to press against your slit, a big hand flat holding your lower belly up.

Every inch of him pushes inside, spreading you slowly, almost too slowly. But Joel knows what he's doing. He knows he will hurt you if he doesn't give you some time to adjust to his size. And even in such a heated state, it's a risk he won't take.

He's the one who'd never hurt you.

"You good?"

"Yes, Jesus-" Does he even know how having him entirely inside without any movement makes you feel?! "Please, Joel, go on already!"

He snorts through his nose, pleasantly surprised to discover you so avid. Not another word crosses his lips as he answers by retrieving himself and smashing back his hips against you, making your whole body jerk forward.

"Oh, fuck!"

Both of his hands hold your hip now as he sets a slow, deliberate tempo. Every time he thrusts into you, it's hard, hitting a spot deep down inside of you that you could never have satisfied yourself. That obscene, hot sound of his balls smacking your skin mingles with your barely muffled moans and his growls, your breaths in the cold creating huffs of mist twirling together before getting lost in the air of the night.

"Are you still going to see that guy?" Joel asks between thrusts, his grip on you tighter than ever, "Be… -mmf- very careful, about your answer, sweetheart."

"N-No, I won't."

"Good girl". The praise rolls from his tongue to your ears like the sweetest liquor. "From now on, when you'll feel like having some fun at night, who you gonna turn to?"

"Y-you, only you!" You can believe how pathetic you are right now, but you want him to continue so bad, you can't do much else but bend at his will. "Joel, faster, p-please."

"Ya want faster, uh?" He slows down, on damn purpose. "Say you're mine."

"I'm yours Joel please! I'm … I'm yours."

"Damn right you are."

And he grounds his legs, picking up a relentless pace, fucking you good and proper, right there against the church's wall just a few feet away from everyone, the muted sounds of the party vibrating through the cold stone against which you're pressed.

His cock is so hard inside of you, rutting your cunt with such intensity and speed it's hard for you to even form a single thought. All you can do is keep your ass up for him as your insides burn, that familiar feeling building up more and more under the strain of his ruthless treatment.

"Joel," You can hear him letting out a pleasured groan, one of his arms leaving your side to snake around your chest, "Joel-I'm-close!" you urgently stammer through your shaken body.

"I know baby, I got ya." His upper body is pressed against your back now, both of you intertwined in an impossible embrace. "I got ya, now give it t'me."

Cheek to cheek, his face nestled above your shoulder, you can feel his beard, coarse but also weirdly pleasant against the side of your face. His body is engulfing you whole, your smaller back arching as he keeps pleasuring you, wanting more than anything to make you come. You're almost suffocating from the warmth he beams around you, like flames licking and twirling all around in the glacial snow.

"That's right, you're so great girl, so good-" His throat tightens as he barely contains his own relief, "Yeaaah just like that!"

Your pussy obeys his every word, and with another push, you let everything go, his shaft buried deep inside as you clench around it, the feeling so perfect the satisfaction makes you see stars, body making one with him completely, even just for a few seconds. He holds you tight during the whole length of it, whispering tender encouragement in your ear. They're almost out of place considering how his hips are still pounding inside to drag every inch of your orgasm out of you.

You mutter his name again and again like a prayer as you dissolve in his arms, your forehead against the wall. He lets a small kiss on your temple, praising you for how good you've been to come for him.

He then reluctantly withdrew his burning hot and still painfully hard shaft from you, smiling to himself at the frustrated little sound you let out.

"Trust me, I would have preferred the first option too, sweetheart-" He pants, curling a big fist around his base, "But we can't take that risk just now."

"S' okay." You pull your clothes back up before gently adding your hand to his grip, fingers joining his. "Let me help you."

He nods. The feeling of your smaller hand on his shaft already sends shivers all the way through his body now that he doesn't have to stop himself from cumming, his pleasure freed and wild making his toes curl and his brow crunch in delight.

You don't waist anytime teasing him again, stroking him hard and fast to match the pace he had inside of you. He moans like he's been hit in the guts, eyes squinting shut, one of his forearms taking support on the stoned wall above your head.

"Shit, keep doin' that," He ordres as he removes his hand to leave you total control.

You can feel how close he already is after fucking you to your relief, and you're well determined to give him back just as much. He's so vulnerable right now, so beautiful with his cock in your hand. His gigantic body to your mercy, his hair disheveled, its gray color sublimated with subtle silvery glints, like the snow-covered landscapes around you.

"Yeah, Jeee-sus," He whispers more loudly than he should, feeling his relief coming. Your hand keeps rubbing his length just like he needs it, all the way up and down as fast as you can, your wrists starting to burn slightly.

He brings his forehead to yours, and you use the opportunity to seal your lips with his. He huffs through the kiss, almost moaning, his pleasure an unstoppable wave crashing on a fragile, immaculate shore.

And with a few more perfect moves of your hand, he comes just like that, his cock spurting his spent all over your clothes, your scent filling his nose, your taste, his mouth. His breath stops for a few seconds, a cry caught tight in his throat, before sighing deeply through his nose. He breaks the kiss, gasping for air as he had just been underwater the whole time.

You gently let go of his softening member, a satisfied smirk plastered on your face. There's a little silence, a bit awkward, where you watch him put himself back in his jeans, and wipe a few beads of sweat on his forehead. How beautiful it is that you succeeded in making this man sweat during the coldest night of the year.

You both seem lost in thought, neither of you daring to speak first, as if doing so would seal something between the two of you. As if it would taint the moment, anchoring that timeless instant in reality. In problems.

After heavy minutes of quiet, Joel's mouth opens, a sound almost crossing it, but a loud, sudden noise surprises both of you.

"Happy New Year!"

Everywhere outside and inside the church, people of Jackson are celebrating, drunken shouts piercing the night, bearers of joy and a well-deserved moment of shared togetherness.

You both look at each other while euphoria surrounds you.

"Happy New Year, Y/N."

"… Happy New Year, Joel."

He awkwardly steps away, disappearing into the falling snow. You sigh, your feet slow, your brain too occupied to process what had just happened.

There was this taste on your throat, bitter. Like those fizzling sweet candies that taste so good but leave your tongue burning. A nagging sense of incompleteness. A painting destined to be a masterpiece, barely begun, from which the artist has been torn away.

A few promising brushstrokes left behind, right there in the middle of the canvas.

You finally move, searching for your loved ones back in the party to wish them all the good stuff for the new year to come.

And you promise yourself that you wouldn't let Joel get off that easily.

a/n: heeey I hope you like it, thanks for reading!! Consider rebloging/commenting if you did!! That means the world to us authors 🫶🏼

The front door still hung half open from where she’d walked in uninvited, letting the cold night air drift through the cramped space in uneven waves. One of the kitchen chairs had been knocked over during the struggle. 

Eddie was still pinned against the wall hard enough to crack the wood behind him, boots barely touching the ground as the Original held him there one-handed like he weighed nothing.

You couldn’t move. Not because she was compelling you, but because every instinct in your body was screaming at you not to.

The woman looked between the two of you with something almost resembling amusement.

Dark hair spilled over her shoulders, fingers lazily curled around Eddie’s throat while he fought against her grip with clenched teeth and shaking arms.

“You know,” she said calmly, “most people beg by now.”

Eddie spat blood onto the floor near her boots. “Most people probably aren’t trying to kill you.”

Her mouth twitched, then her eyes shifted to you.

“But you.” Her voice softened slightly. “You’re interesting.”

Your jaw tightened. “Let him go.”

She ignored that entirely.

“I could feel it before I even found you,” she continued, slowly circling her head toward Eddie again. “The anger. The grief. All that lovely little resentment rotting around inside both of you.” Her smile widened faintly. “You wear it like perfume.”

“Lady, you’re fucking insane,” Eddie hissed.

She laughed quietly at that. “No,” she said. “I’m honest.”

Her grip tightened suddenly, and Eddie sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.

“You two should’ve been perfect already,” she continued. “Predatory. Unfeeling. Untouchable.” Her gaze dragged slowly toward you again. “But your humanity keeps getting in the way.”

“We’re not like you,” you snapped.

Something dangerous trickled across her face then. Not anger exactly, something more towards disappointment.

“That,” she murmured, “is exactly the problem.”

Before you can argue, a distant sound dragged your attention—the sound of footsteps down the gravel path towards Eddie’s trailer. The Original’s expression changed first, then Eddie’s eyes widened.

“…No,” he breathed.

Your blood ran cold. Robin. You could hear her approaching the trailer, muttering to herself under her breath before her footsteps hit the porch.

“Hello?” she called casually from outside. “Eddie? Your door’s open, which feels super murder-y by the way—”

“Robin, don’t come in!” you shouted instantly. Too late.

She stepped through the doorway just as the Original released Eddie. He hit the ground hard, gasping, and before either of you could move, the woman crossed the trailer in a blur.

Robin screamed. The sound tore through the room as the Original grabbed her by the throat and slammed her backward into the kitchen wall hard enough to rattle the cabinets.

“What the fuck—what the fuck—” Robin choked, clawing at the woman’s wrist.

“ROBIN!” you lunged forward instinctively.

The Original turned her head slowly toward you. “Oh,” she said softly.

Robin whimpered as the woman’s grip tightened.

“Oh, you care about her.”

“Let her go!” you shouted.

The Original ignored you again, eyes fixed entirely on your face now like she’d finally found what she’d been looking for.

“That’s why you’re fighting it so hard,” she murmured. “You’ve anchored yourselves to people.”

Eddie shoved himself upright beside you, breathing unevenly. “Touch her again, and I swear to god—”

“You swear to god?” she interrupted with a smile. “That’s adorable coming from you.”

Robin’s terrified eyes darted wildly between all of you. “…What is happening?” she gasped. “What the hell is happening?!”

Your chest felt tight enough to split open.

“Robin,” you said quickly, voice shaking despite yourself. “Don’t fight her, okay? Just—”

“Don’t fight her?” Robin cried. “Are you hearing yourself right now?!”

The Original tilted her head slightly. “She matters to you more than the others,” she observed.

You’d answered the second panic crossed your face. Robin realized it now, too. Her expression cracked somewhere between confusion and fear as she looked at you.

“…You know her?”

You couldn’t answer. The Original smiled wider. “There it is,” she said softly. “Humanity.” Her fingers tightened in Robin’s throat. “Messy little thing.”

“Stop!” you shouted.

The room rattled, every light flickered violently overhead, and the Original glanced upward briefly, impressed.

Eddie looked at you instantly. But Robin was staring at you like she didn’t recognize you anymore.

“Please,” you whispered now.

Not to Robin, but to her. For the first time all night, your voice actually sounded afraid.

The Original studied you for a long moment, then she sighed. “You could’ve been extraordinary.”

And before either of you could move:

CRACK.

The sound echoed through the trailer. Robin’s body went limp immediately. For one horrible second, nobody moved, then she hit the floor with the quietest thud.

Robin’s body hit the floor with a sickening weight. For a second, nobody moved. Then something inside you snapped.

The scream that tore out of you didn’t even sound slightly human anymore. It ripped through the trailer raw enough to burn your throat, and before your brain could catch up, you were moving.

You launched yourself at her hard enough to send both of you crashing into the kitchen table, wood splintering underneath the impact as you clawed at her like an animal.

You barely registered Eddie shouting your name; all you could see was Robin. Robin sprawled across the floor at a crooked angle. Robin’s eyes are still open. Robin, who came here looking for you.

Your fists slammed into the Original again and again, frantic and vicious, nails dragging through skin, blood smearing beneath your hands as you screamed at her through broken sobs.

“You fucking bitch—”

She caught your wrist easily.

You tore free immediately and went for her throat instead, teeth bared, hysterical rage making your vision blur at the edges. The Original laughed softly underneath you, which only made you hit harder.

“You killed her!” Your voice cracked violently around the words. “You killed her!”

The woman finally grabbed both your wrists and slammed you backward hard enough to crack the remaining leg of the table beneath you.

Pain exploded through your spine, but it barely registered over the sound coming out of your own mouth.

You were crying. Not quiet tears, or graceful grief. Full body sobbing that made your chest convulse while you fought against her hold with everything you had.

“Oh, there she is,” the Original murmured almost tenderly, pinning your arms above your head. “That’s real.”

“Get the fuck off her!” Eddie roared.

He lunged at her from the side, but she threw him backward without even looking. His body slammed into the wall near the hallway hard enough to leave another crater in the wood.

The Original looked back down at you while you struggled beneath her, mascara running down your face, blood smeared across your mouth and chin where you’d bitten through your own lip without noticing.

“You feel everything too deeply,” she said. “That’s why this hurts.”

“You think monsters are born cruel?” she asked quietly. “No. First, they lose something.”

“Shut up!” you screamed.

The lights overhead burst.

Glass shattered somewhere behind you. The trailer trembled violently around all of you as your grief spiraled outward in waves you couldn’t control anymore. Cabinet doors slammed open. The television crackled dead. Eddie staggered back upright, looking half terrified of you now.

The Original finally loosened her grip slightly, watching your breakdown with dark fascination.

“She made you weak,” she said softly.

You thrashed harder instantly. “No, she didn’t!”

“But she did.” Her fingers brushed damp hair away from your face, almost mockingly gentle. “Look at you.”

Another sob ripped through your chest. Then suddenly, the pressure vanished. The Original was gone from atop you so quickly that it made your head spin.

A hand hooked around the back of your jacket, yanking you violently backward across the floor before you could even process what happened.

You fought immediately, twisting hard enough to nearly break free before a familiar voice snapped through the chaos.

“Stop.” Kane.

His grip tightened as he dragged you against his chest, restraining you while you struggled like something feral. “Let me fucking go!” you screamed.

Across the ruined trailer, the Original had gone still. For the first time since arriving, she actually looked surprised. Then slowly, she smiled.

“…Kane.”

His expression darkened instantly. “Astara.”

Eddie pushed himself upright again, breathing hard, eyes darting between them while blood ran from the corner of his mouth. “You know this psycho?”

Astara ignored him completely. Her eyes stayed fixed on Kane while he held you against him, one arm locked around your waist to keep you from launching yourself at her again.

“Well,” she said softly. “That explains quite a bit.”

Kane’s jaw tightened. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“And yet,” Astara replied lightly, glancing toward Robin’s body, “I am.”

You made another broken sound at the sight of her.

“Oh,” she said quietly, amused again. “You care about her.”

“Careful,” Kane warned.

Astara laughed softly under her breath before looking back at you. Your entire body was shaking now, face wet with tears, eyes locked helplessly on Robin lying motionless near the kitchen table.

“You see?” Astara murmured. “This is why they’ll never survive what they are becoming.”

Slowly, she stepped toward you through the wreckage of the trailer, glass crunching beneath her boots while the overhead light flickered weakly above her.

Robin’s body still lay twisted near the kitchen table, one arm bent beneath her awkwardly, eyes half open toward nothing.

You couldn’t stop looking at her. Astara crouched in front of you carefully, almost gently, while Kane still held you in place.

Her fingers slid beneath your jaw, cool against tear-streaked skin as she tilted your face toward hers.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” she asked softly.

The grief felt unbearable now that it had nowhere to go. It sat inside your ribs, threatening to split you open from the inside while Robin stayed dead on the floor beside you.

You hated that she could see it, hated that she sounded almost kind.

“You don’t have to keep feeling it,” Astara whispered.

Eddie stepped forward instantly. “Don’t touch her.”

Astara ignored him. Her thumb brushed beneath your eye, smearing tears and blood together across your cheek while she studied you with something dangerously close to affection.

“You’re trying so hard to hold onto something human,” she murmured. “But humanity is exactly what’s destroying you.”

“She was my best friend,” you choked out.

“And now she’s dead.” The words landed brutally flat.

“You think this pain honors her?” she asked quietly. “You think suffering keeps her alive somehow?”

Your chest convulsed around another sob.

“No,” she continued softly. “It just keeps you weak.”

“Stop talking to her like that!” Eddie snapped.

Astara’s expression changed, her warmth vanishing so fast it was terrifying. She turned toward Eddie slowly, eyes darkening, and suddenly the entire trailer felt smaller around her.

“You,” she said coldly, “should understand better than anyone.”

Eddie’s jaw tightened. “Understand what?”

“That this attachment is going to get you both killed.”

Kane finally released some pressure from his hold on you, though he clearly wasn’t convinced you wouldn’t lunge again.

His gaze stayed fixed on Astara carefully.

“You’ve both been resisting the inevitable since the second you turned,” she said. “Pretending this can coexist with normalcy. Pretending you can feed and hunt and kill and still cling to little human relationships like they mean something.”

“She means something,” Eddie snarled.

Astara smiled faintly. “There it is again.”

She moved closer to him now, head tilted slightly while Eddie visibly fought the instinct to back away from her.

“The anger,” she murmured. “The desperation. The grief.” Her eyes flicked briefly toward Robin’s body. “Do you know how rare that is after transition?”

“Most vampires lose themselves quickly,” she continued. “Their humanity burns out because it cannot survive what they become. But you two…” Her smile widened slightly. “You’re evolving.”

Kane’s expression darkened further at that word.

“You’ve felt it too, haven’t you?” she asked him casually. “How powerful they are already.”

Kane stayed silent. Astara looked pleased anyway.

“The compulsion,” she continued, glancing back toward you. “The emotional projection. The instability.” Her eyes shifted toward Eddie again. “And all of it this early.”

Eddie shook his head slowly. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Astara’s gaze sharpened. “Original blood,” she said simply.

Astara laughed softly at everyone’s silence.

“Oh, so she did figure it out.”

“She?” Eddie echoed.

“The old woman,” Astara replied. “Your little witch grandmother.”

You stared at her through blurred vision. “…What are we?”

Astara looked almost delighted by the question. “The future,” she said.

Eddie scoffed immediately. “Yeah, okay, you’re officially insane.”

“No,” Astara replied calmly. “I’m ambitious.”

She began pacing slowly through the ruined trailer again while she spoke, boots dragging through shattered glass and blood.

“Original blood isn’t easy to spread,” she said. “Not naturally. Not carelessly.” Her eyes slid toward both of you again. “But when it does… it creates something stronger.”

Kane’s voice finally cut through the room. “Astara.” A warning.

She ignored it. “You can already feel it happening,” she continued. “Your hunger is different. Your abilities are mutating faster than they should. Your emotions affect the world around you.” Her gaze locked onto yours. “And eventually your humanity will become a liability.”

“No,” Eddie said firmly.

Astara turned toward him again. “You watched her break down over a dead girl,” she said flatly. “You think hunters won’t use that against her? You think enemies won’t?”

Eddie’s jaw clenched hard enough to crack. “She’s not losing herself.”

Astara’s smile turned almost pitying. “She already is.”

Your stomach twisted.

Eddie moved toward you immediately, kneeling in front of where you sat, while Kane finally loosened his hold completely. Eddie grabbed your face carefully, like he was trying to anchor you back into something real.

“Don’t listen to her,” he said quickly. “She’s trying to mess with your head.”

But his eyes kept flicking toward Robin. Toward the proof sitting in the middle of the trailer that Astara could destroy anyone either of you loved without even trying.

Astara watched the realization spread across both your faces with quiet satisfaction.

“That’s the problem with humanity,” she murmured, pacing slowly around the room again. “It gives people handles to hold you by.”

“Shut up,” Eddie snapped.

“You love something,” she continued casually, “and suddenly it becomes a weakness. A hostage. A threat waiting to happen.”

Astara stopped beside the kitchen counter, fingertips dragging lazily through the blood smeared across it.

“You think this girl mattered?” she asked softly, glancing toward Robin. “No. She was just nearby.”

Your breathing hitched. Eddie stepped in front of you slightly.

“Don’t,” he warned.

Astara tilted her head. “But the uncle,” she said thoughtfully. “Now that would hurt.”

The air left Eddie’s lungs so fast you heard it.

Astara smiled slowly. “Yes,” she murmured. “There it is.”

“You stay the fuck away from Wayne,” Eddie said immediately, voice low and shaking with rage.

Astara looked amused by the threat. “Or what?” she asked softly. “You’ll kill me?”

The trailer lights flickered again. Eddie’s hands curled into fists at his sides, so violently his knuckles split open.

“You touch him, and I swear to god—”

“You swear to god a lot for someone becoming less human by the second.”

“Eddie,” you whispered.

His eyes snapped toward you instantly, and that was the worst part. The fear in them. Not for himself, but for Wayne. For you.

Astara watched the exchange carefully, reading both of you like open wounds.

“You understand now,” she said quietly. “Don’t you?”

Neither of you answered. Because suddenly Robin wasn’t the only thing sitting between you anymore. It was Wayne sitting alone in the trailer park waiting for Eddie to come home. It was Dustin barging through the front door.

Steve. Nancy. Anyone. Everyone. Every person, whether you still loved or not, suddenly felt fragile.

Astara stepped closer again, her voice softer now.

“You don’t have to keep living like this,” she said. “Terrified every time someone gets too close to you.” Her eyes shifted between both of you carefully. “You can let it go.”

Eddie shook his head once. “That’s not how this works.”

“It is exactly how this works,” Astara replied.

You stared at Robin’s body while she spoke.

Astara crouched in front of you again, dark eyes steady on yours.

“You think becoming monsters is the tragedy here,” she said softly. “But the real tragedy is pretending you aren’t.”

Then Eddie laughed once under his breath. Not because anything was funny, it sounded broken. “…Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

You looked at him slowly. His eyes were wet now too, red-rimmed and furious and terrified all at once. Astara smiled immediately when she saw it.

“There you are,” she murmured.

Kane looked disturbed for the first time since arriving. “Astara,” he said sharply. “Enough.”

But she ignored him completely, because both of you were staring at each other now in horrible understanding.

You broke the silence first, voice smaller than you intended. “…How?”

“You stop fighting it,” she said simply.

Eddie frowned. “That’s your big explanation?”

“It isn’t complicated,” Astara replied calmly. “Humanity isn’t stitched into you permanently. It’s emotional restraint. Guilt. Attachment. Conscience.” Her gaze dragged slowly toward Robin’s body. “Pain.”

“And when you become vampires,” she continued, “those emotions become optional.”

Kane’s expression darkened immediately. “Astara.”

“She asked,” Astara replied without looking at him.

Then she crouched in front of you again.

“It’s like a switch,” she said softly. “You let go of the grief. The guilt. The fear.”

Astara extended a hand toward you gently. “You don’t erase the memories,” she murmured. “You just stop letting them hurt you.”

The fact that sounded good right now was the horrible part. Robin’s death sat inside your ribs like broken glass, sharp enough to make breathing feel impossible. And some ugly, exhausted part of you wanted it gone.

Eddie looked at you carefully from across the ruined trailer.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

“…I don’t want them to die,” you whispered.

Eddie shut his eyes briefly.

“They will,” Astara said softly before he could answer. “Over and over again.” She tilted her head slightly. “Unless you become strong enough not to care.”

Kane finally stepped forward. “That’s enough.”

Astara rose smoothly to her feet again, unconcerned.

“No,” she said quietly. “This is mercy.”

You looked toward Robin one last time. Your best friend, gone because she loved you enough to walk into the trailer without knocking.

Eddie knelt beside you in the wreckage, blood still smeared across his mouth and jaw, eyes red-rimmed from rage and grief.

For a second, neither of you spoke. You just stared at each other while the trailer creaked quietly around you. Then Eddie reached for your hand, your fingers locking together instantly.

“I don’t know how to do this,” you admitted quietly.

Eddie’s thumb brushed shakily across your knuckles. “Me neither.”

Then he laughed again softly under his breath, broken and exhausted. “…We’re really doing this, huh?”

Your eyes burned. Not with tears anymore, but something far worse that you simply cannot name. You nodded once.

Eddie stared at you for another long second before finally squeezing your hand tighter. “…Okay.”

Astara’s voice cut through the room low and smooth. “Let go.”

The trailer suddenly felt too still. You shut your eyes, and for one terrible moment, every emotion inside you surged harder instead of fading.

Robin laughing. Wayne hugging Eddie. Dustin. Your grandmother. Fear. Love. Guilt. Grief. Humanity clawed desperately at your ribs like it knew it was dying.

You almost stopped. Then you felt Eddie’s hand tighten around yours, and suddenly you could feel him too. Not metaphorically, but literally.

His fear pressing against yours. His grief tangled in your chest. Rage. Hunger. Possessiveness. Pain. All of it bleeding together through whatever existed between you now.

A sire bond snapped violently into place.

Your eyes flew open. Eddie gasped sharply beside you, his entire body tensing as the connection deepened so abruptly it felt invasive, overwhelming, intimate in a way that bordered on horrifying.

You could feel him; every part of him. And he could feel you.

Astara smiled wider. “Yes,” she whispered.

The grief inside your chest suddenly loosened. Like someone had reached into your body and severed the nerves attached to it.

You stared at her body without sobbing, shaking, or breaking apart. Beside you, Eddie went still too.

His breathing slowed. The panic vanished from his face first, then the guilt.

When he looked back at you now, the connection between you slammed even harder through your system.

Hunger. Loyalty. Obsession. Possession. Not human love anymore; something darker, something eternal.

Kane looked genuinely unsettled now. Astara, meanwhile, looked delighted.

“There,” she murmured. “Much better.”

Astara looked almost proud of you; that was the first thing you noticed after it settled. Like she’d been waiting for this.

Robin’s body still lay on the floor between the kitchen and living room, but now, when you looked at her, the reaction felt muted somehow. You knew you should’ve been hysterical.

You remembered the feeling of it vividly enough that the absence became disturbing all on its own. Eddie felt it too.

You could sense it through the bond now, every shift in his emotions brushing against yours like another set of instincts living under your skin.

The grief was still there somewhere, but buried beneath hunger and attachment and something possessive that kept pulling toward you over and over again.

It felt wrong, but also felt so good. Astara stepped toward Robin’s body casually, crouching beside it while she brushed dark hair away from Robin’s face almost respectfully.

“She’ll attract attention if she stays here,” she said.

“She’s not taking her anywhere good,” Kane said flatly from near the doorway.

Astara glanced back at him. “No,” she agreed. “Probably not.”

Eddie’s fingers tightened around yours.

“When will you be back?” you asked quietly.

Astara looked pleased by the question.

“Morning,” she replied. “You’ll need guidance.” Her eyes dragged slowly between you and Eddie again. “Especially with the bond progressing this quickly.”

Eddie frowned slightly. “What exactly does that mean?”

Astara smiled faintly. “You’ll figure it out.”

Then her attention shifted toward Kane. “Come with me.”

Kane’s expression immediately hardened. “No.”

Astara stood smoothly, Robin limp in her arms. “That wasn’t a request.”

For a second, you thought he might actually refuse her. Then Kane’s jaw flexed once before he pushed himself off the wall.

“I’m not cleaning up your messes forever,” he muttered.

Astara laughed softly under her breath. “Sure you are.”

The two of them moved toward the doorway together, Robin’s body hanging unnaturally still against Astara’s side while cold night air drifted through the open trailer.

Before stepping out, Astara paused. Then she looked back at the two of you sitting together in the wreckage.

“You feel it already, don’t you?” she asked softly.

Then they disappeared into the darkness. For a long moment, neither of you moved.

Then Eddie finally looked at you fully, and the bond hit harder. Your breath caught sharply.

Jesus.

It felt like standing too close to an exposed wire.

Every emotion rolling off him slammed directly into your chest before he even spoke: possessiveness, relief, hunger, obsession, fear of losing you so intense it bordered on panic despite everything else that had dulled.

“…Holy shit,” he whispered.

You stared at him. “You can feel it too?”

“Yeah.”

You became suddenly hyperaware of everything: the warmth of his hand tangled with yours, the blood drying beneath his fingernails, the fact that his heartbeat had synced almost perfectly with yours somewhere in the last few minutes.

Your emotions brushed against him, too. His eyes darkened slightly as your thoughts hit him: fear, attachment, want, the lingering violent instinct to kill anything that threatened him ever again.

“…Okay, that’s weird,” he muttered.

You shifted closer without thinking, Eddie doing the same.

The movement made both of you pause. Then the bond surged warmly through your chest again, rewarding the closeness in a way that felt disturbingly natural.

“Oh my god,” Eddie said quietly, realization dawning across his face. “It likes that.”

You blinked at him. “What likes that?”

“The bond.” His expression twisted slightly. “I can literally feel it reacting when you get closer.”

You stared at each other. Then experimentally, your fingers slid further between his. The reaction was immediate. Warmth bloomed sharply through your chest, spreading down your spine almost like relief.

Eddie visibly felt it too, his eyes fluttering briefly before he let out a quiet curse under his breath. “Jesus Christ.”

He was on you in the space of a blink, hands fisting in your shirt, yanking you up and against him so hard the flimsy couch creaked.

The feeling sang at the contact, a rush of liquid heat flooding straight down your spine and pooling low in your belly.

His mouth crashed into yours, all teeth and desperation, and when your fangs nicked his bottom lip, the taste of him, rich and metallic, exploded across your tongue like the best drug you’d ever known.

“Fuck,” he growled against your mouth, voice wrecked. “I can sense how wet you are already. Jesus Christ.”

You whimpered, nails digging into his shoulders as he walked you backward through the wreckage until your back hit the wall.

His thigh shoved between yours, pressing hard against your core, and the friction made your hips roll on instinct. Every pulse of need from him slammed into you and bounced back doubled. It was dizzying, addictive.

Eddie tore his mouth away only to drag it down your throat, fangs scraping over your racing pulse. “Mine,” he snarled, the word vibrating straight into your bones. “You’re fucking mine now. Not letting anything take you from me again.”

You felt the truth of it within your own body: raw, obsessive, edged with the terror he’d almost lost you. It made you shudder and arch harder into him.

“Then take me,” you breathed, voice trembling with how badly you needed him inside you. “Bite me. Mark me. I want it to hurt.”

A broken sound tore out of his chest. He ripped your shirt open with one brutal tug, buttons scattering across the floor. Cool air hit your skin for half a second before his mouth was on you again, sucking, biting, fangs piercing the swell of your breast just enough to draw blood.

The sting was exquisite. You cried out, fingers tangling in his wild curls, holding him there as he drank.

The bond lit up like fireworks. His pleasure at your taste flooded you so strongly that your knees buckled. Eddie caught you easily, lifting you so your legs wrapped around his waist.

You felt him grinding against you through his jeans, the bond feeding you every throb of his cock like it was your own.

“Bedroom,” he rasped, already carrying you. “Now.”

He didn’t bother with the light. The trailer was small; he knew every inch. The second your back hit the mattress, he was tearing the rest of your clothes off.

You returned the favor, ripping down the front of his shirt until pale, perfect skin was bared to you. You dragged your tongue over the old tattoo on his chest and bit down hard right over his heart.

Eddie’s roar was pure predator. He pinned your wrists above your head with one hand, the other shoving your thighs wider. Two fingers plunged into you without warning, curling cruelly against that spot that made you see stars.

“So fucking tight,” he groaned, pumping them deep. “Still so wet for me even after everything. You feel that? Feel how bad I want to be inside you?”

You could only moan, hips chasing his hand. The bond was a live wire now, every stroke of his fingers sent sparks of his own pleasure back at you until you couldn’t tell whose orgasm was building.

He pulled his fingers out, brought them to his mouth, and licked them clean while staring straight into your eyes. Then he freed his cock, the head already glistening, and dragged it through your slick folds.

“Beg,” he ordered, voice velvet and gravel. “Tell me how bad you need my cock.”

“Please, Eddie—fuck me. Bite me while you do it. I want your fangs in my throat when you come.”

His control snapped.

He slammed into you in one brutal thrust, burying himself to the hilt. The stretch burned so perfectly you screamed, legs locking around his waist.

Eddie didn’t give you time to adjust; he fucked you like he was trying to crawl inside your soul, hips snapping hard and deep, the wet slap of skin echoing in the trailer.

Every thrust sent the feelings reeling. You felt his pleasure, felt how your pussy fluttered and squeezed around him, felt the way your blood sang for him. He dropped his weight onto you, mouth latching onto your neck, and bit.

The pain was white-hot bliss. Your orgasm crashed over you instantly, pussy gushing around his cock as he drank deep. Eddie snarled against your skin, hips stuttering. Then he was coming too; thick pulses flooding you while the bond fused the sensations together until you didn’t know where you ended and he began.

He kept fucking you through it, slower now but just as deep, grinding against your clit with every roll of his hips. When he finally pulled his fangs free, he licked the wound closed with lazy strokes of his tongue, then kissed you filthy and deep so you could taste yourself on him.

You whimpered, already rolling your hips up for more. The sensations in your body purred its approval, wrapping you two tighter together.

The rest of the night blurred into a haze of teeth, blood, and endless fucking. You barely made it ten minutes before Eddie had you bent over the kitchen counter, pounding into you from behind while his fangs stayed buried in your shoulder.

Round three was on the floor; slow and filthy, you riding him while he drank from your wrist, and you drank from his. Four had you pressed against the bathroom mirror, watching his reflection,  as he choked you harshly and came so deep you swore you felt it in your throat.

Five was in the shower, with cold water doing absolutely nothing. Eddie on his knees with your leg over his shoulder, tongue and fangs working your clit until you screamed and then fucking you against the tile until your legs gave out.

Six happened right there on the wet floor, lazy and grinding, mouths fused together in a constant exchange of blood.

By seven, he had you back in bed, wrists tied to the headboard with his own belt while he edged you mercilessly, pulling out every time he felt you were close, only to slam back in and drink from your inner thigh until you were sobbing his name.

Eight was brutal. Him behind you, one hand fisted in your hair, the other slapping your ass hard enough to bruise even with vampire skin, growling “Mine” with every thrust like a prayer.

Nine was softer but no less intense: face to face, slow, deep rolls of his hips while you both fed from each other’s necks, the need and want pulsing so strongly it felt like one continuous orgasm.

Ten happened just before dawn: you on top again, riding him slow and possessive while the sky outside started to lighten.

Eleven was desperate and messy, Eddie flipping you onto your back and folding you in half, fucking you so hard the cheap trailer bedframe cracked as the first rays of sun crept toward the windows.

By the time you finally collapsed, tangled together in blood-smeared sheets, the endless feeling of want and desire was glowing warm and sated in your chests. For now.

The trailer smelled faintly of sex, blood, and steam now, humid air still drifting out from the bathroom while pale morning light pushed weakly through the blinds.

Somewhere between the bond and whatever shutting off your humanity had done to the two of you, neither of you had been able to keep your hands off each other for more than a few minutes at a time.

Every touch fed it. Every kiss made the connection tighten further until it became impossible to tell where your emotions ended, and Eddie’s began.

By the time you finally pulled yourself out of bed sometime after sunrise, the scratches carved into Eddie’s back were already fading.

The bite marks littering your throat and shoulders had healed down to faint pink traces beneath your skin, disappearing more by the second as hot water ran over both of you in the shower.

You caught Eddie staring at your neck at one point while you washed blood from your arms. Not casually, but hungrily.

A sharp pulse rolled through your chest and straight into his, making his jaw tighten while your stomach twisted pleasantly in response. “…Seriously?” you muttered.

Eddie snorted quietly, dragging a towel through his damp curls. “Don’t look at me like that, then.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You literally did,” he replied immediately.

The terrifying part was that you could feel he was telling the truth. Every little emotion leaks between you now.

Attraction hit twice as hard because it bounced back amplified through the bond over and over until it became almost impossible to ignore.

By the time you both got dressed and stepped back into the living room, the trailer looked mostly repaired.

The broken table had been shoved aside. The blood was gone from the floorboards. The lights worked again.

And sitting on the couch like they owned the place were Astara and Kane. Astara looked up first, then smiled slowly.

“Well,” she drawled, crossing one leg over the other. “You two had a long night, didn’t you?”

You both froze instantly.

Kane looked deeply uninterested in being part of this conversation, leaning back in the armchair beside the couch with his arms crossed.

Astara’s eyes dragged lazily over both of you. The healed marks on your neck. Eddie’s still damp hair. The way your hand instinctively found his the second you entered the room.

Her smile widened. “The bond settled nicely,” she observed.

Neither of you answered, mostly because she wasn’t wrong. The connection felt stable now in a way it hadn’t before.

You could feel Eddie’s awareness pressing quietly against yours every second, even standing across the room from him.

“You’re encouraging it too much,” he said flatly.

Astara laughed softly. “And yet it worked.”

Eddie frowned slightly. “What exactly is happening to us?”

Astara tilted her head. “You’re becoming what you were supposed to be.”

“That doesn’t answer literally anything.”

“It’s not supposed to yet.”

You rolled your eyes slightly at that, though the motion lacked real irritation now; most emotions did. Everything felt flatter except for the things tied directly to Eddie or hunger.

“There it is,” she murmured approvingly. “The emotional dampening already stabilized.”

The wording should’ve disturbed you more than it did. Instead, your attention drifted elsewhere.

Toward the pulse in Kane’s throat. Toward the faint scent of blood beneath the air. Hunger twisted sharply through your stomach.

Beside you, Eddie shifted at the exact same moment. Astara looked delighted.

“Yes,” she said softly. “That too.”

Eddie exhaled quietly through his nose. “…We fed yesterday.”

“And now you’re hungry again,” Astara replied. “Original blood burns faster. Stronger. Your bodies are changing.”

Kane looked unimpressed. “You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“It is a good thing,” Astara said calmly.

Then her eyes settled on you again. “You’re starving.”

The drive took nearly two hours. Nobody explained where you were going.

Astara sat in the passenger seat smoking lazily with the window cracked while Kane drove in complete silence, one hand tight against the steering wheel like he was tolerating the entire situation instead of participating in it. 

You and Eddie sat in the backseat together, your thigh pressed firmly against his, your hand tangled loosely with his near the center console, because separating for too long made you ache now in a way that felt almost physical.

The hunger made everything worse. Every town you passed smelled alive.

Gas stations. Diners. People crossing parking lots, laughing with warm blood moving beneath their skin, while your body reacted automatically to every heartbeat nearby.

Astara finally broke the silence somewhere past the state line. “You’re both handling this better than most.”

Eddie stared out the window. “Comforting.”

“I’m serious,” she replied smoothly. “Most transitions this strong end in bloodbaths.”

Kane snorted quietly at that, and Astara ignored him.

“You’re adapting quickly,” she continued, glancing back at the two of you. “The bond stabilized overnight, your humanity detached cleanly, and neither of you have tried to kill each other yet.” A small smile tugged at her mouth. “That’s promising.”

You rested your head briefly against the seat behind you.  “…Where are we going?” you asked.

Astara’s smile widened slightly. “Home.”

The town itself looked dead when you arrived. Not literally, just old.

Most of the buildings downtown were dark except for a handful of flickering neon signs and a liquor store near the corner where two men stood smoking beneath a broken streetlight.

Rainwater glistened black against the pavement while Kane pulled the car down a narrow side street lined with brick buildings and rusted fire escapes.

The place Astara brought you to looked abandoned from the outside. Three stories tall. Blacked-out windows. Faded paint peeling from the walls.

But the second you stepped inside, you could smell them.

Astara smiled without turning around. “Relax,” she murmured. “You’ll feed.”

Dim lamps cast soft amber light across old furniture and heavy curtains while music played quietly somewhere deeper inside the building.

So much blood.

You followed Astara through a long hallway while your senses sharpened violently with every step, your mouth already aching faintly where your fangs threatened to descend.

Then you saw them, humans.

At least eight or nine were scattered throughout the massive living room ahead, some lounging across couches, some half asleep against each other. None of them looked afraid.

A girl sitting near the fireplace looked up as Astara entered, then smiled dreamily before moving toward her without hesitation.

Another man slowly lifted his head from the couch, eyes glazed over in that same detached way.

Compelled, every single one of them. Astara gently caught the girl by the chin as she approached, brushing her thumb along her jaw almost affectionately while the girl leaned into the touch automatically.

“They volunteer,” Astara said casually.

Kane rolled his eyes slightly behind her. “They’re compelled,” he corrected.

Astara shrugged. “Same difference.”

One girl sat quietly with puncture wounds already healing along her throat, while another laughed softly at something a vampire whispered against her neck near the far wall.

The entire place felt wrong in the calmest possible way, like a den full of sleeping predators and people too hypnotized to realize they’d already been eaten alive.

Eddie stepped closer to you instinctively, the bond pulsing warmly in response.

“This is a nest,” she explained, finally releasing the girl beside her. “Safe feeding. Safe hunting. No panic. No mess.” Her eyes drifted slowly between you and Eddie. “No unnecessary attachment.”

The girl beside her tilted her head toward Astara obediently, exposing her throat without even being asked. You felt Eddie’s hunger spike violently beside you.

Immediately, your own answered it. Astara smiled faintly at the reaction.

“You’ll learn quickly now,” she said. “Originals don’t survive by pretending to be human.” She spread her arms slightly toward the room around her. “This is what you are now.”

Astara watched both of you carefully from across the room, like she was waiting to see what instincts surfaced first. Apparently, she got her answer quickly when a girl approached Eddie without hesitation.

Pretty. Young. Dark lipstick smeared slightly at the corner of her mouth like someone had kissed her too hard earlier in the night.

Her eyes were unfocused in the same dreamy, compelled way as the others, while she stepped directly into Eddie’s space and touched his chest lightly.

“You’re new,” she murmured softly.

Eddie looked down at her hand. You felt the exact second his interest flickered. 

Possessiveness surged through your chest before you could think about it, sharp enough to make your stomach twist painfully.

Your hand caught the girl’s wrist hard. “Don’t touch him.”

The girl blinked at you slowly, while you shoved her hand off Eddie’s chest with enough force to stagger her backward a step.

Eddie stared at you. Then something darkly amused crossed his face, the bond practically purring at the reaction.

Astara smirked from the couch nearby. “There she is.”

The girl looked between you both uncertainly before instinctively taking another half step toward Eddie anyway, compulsion and hunger and obedience making her brave in all the wrong ways.

“He smells good,” she murmured dreamily.

Your fangs dropped immediately, Eddie noticed. And instead of calming the situation down like he probably should’ve, he smiled, just enough to show teeth.

The possessive pulse that rolled through him hit your chest instantly, mixing with obvious attraction so fast it made your head spin slightly.

“Oh my god,” you muttered, glaring at him now. “You like this.”

Eddie’s hand slid slowly around your waist, pulling you back against his chest while his eyes stayed fixed on your face instead of the girl.

“You shoved a girl across the room for touching me,” he said softly.

“She was touching you.”

“She was compelled.”

“She was breathing.”

That actually made him laugh quietly. Eddie’s fingers slid beneath your jaw, then, stroking his thumb slowly across your cheek while his expression darkened into something openly interested now.

“You’re getting territorial.”

Your stomach twisted again because he sounded pleased about it.

“I’m not territorial,” you snapped.

The girl beside you reached for Eddie again hesitantly, and you physically stepped between them this time.

Eddie looked downright delighted now.

Astara laughed softly under her breath from across the room while Kane visibly reconsidered every life decision that brought him here.

“Careful,” Astara called lazily. “The bond gets obsessive if you feed it too much.”

Neither of you listened. Eddie’s fingers curled lightly against your throat while his eyes dragged slowly over your face, clearly feeling every spike of jealousy and possessiveness echoing through you in real time.

“…You know,” he murmured, voice lower now, “we could share.”

You blinked at him. “What?”

The girl beside you looked equally confused and pleased. Eddie’s mouth twitched slightly while his thumb continued stroking slowly along your jaw.

“She likes both of us,” he said simply. “And honestly?” His eyes darkened faintly. “I kinda like watching you get possessive.” Heat curled low in your stomach instantly.

Eddie inhaled sharply in response. “Oh, wow,” he muttered softly. “Okay, yeah, definitely felt that.”

You hated how much the connection betrayed you now. Astara looked entertained beyond belief.

The girl finally smiled faintly while she stepped closer again, eyes flicking carefully between both of you.

She stood there between you, soft and willing, her pulse fluttering visibly in her throat like an offering.

Eddie’s hand never left your body. He slid his arm fully around your waist from behind, pulling your back flush against his chest as he dipped his head and spoke low against your ear. “Together, baby. Just like everything else now.”

You felt the dark thrill roll through you. His, yours, tangled so tightly it was impossible to tell them apart. The girl tilted her head obediently when you both stepped in.

Eddie’s free hand stayed on you, fingers splaying possessively over your stomach, thumb stroking slow circles just under the hem of your shirt while his mouth found the left side of her neck.

You took the right. The moment your fangs sank in, the connection exploded.

Warm blood flooded your mouth, sweet, hot, laced with the artificial bliss of compulsion, and Eddie’s low groan vibrated straight through your spine.

His fingers tightened on your waist, then slid higher, slipping under your shirt to stroke bare skin as he drank.

Every pull he took at the girl’s throat sent echoes of pleasure rippling into you, and he made sure you felt exactly how much he loved your jealousy still simmering under it all.

You drank harder, fangs deeper, one hand fisted in the girl’s hair while your other reached back to clutch Eddie’s thigh.

He rewarded you instantly, his palm gliding up to cup your breast through your bra, thumb brushing over your nipple until it hardened. A soft, filthy sound escaped you around the blood.

Eddie pulled back just enough to lick a slow stripe up the girl’s neck, sealing his bite, then turned his head and kissed you. Messy, bloody, tongues sliding together while the girl whimpered dreamily between you.

His hand never stopped moving on your body: possessive strokes down your ribs, over your hip, dipping teasingly toward the waistband of your pants before sliding back up again.

“She’s nothing,” he murmured against your lips, voice rough with blood and lust. “Just food. Feel that?” He pressed his hips forward so you could feel how hard he was against your ass. “This is all for you.”

He spun you in his arms, mouth crashing into yours again, deep and claiming, tasting like shared blood and pure want.

His hands roamed everywhere: cupping your ass, sliding up your back under your shirt, tangling in your hair, while the girl sat forgotten on the couch behind you, utterly irrelevant. 

“Mine,” Eddie growled against your lips, fangs grazing your bottom lip. “Only fucking yours. And I’m only yours.”

Astara’s soft laugh drifted from across the room. “Told you the bond gets obsessive.”

Neither of you cared. Eddie’s forehead pressed to yours, eyes glowing faintly as his hands continued their slow, worshipful exploration of your body like the rest of the nest didn’t exist.

“Next one that tries to touch me,” he whispered, voice dark velvet, “you feed. I’ll hold them down for you, ‘kay?” 

sorry guys idk what got into me while writing this one....🫣

dividers by @uzmacchiato

taglist is open:)

overall taglist:

@bitterestwillow@kozume-ko, @obsessed-eddie, @doomdabss, @julxsxx, @leelei1980@hexqueensupreme @ches-86 @plaidamoosette @bobiverses@meadows-ofasphodel @whitakerstorm @dreamerjj @sariahs-stuff @brrrainst3w @serendipdipity01 @hypersexytoptobottom @m-art000 @sisteramycatherine @walleloveseve @camsmunson101@flavorfullstevepeachpuffs25@abirdinthehouse@m-art000 @micheledawn1975  @whitakerstorm @cciessuzi @blackqueenie-18 @hbkchokeme

series taglist:

Seven full days since Joel was in your bed. And like a coward, you avoided going outside whenever his crew was working next door. But even if you wanted to, they didn't give you much of a reason. His crew was respectful and quieter, mostly because they began working indoors now. But you still caught glimpses of Joel frequently going in and out of the house to grab something from the trucks.

You hadn't spoken. It was like it never happened. But it did. You know it did, because his name and number are still scribbled at the bottom of the white board you have on your fridge, right underneath the list of items you need to grab from the grocery store next time you go. It glares at you every time you get milk for your coffee. Your gaze naturally drifts to the digits scrawled in his unique handwriting, like a beacon scanning the sea.

You never called him. You're not even sure what you would say if you did. Yet you can't bring yourself to erase his script from the board.

Around Thursday, your mind starts playing tricks on you. Right on schedule. You overanalyze everything and the further away you get from the last time you spoke to him, the more fuzzy the memory grows. What was his mood when he left? Did he regret it? Was he ashamed or feeling guilty? Is that why he never gave your house so much as a glance all week? Was he trying to forget?

It doesn't matter, you keep telling yourself. You didn't want anything more from him, you made that abundantly clear. So why are you still obsessing over it? Why are you even thinking about it now, a full week later, while you watch his crew eat lunch together in the shade on your neighbor's front lawn? Why are you scanning the group for those familiar broad shoulders and warm eyes and feeling disappointed when you can't find him?

Your computer monitor goes black from being left unattended for so long while you continue to look. You don't even notice.

He's avoiding you.

Well, you're avoiding him, aren't you?

You try to shake the invasive thoughts loose but they don't budge. Doubt begins to fester in the corners of your mind.

You set the parameters, you remind yourself. You're the one who didn't call him.

You pinch the bridge of your nose as the wave of insecurity washes over you.

It's easier this way. You don't get hurt this way.

You breathe slowly—in, then out. Then do it again, repeating your mantra to yourself until the tightness in your throat eases and you can feel again.

"Jesus," you mutter to yourself. How pathetic. You had sex with the man once. You hardly know him and yet you still have the same issues you always have when it comes to men you've dated.

Slowly, your gaze lifts to look out your window again. Finally, you spot him. He's under a tree with two other workers with a cooler open in front of him. He's holding a half eaten sub in one hand and a clear gallon jug of water in the other. They're laughing about something and even from this distance, you can see that dimple appear next to the corner of his mouth. His eyes soften and crinkle a little bit when he smiles and says something back, making his crew laugh even harder.

Without realizing it, the tension in your shoulders loosens. Your pulse slows and your mind is no longer clouded with insecurities. You feel steady again.

Suddenly struck with what you think is a fabulous idea, you stand up, nearly knocking over your chair in the process.

"Cookies."

Some demon possesses you to hurry to your kitchen and whip open your fridge for a roll of chocolate chip cookie dough you bought a few weeks ago and you get to work. Your eyes only settle twice on his number scrawled with black ink on the board while you preheat your oven and slice up the roll.

When you slide the baking sheet onto the top shelf and close the oven with a soft, satisfying thud, you dust your hands and smile to yourself. You're far from a domestic goddess, but baking some premade cookies is certainly a skill you possess.

They work hard, right? There's no harm in bringing them cookies. It's not weird.

There's a tall, narrow cupboard next to the fridge where you store most of your dry goods, including the baking spray you're looking to return to its spot on the bottom shelf, but when you open the door and notice the mess of items scattered on all four shelves, you frown.

Glancing at the clock to confirm you have a full hour before your next meeting, you decide it's the perfect time to reorganize your pantry. It's definitely not because you're fighting the urge to pretty yourself up with a touch of makeup and a spritz of perfume at the thought of being close to Joel again soon.

Ten minutes later you have two shelves of items scattered around your kitchen floor. It feels good to clean and organize. It helps ground you when your anxiety flares up, like a gentle reminder you do have control. After disinfecting the shelves themselves, you carefully place all the items back, turning the labels forward and lining up cans in a perfectly straight line.

You stand to admire your work with a pleased smile. Halfway done. Just as you lean forward to empty the last two shelves, you smell it. Burning.

You forgot to set a timer. Shit.

With a panic, you straighten up way too quickly, cracking your head on the top shelf of your pantry in the process. You cry out and stumble back, rubbing the sore spot just in time to watch in horror as the wood snaps from its place against the wall and shifts forward.

"No!" you yell, but it's hopeless. A bag of flour explodes on the ground. A glass jar of something pickled comes next. Salad dressing that is thankfully in a plastic bottle follows, along with a half opened bag of cookies and some stale cereal. You close your eyes so you don't have to watch the rest but you can hear it, your tidy little world giving into a chaotic mess at your feet.

If you were a crier, now would be the time. Instead, the usual wave of panic surges through your veins, your pulse speeds up, and your throat starts to close.

"It's f-fine," you whisper to yourself, forcing your eyes open. "It's just... I can fix this." But it's not helping. And the cookies are still burning. And your life is still crumbling. And you're still not good en—

Stop. Your eyes squeeze shut again.

One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three, out.

Your jaw is clenched hard but you force yourself to go through the motions to calm your body.

Triage. It's what you do best. You do it at work all the time.

Your eyes fly open and you look around.

Oven first. A fire is worse.

You grab a mitt and yank the burned cookies out of the oven, only to take the tray and put it immediately on your back porch so the smoke doesn't set off your smoke detector because you're fairly certain that high pitched squeal will actually be the last straw right now.

Second. The mess on the floor. Liquid traveling under appliances is bad. That means more work. So you set yourself on stopping the slow moving trail of vinegar and god knows what else.

Once that is cleaned up, you begin to feel calmer. Actually seeing progress being made helps, it always does. Cleaning up the flour and cereal and all the other dry goods is easier. Your throat relaxes and your pulse returns to normal.

Your floors needed to be mopped anyway, you think after all the shattered pieces of glass are swept up. Not to be deterred, you grab a new baking pan, put in another batch of cookies, and actually set the fucking timer before you get a mop and clean up the floors from any sticky residue.

Once the batch is finished in the oven—looking perfect, actually—your kitchen smells clean and your life is back in order. Just the way you like it.

"Alright," you breathe, flicking some hair out of your eyes. You find a cheap plate made for outdoor entertaining and place the cookies on it, trying to make them look as aesthetically pleasing as possible, but at the end of the day they're just... cookies from a tube. Whatever.

You peer out your window, readying yourself to take them over to the crew. That's when it hits you: what the hell do you even say? 'Here's some cookies, you're working so hard on a house that isn't even mine'?

You could give them just to Joel, but you know that'll look even worse. At that point you might as well just get a shirt that says we had sex on it.

This was a stupid idea. What were you thinking?

And what's worse is, if you don't give these cookies away, you'll end up eating them all by yourself in two days.

From your spot in your living room, you can see some of the men beginning to stand. Their break is coming to an end, along with your window.

Apology cookies. That's it!

You'll take these cookies over as an apology for being annoyed with them the last few weeks.

There's only time to rake your fingers through your hair once or twice. That's good. You don't want to look like you're trying too hard.

Yeah, like bringing them fresh baked cookies doesn't look like you're trying hard.

After wrapping the plate tightly with plastic wrap, you head out your front door with what you hope is a casual look on your face and an energetic pep in your step. Gravel crunches under your sneakers as you walk across your driveway, alerting a couple of the men to your presence. You try to ignore the kick in your chest the closer each step brings you to Joel.

"Well, look who it is," one of the older workers says wearily when you're within earshot. You smile sweetly at him, closing the distance between you and the crew. It's impossible not to notice the way they all stop laughing and talking as you approach, making you feel like you're about to give a presentation in front of an audience or something. It's certainly not helping your nerves, but you power through as if you were leading a meeting at work.

"Gentlemen," you greet them, coming to a stop. Joel is the last to turn but something tells you he knew it was you that was approaching. He doesn't look surprised to see you. In fact, you think he looks pleased. At least, based on the way he lets his gaze slowly take you in tells you he's pleased.

You ignore the way your stomach flutters.

"Oh," you say lightly with a smirk when you lock eyes with him. "Gentlemen... and Joel," you correct yourself, making some of the guys chuckle. Joel included.

"Somethin' you need, darlin'?" he asks. That familiar southern twang has your pulse skipping in your throat.

"Need? No. Want? Yes." You lift the plate of wrapped cookies for them to see. Instantly, their eyes light up as they all look at the plate. All except Joel, who keeps his gaze directly on you. "I wanted to come over and give all of you these cookies. As an apology."

"I'll take those, thank you," a scrawny looking younger guy with a terrible sunburn says, snatching the plate from your hands. You smile as he takes it over to the crew.

"Apology for what?" Joel presses, still not showing the least bit interest in the snacks. The rest of the men have started tearing into the plastic, your conversation no doubt fading into the background.

"Apology for being... rigid these last few weeks." You clasp your hands in front of you, addressing solely Joel now that the crew has forgotten you existed.

Joel steps closer so he can lower his voice. "Feelin' rigid again today, sweetheart?"

You bristle but your face gives you away. He can read how flustered you are at the vaguest hint of your last encounter and it only encourages him.

"No!" you choke, "Jesus, Joel. I'm just trying to be nice."

"That so?"

Your eyes flicker to his crew. Not a single soul is paying either of you any attention.

"Of course. What else would it be?"

A deep, thoughtful hum rumbles in his chest as he inches a little closer. The heat of his gaze sets your skin on fire. Every spot of your body he lingers on comes alive.

"Could be you were lookin' for my attention," he says rather boldly. You scoff even though your cheeks flush almost immediately.

"Don't flatter yourself. Actually—" You turn to face him head on, arms crossed defiantly across your chest. You tilt your chin up to pin him with your most confident glare. "I was hoping to borrow a drill. So, yeah, you could say I have an ulterior motive. Not the one you wish, though."

"A... drill?" he repeats, voice filled with doubt. His brown eyes sparkle with amusement as he looks down at you, his shadow shielding you from the powerful Texas sun. "What do you need a drill for?"

You jut a thumb casually over your shoulder, back towards the direction of your house. "I broke a shelf in my pantry. I need to fix it."

His mouth twitches as he thinks over what you said, like he's trying to decide if you're lying or not. You can see the gears in his head working, no doubt trying to come up with something to say that will make you squirm.

"Sure. I'll let you borrow a drill. You know how to use one?"

You shrug. "How hard can it be?"

Joel rolls his eyes with a sigh before motioning you towards the lawn. "C'mon, Handy Ma'am."

You laugh at the lame joke and follow him to his truck. Now that his back is to you, you allow yourself a few moments to admire his strong shoulders and easy gait. It's exciting, knowing what this man is capable of behind closed doors, surrounded by people who wouldn't suspect a thing.

Joel opens the back of his cab and reaches forward with a grunt. You bite your lower lip and try not to stare too long at the way his shirt rides up, revealing just the slightest hint of his boxers. Suddenly, your mouth feels dry.

"Think this one'll do the job," he says, emerging with a yellow cordless drill. He holds it up and presses the trigger a few times in rapid succession, making sure the battery is charged before handing it over to you.

"Thank you," you say, eyes widening briefly when you feel the weight of it in your hand. It's heavier than you expect.

Joel must see your uncertainty and quirks an eyebrow at you. "You need help?"

"No," you shake your head quickly. "I can do it."

You can't, but he doesn't have to know. You can pretend you fixed it when you return it to him later.

A slightly awkward moment of silence settles between you, like you're both trying to find a reason to keep the conversation going without looking like you're desperate. You pretend to inspect the drill while Joel casually studies the sky.

"Wondered if I scared you off," he finally says, chin still tilted upwards. "Didn't wanna pester you or nothin' but... I was thinkin' 'bout you."

The softness in his voice catches you off guard. "Oh, uh..." you stammer, surprised. "No. Not scared. Just... busy."

"Yeah. Good. That's good." He drops his gaze to look at you once before staring at something on the ground. His jaw rocks from side to side and he clears his throat. It occurs to you then that he's... uneasy? Nervous?

It shouldn't, but it relaxes you for some reason.

"I thought about you, too," you admit quietly. His face lights up with a cocky grin and you immediately regret it.

"Yeah? You thought 'bout me?"

"Oh, shut up."

"No, tell me. What were you thinkin' 'bout?"

"I take it back."

"Can't. It's already out there."

"You're impossible!" You aim the drill at him and press the trigger. The gentle whir acts as a soundtrack to his laughter, which only makes you scowl.

"Just got one question for you," he says, still laughing. Despite yourself, you can feel the corners of your mouth tug upwards at the way he looks at you like you're the only thing worth looking at in that moment.

"What?" you reply dryly.

He leans in then and you forget to breathe, nearly dropping the drill in your hand from the way he smells like the earth and coffee and some spicy undertone. Probably deodorant or shampoo—

Stop it.

"Wanna screw?"

You gasp, face hot as you quickly scan your surroundings. Luckily, no one overheard him. At least, you don't think they did. Still, you're about to rip into him when you turn back around only to find him smugly standing there holding up a... well, an actual screw.

"Excuse me?" you hiss.

"Said... do—you—want—a—screw?"

"That is not what you said."

"You're hearin' what you wanna hear, darlin'."

You make a frustrated noise and turn on your heel, back towards your house. "Thanks for the drill!"

"Hey, wait!"

"No, Joel, I don't want a screw!"

Some of the men in his crew chuckle as you march past but you don't care.

"I was just jokin'," Joel says after catching up with you. "Gimme that, I'll do it," he adds, reaching for the drill.

"I can do it."

"No, you can't. You ain't ever touched a drill before in your life, have you?"

Your pace slows and your grip on the drill loosens. "Well, no, not technically—"

"Then lemme help you. It'll take ten minutes, I don't mind." Joel turns and walks backwards next to you so he can address his men. "Imma help her fix her shelf, get back to workin' on that framin', need it done 'fore the concrete guys come next week."

You hear an amused murmur behind you and you stiffen. You don't need to hear what they said. You already know.

"They're gonna think something's going on," you scold him, embarrassed as you stomp up your porch steps.

"Well, somethin' is goin' on," he argues. You stop dead in your tracks and turn on him, making him stumble.

"This is not like last time," you warn him, pointing a finger at his chest. His wide, tanned, sweaty, gorgeous chest.

"I know, I know," he says, palms in the air. You stare at him for another moment, making sure he understood and was being serious before lowering your hand and offering him the drill.

"Good. Follow me."

You miss his sly grin when you turn to open your door.

***

"How the hell'd you do this?"

"Huh?"

Joel gestures to the splintered wood. "This. You take a hammer to it?"

"No, I—my head, I knocked into it when I was cleaning."

Joel gives you an incredulous look before focusing back on the shelf. "Goddamn. You alright?"

You huff, brushing off his concern. "Of course. Can you fix it?"

Joel clicked his tongue as he examines the wood further before peeking inside your pantry. "Gonna need a new piece of wood. I got some scrap in the back of my truck, gimme a second, be right back."

"Oh, forget it. It's too much trouble. I'll figure someth—"

"It ain't too much trouble," Joel says firmly, cutting you off. He gives you a sincere look, like he wants to make sure you understand. "It'll take a minute. You're doin' me the favor, anyway. Less wood I gotta unload later."

Before you can argue further, he disappears down your hallway and back out the front door. Your screen swings shut and you hear the dull thud of his boots hitting your porch, then the sound fades and you're left all alone in your kitchen, struggling yet again with your inner demons.

You're a burden.

You never even called him, you don't deserve his help.

He doesn't care about that. He doesn't care about you like that. He got laid, he got what he wanted and left his number because he thought it was the right thing to do.

It didn't mean anything.

"Oh, my god. What is wrong with me?" you mutter, rubbing your eyes in frustration. You shake it off, straighten your shoulders and smooth out your shirt just in time because a moment later, you hear Joel jog up your front steps and open the door.

You take a deep breath and force a smile when he triumphantly enters your kitchen, holding up a piece of wood.

"This should do it."

"Great."

Joel kneels down with a heavy grunt and gets to work, but something caught your eye: he returned wearing a tool belt.

It looks good on him.

Snap out of it.

"Do you want something to drink?" You're already moving towards a cupboard, pulling down two glasses before he answers.

"Sure."

You have half a pitcher of lemonade you made a few days ago—the powdered kind, obviously. Your culinary prowess only extends to cookie dough logs, not reaming citrus.

There's a high pitched squeal from the drill and the grating sound of wood being punctured and twisted by metal. You wince and set his lemonade down on the counter behind him, then take yours a few feet away to your small kitchen island. With a little jump, you hoist yourself up to sit on the edge of the counter, bare legs dangling over the sides as you sip your lemonade and watch Joel work.

He unclips a flashlight from his belt and pops it between his teeth so he can see what he's doing. He's all business, focused entirely on doing the job and nothing else. There's no awkward air, no sexually charged quips. When Joel Miller is working, he's putting his entire focus on doing a good job.

It's kind of hot, when you think about it. His head must be an encyclopedia of manual labor. He knows the exact right screw to use, the right wood... he knows to avoid the back panel because there's likely electrical running back there for your refrigerator. He knows to install the shelf a little lower than before because you're shorter than the pantry.

He's smart. A different kind of smart than you're used to. Watching him work gives you a new found appreciation for him.

You don't realize you're staring until he pockets the flashlight and peers out from inside the pantry with a knowing smirk.

"See somethin' you like?"

Normally, you'd bite back with some sarcastic remark to cut him off at the knees, but this time, you're flustered and you can't shake it off in time to think of anything clever.

"Uh—" You clear your throat and take a sip from your glass, hoping he can't see the way you're breathing a little faster. But he does see it. He sees everything. The smile slips from his face and his gaze darkens fractionally when you rub the back of your neck and take a deep breath before responding. "How long have you, uh—how long have you done this?"

Joel pauses a moment, still leaning halfway inside your pantry with the drill poised against the wood. He can see the way you fidget on your counter, the way your thighs press together and your teeth dig into your lower lip.

"What? Construction?" he eventually asks. You nod. "All my life. Started out at a landscaping company right outta high school, then went to U Tech to be a welder. Took some classes here 'n there 'bout different things. Hopped around a bit to find what suited me best."

"And what was that?"

He frowns. "What?"

"What suited you best?" you clarify. Joel smiles and drags his gaze back to your shelf. Before pressing the trigger for the drill, he answers.

"None of it. Liked it all, so I started this business. Little bit of everythin' that way."

The sound of the drill drowned out the space left for you to reply.

He makes it sound so simple. Like of course he just started a business from the ground up because that's what he knew he wanted to do. And he seems to be good at it. And enjoy it. You wonder if he knows how rare that is.

You're too lost in your own musings to realize he had been talking. You blink and refocus on him, standing next to your pantry with the drill at his side and his tool belt slung comfortably around his waist, looking at you expectantly.

"Huh?"

"I said, how long you been doin' your job?"

"Oh. Uh, almost ten years. Started as an intern during my final semester of college and accepted a job after graduating. Never really considered anywhere else."

"Why?"

You swing your legs and shrug. "Easier than starting over, I guess."

"Do you like it?"

You think about his question. Do you? You want to say yes, but you're not even sure anymore. You're pretty sure you used to, right?

"I'm good at it," you finally say. But Joel sees through it. Of course he does.

"Didn't really answer the question."

You laugh and look down at your freshly mopped floors. "I like that I'm good at it, how about that?"

Joel hums to himself and slowly turns to examine your shelf. He gives it a little shake, taps the top to make sure it's steady, then tests the door before making a satisfied noise and stepping back.

"You're all set here."

You lean forward a bit to look inside the pantry, impressed with how quickly and neatly he was able to fix it. There's no question you wouldn't have been able to do the job half as good.

"Thank you."

Joel grins, giving you a flash of that dimple, before picking up a few loose screws from the ground and pocketing them somewhere in his belt. You catch a glimpse of his stomach and you swallow hard. Your gaze shifts briefly to the clock—you still have twenty minutes before your next meeting.

"Anythin' else?" he asks, glancing around the kitchen. He picks up the lemonade and leans a hip against your counter while he drinks. His eyes settle on the whiteboard on your fridge, where his writing is still scrawled with his name and number, and guilt blooms in your chest.

"Yeah," you say softly, pulling his attention from the board. Slowly, he sets down the empty glass where he found it. He raises his brows, waiting, then you lift your hand and curl your finger, beckoning him forward. His expression softens and he does as you wish, closing the space between you until he's standing between your knees, inches apart. You drop your hand and hook your finger around his tool belt, giving him a playful smirk. That's all he needs to see. He presses both palms flat against the countertops on either side of your hips and tips his face down, brushing his lips gently over your own.

He's testing. Wondering if he's reading the room right. You respond with a little more pressure and he relaxes into the kiss with a sigh. Your arms loosely circle around his neck and you part your lips, inviting his tongue to dance with your own. He's so warm and smells so good, you almost forgot. Your mind goes hazy as you give in, letting your fingers thread gently through the hair at the nape of his neck. He practically purrs into your mouth, clearly enjoying the affection.

"I have twenty minutes," you breathe, pulling back just enough to whisper the offer.

"I can work with that," he replies just as softly. Then his mouth is pressing eagerly to yours, sealing the deal.

His hands slide up your shirt, mapping the skin underneath. He makes a pleased sound and kisses you a little harder when you shift forward, pressing yourself closer.

Joel flattens his palm against your spine, drawing you in. You welcome it by wrapping your legs around his waist and deepening the kiss with a soft sound.

He's so good at this, you think. He's good at making you feel good, at turning your brain off. All the static in your head leading up to this moment vanishes under his touch.

You break the kiss when your leg slides down and collides with a tape measure strapped to his hip. You glare at it like it offended you but Joel doesn't notice—his mouth trails down your jaw, pausing at your throat to graze his teeth gently over your pulse point. A shiver rolls down your spine.

"As much as I like this," you murmur, unlocking your legs from his waist, "it's gotta go."

You tug hopelessly at the tool belt and Joel chuckles, low and deep next to your ear.

"Oh, you like it, huh?" he teases while simultaneously dropping his hands to his belt. You roll your eyes.

"Don't start."

"You got a little fantasy? That what this is?" He unfastens the tool belt and leaves it in a heap on the floor.

"No, it is not a fant—"

"I can dress up like all the village people if that's what you're into."

"Oh, my god, shut up," you groan before yanking him forward, covering your mouth over his. But you're smiling. He can tell.

His hands fly up to cup your face, his fingertips dig into your cheeks, and he kisses you so carefully that it catches you off guard. You lean into it and let him set the pace. You don't mind so much. His lips massage your mouth open and then his tongue dips past your teeth, searching for its mate. He tastes like lemon, sharp and sweet against your tongue, which undoubtably tastes the same, yet you think it tastes better on him.

He's a great kisser, but you'll never give him the satisfaction of admitting it.

"Fifteen minutes," you warn him, already breathless when you whisper against his lips. He smiles and his eyes crinkle in that way that makes your heart stutter so you push that silly feeling down before sliding off the counter and dropping to your knees.

You have to stifle a laugh when his eyes grow wide. His button is already undone and you have his zipper halfway down before he finds his voice.

"Y-you—we don't g-gotta—"

"I want to," you tell him, hooking your fingers over the waistband of his jeans and pulling them down his legs.

"Darlin'—"

"Joel," you say firmly. You stare up at him from your spot on the kitchen floor. He just continues to flounder and grow red in the face, but at least he stopped talking. "Let me do this. Please?"

His eyelids flutter shut and he groans. "C'mon, that ain't fair."

"What?"

"Sayin' please like that."

"How'd I say it?" you tease as you pull his boxers down to his ankles. His cock bobs to attention and you shimmy forward, pressing your thighs together to quell the ache burning between your legs. When your hand gently wraps around the base, he gasps and his eyes fly open. You start to stroke him, admiring how thick and hard he is for you already.

"Joel? You didn't answer me."

"Huh?" His voice is about two octaves higher.

"I said—" You lean forward, making sure to hold eye contact when you stick your tongue out and slowly drag a thick stripe up the underside of his cock. His arms fly forward to brace himself on the counter behind you. "How'd I say it?"

You flick the tip of your tongue over the head, licking up a small drop of arousal that rests there. Joel swallows hard and takes a deep breath, steadying himself. When he's ready, he drops his voice so it's rough and deep above you.

"Said it like you might die if I don't stuff my cock in that pretty little mouth of yours."

You grin right before wrapping your lips around him with an exaggerated moan. His eyes roll to the back of his head and his jaw slowly drops the further you take him, inch by inch, only stopping once he tickles the back of your throat.

"Oh, fu—goddamn—"

One hand finds the back of your head and his fingers splay wide. He's not pressing you forward or tugging on your hair like other men before him had done. It's just a steady, grounding weight as you begin to move, slowly at first, savoring the way his breath hitches every time you swallow him again.

"You're good at that," he gasps, watching you bob up and down. Your fist covers the rest of him you can't take, twisting and pumping in rhythm. He groans again and a fresh wave of wetness pools between your thighs. "S-so good. That's it. Tha-a-t's it, oh, shit—look so pretty like this, honey. Shoulda known that smart m-mouth has many talents."

It shouldn't, but the praise warms your chest like the soft glow from hazy sunbeams. You don't think he even realizes it, that's the worst part. He's not saying it to get what he wants. He genuinely means it when he compliments you.

It propels you, making you suck harder, moan louder, and even though tears sting the backs of your eyes from how badly your jaw burns, you don't stop because Joel just keeps telling you over and over and over again in that warm, deep drawl what a good girl you are and you make him feel so good and you drive him fuckin' crazy.

"Slow down—wait—"

His voice is pained. It's the only thing that pulls you out of it. You slow down but you keep him in your mouth, sucking gently on the tip as you gaze up at him curiously with watery eyes.

And Joel? Joel looks like a complete wreck.

His face is flushed. Neck, too. He's panting and a little sweaty at the temples just from the few minutes you've been on your knees. It has you brimming with pride, and from the looks of it, forcing him to hold eye contact with his cock filling your mouth is just making him crumble even more.

"Jesus Christ, I'm gonna come if you don't stop," he whines. Your tongue slowly swirls around his girth and you just tip your head to the side, giving him a look that says, well, that's the point.

He receives your wordless message and shakes his head.

"Wanna fuck you. Wanna feel that tight pussy again." Your eyes dart to the clock on the wall—ten minutes. The hand on the back of your head tightens and you focus back on his face. His throat bobs before he speaks. "Gonna let me, sweetheart? Gonna let me make you come?"

You make a frustrated noise before releasing him from your mouth and stand up. His dick twitches from the cool air of your kitchen, wet and angry looking from being left unattended. Without thinking, you turn around so your back is to Joel and begin to unbutton your shorts, but he swivels you back around to face him.

"Nuh-uh. Wanna see you."

You open your mouth to protest—you're pressed for time as it is, pausing and picking this up in your bedroom is a mood killer at this point—but he just scoops you up and somehow, with his jeans and underwear bunched around his ankles—carries you a few feet away to your kitchen table.

"Jesus," you murmur when your back hits the firm wood. But then his mouth is on you and his hands are pushing down your shorts and you forget what you were annoyed about in the first place.

He pulls away only briefly, just to bend down to fish a condom from his wallet while you work on removing your panties. With eight minutes left, the thick tip of his cock is finally pressing into you and like a puppet on a string, your spine arches and your jaw drops at the stretch.

"Shit," you whisper, breathing deep as he settles inside you.

"Yeah, miss me, sweetheart?"

You scrunch your nose with your eyes pinched shut as you adjust to the heavy feeling of him prying you open.

"Don't... get cocky," you breathe, thighs relaxing around his hips with a sigh.

"Don't get what?" Joel pushes in deeper and you gasp.

"Asshole," you mutter, but when your eyelids flutter open, he can see the traces of amusement you're desperately trying to hide. "You're the one begging for my pussy a minute ago," you clip back, and Joel smirks before he shifts his hips.

"Got me there," he says, slowly thrusting back inside you. A traitorous soft moan slips past your lips and his gaze darkens, like a predator honing in on its prey. He continues to work you open with slow, deep thrusts, lost in the way you respond to each one and wishing more than ever he could have dragged you to your bed, stripped you naked, and taken his time with you.

"Five... minutes..." you remind him when you start to roll your hips in sync with his movements. Joel's eyes dart to the clock and he groans before falling forward, caging you in on your table. He buries his face against your throat and begins to move faster. The table legs scrape against the floor each time your hips collide and you roll your head backwards as the heat builds low in your stomach.

"Right there," you gasp. He grunts and fucks you harder, the head of his cock kissing a soft spot deep inside that is slowly making you come undone. His lips messily suck at your throat, the sharp scratch from his beard sending chills down your spine.

Your fingers get lost in his hair, desperate for something to hold onto as he pushes you closer and closer to the edge. It's so easy to fall back into this with him. Dangerously so. After the first time, you thought you got it out of your system. Unfortunately for your work hard now and play later mindset, the hot, annoying, funny construction worker next door has figured out how to read you like a book. He's gotten under your skin and burrowed into your brain, taking up space where once you held plans on advancing in your company, ideas for the latest projects, and innovative ways to acquire new business.

Case in point, you never take a lunch break, and yet here you are, baking cookies like June fucking Cleaver and getting railed on your kitchen table two minutes before your next call.

"Joel," you pant, vision going blurry at the edges, "m'close."

He lifts his head from your throat so he can study your face, just like he said he wanted to do. He grunts, hooking one of your legs over his forearm to widen your hips. You cry out and tug on his hair. His eyes roll back for a moment before he blinks hard and snaps out of it.

"Let go," he says, teeth clenched like he's fighting off his orgasm, "give it to me. C'mon, know you can do it. Lemme feel you."

You writhe and whimper, arching your back to deepen the angle. You're so close that it burns the back of your throat. But the ticking clock on the wall is adding too much pressure and you feel yourself starting to lose what he so expertly built up.

"I—fuck—"

You squeeze your eyes shut and make a frustrated noise. Joel senses it: the way your muscles give up, the exasperated furrow of your brow, and he quickly grabs your chin.

"Look at me."

His voice is so deep and commanding that your eyes snap open in shock. He's inches away from your face, forcing you to stare deep into his eyes. His hips never stop. He never loses rhythm, still hitting that sensitive spot that holds you right at the edge.

He doesn't say anything else. Just makes you hold his gaze so you can see the fire in his eyes and the desperation on his face.

Don't think about the time. Don't you dare think about work. Stay with him. Focus on him. On this.

Another sharp snap of his hips sends you soaring. Relief rolls down your spine and through your limbs. An embarrassing sound rips from your throat and your cheeks burn but you don't look away. He stays locked on you, watching the way your face melts with pleasure. He growls low and fucks you harder, chasing his own high. Your table knocks loudly against the wall but you're too lost in a hazy bubble to notice.

"Good job," he breathes, and your heart stutters. "Feels better, don't it? You deserve to feel good, baby."

Your eyes roll back and you let out a weak moan from the praise. The words hit you just right and he knows it. Joel smiles to himself before feverishly capturing your lips with his and letting go with a heavy groan.

Your chest tightens when his hips slow and you wonder what it would feel like to have him dripping out of you during your call. You wonder if the people on the other end would be able to tell what he just did to you.

Your phone pings brightly on the counter and you both freeze, mouths still pressed together but unmoving now. With a sigh, you tilt your head away to look for it, but Joel pushes himself up and grabs it himself, handing it over while still buried deep inside you.

"Hope you don't gotta be on camera," he grins.

You tap in your passcode on your phone and laugh softly. "I think I'll make up some technical issue."

Joel makes a pleased noise before settling back down on top of you to catch his breath. You join the call and pray no one asks you any questions for at least ten more minutes because he seems so content to just wrap his arms around you and quietly bury his face against the side of your neck.

This is nice, you think, closing your eyes while the familiar sound of boring higher-ups chirps from the speaker of your phone. Your heart rates slow in tandem and the sweat cools on your skin as the next few minutes tick by. Your fingers drift unwillingly to his hair and you play idly with the soft curls there. You swear you feel him relax even further into your hold from your gentle touch.

It's peaceful but you know it needs to end. He needs to get back to work. So do you. But for once, you don't want to be the one to push someone away first.

The choice gets taken from you anyway when you suddenly hear your name from the phone and your eyes snap open. You reach to unmute and Joel pushes himself up on his hands, careful not to make any noise.

"Yes, I believe that's correct at this juncture, but I do have a follow up meeting on the books with the client next week where I'll confirm."

The robotic voice thanks you and you mute yourself again before your gaze slides to Joel.

"Guess that's my cue," he says with a lopsided grin, then he winces when he pulls his half hard cock from between your legs.

You watch lazily as he rolls off the condom and tosses it in your trash. What do you say now? This isn't something you regularly do. Joel doesn't make it awkward and you both have to get back to work, so there's no reason to linger, yet you still feel like you need to say something.

You push yourself up and rub the back of your neck before hunting for your panties and shorts on the floor.

"Uh, thanks," you say, buttoning your shorts. Joel is picking up his tool belt and when you speak, he glances up.

"For the sex or for the shelf?"

You laugh. "Both. But mostly the shelf."

Joel gives you a teasing look and sets the belt on your counter so his hands are free when he crosses the room to join you.

"Y'know," he begins, rubbing his chin, "next time you wanna see me, you don't gotta go through all the trouble of burnin' cookies and breakin' shelves. Left my number right there."

He juts his thumb over his shoulder towards your fridge and your gaze follows. Your stomach twists with guilt again. You didn't expect him to bring that up, but you suppose you'd want an answer if it was you putting yourself out there.

Then you blink and look up at him in surprise. "Burned cookies?"

He grins and his head tilts towards your back deck, where the charred baking sheet of cookies still remains, solidified like a goddamn fossil.

Your face flares with heat. "Oh."

"Yeah. Oh."

Your phone is in your hand, executives are yapping away. You should be listening. You want to get ahead, right? Every meeting is a chance to make a splash. Make your mark. And yet... it's the last thing on your mind.

"Listen," you sigh, and Joel folds his arms across his chest. You drop your gaze so you don't get distracted by the muscles straining against his worn, soft shirt. And you definitely stop thinking about what it would feel like to wear that very same shirt on your own body. Because those thoughts don't have a place here. Not with you. Not anymore.

"I'm listenin'," he urges, lifting one eyebrow.

"I don't do..." Your hands flail as you search for the right word. Joel just waits, amused. "I tend to stay away from... relationships," you say, instantly feeling raw and exposed. You don't need to explain why. You don't owe him anything. Just leave it at that.

"Honey," Joel smiles, "I ain't lookin' to buy you a ring, I just wanna buy you a beer."

You chew your bottom lip, avoiding his gaze. He gives you a minute to think it over, but when it becomes clear you don't have a response, he shrugs and turns to pick up his belt.

"Ain't that serious," he adds, masking his hurt by clearing his throat. "Just thought it'd be nice to talk to you when neither of us gotta run back to work."

"Why?"

His hands still and he slowly turns around. "Huh?"

You shift uncomfortably from foot to foot, looking a little timid. It's not a look he's used to seeing on you.

"Why... do you want to talk to me?" you finally whisper, gaze glued to the ground. It hits him then that whatever walls you built up must be for a reason, something that cuts much deeper than his initial assessment of you being the overachiever, workaholic type.

He makes sure to straighten his spine and take a deep breath, facing you full on so you know what he's about to say means something.

"'Cause I like you, sweetheart. And I wanna get to know you better."

The softness in his voice makes you flinch. He lets you sit with it for a few more minutes, not rushing you, not saying anything more. He waits patiently while your brain turns over what he's said until you finally blink and meet his eye.

The walls are back up, but it's gentler now.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"I'll think about it."

"Is the answer okay, or you'll think 'bout it?"

You roll your eyes. "Same thing."

"It ain't. See—okay implies: yes, Joel, I'll give you a call tonight. I'll tell you my favorite bar and when I'm free, and I'll even let you pick me up in your beautiful, shiny truck—"

"Your truck is not beautiful."

He raises a finger in warning. "Don't talk bad 'bout her again. Hurt her feelin's last time."

When you crack a smile, Joel does the same. His chest lifts to see you happy and out of whatever dark place you disappeared to inside your head a moment ago. He doesn't like that, and he makes a note to be extra careful with you until you're willing to tell him more.

The voices coming from your speakerphone grow louder as a few different men talk over one another, drawing your attention down to your hand. Joel decides not to push you further and heads towards the door, tool belt slung over his shoulder.

"You know where to find me," he calls when he opens your front door. You look up but stay where you are in your kitchen. "I'll be waitin'," he adds after a pause, then quietly shuts the door behind him.

Your heart thuds loudly in your chest when you're left all alone once again. The conversation happening in your hand should be your primary focus, but it's not. The men are loud, but the numbers scrawled on your fridge are louder.

That familiar, creeping fear claws its way up your throat. That swell of panic and a fresh wave of uncertainty follows.

It's just a beer. It's not serious. It's not like—

With a determination you haven't felt outside of work in a long while, you stomp to your fridge and stare at his name scrawled in black ink. He's got blocky writing. But his numbers are sharp.

You smirk.

Of course the numbers are sharp. He's a contractor. He lives and breathes numbers, just like you, but in a very different way.

Don't overthink it.

You punch the numbers into your phone and stare blankly at the empty text message. You swallow tightly, ignoring the pang in your chest and the voices arguing over projections or referrals or something that seems incredibly insignificant now.

It's a big leap. Something you swore you'd never do again. Yet here you are, about to do it, because something about Joel just feels... different. And you're really interested in finding out if you're right.

What's the worst that could happen?

You wince.

Okay, bad question. You know the worst that could happen. You've lived it. Barely.

Stop it.

You take a deep breath and quickly tap out one word. Four letters. And hit send.

You: Okay

***

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Every fucking lead you’d presented them with, information scraped together in your scarce free time because they didn’t pay you a living wage yet. So one job wasn’t enough, forcing you to job as a barista too, got dismissed. Brushed over or worse, handed to someone else. 

Talk about fair. 

Not that you had thought it would be easy, but fuck, you hadn’t expected it to be so hard either. Almost a year since you moved to New York and you had nothing to show for it. Not even a loyal group of friends. 

Braving the life you’d once dreamed off all by yourself. 

No, not all by yourself. You had Pepper. The orange tabby that lived in the alley behind your apartment building. You’d started feeding her a couple month ago. You’d even built her a little shelter out of an empty box and blankets you’d lined with trash bags to make sure it wouldn’t rot after the first time it rained. 

If your landlord would allow pets, you’d have already tried to lure her inside. Especially now, since it kept rapidly getting colder and you weren’t sure how well the shelter would hold up during the New York fall and winter.

Right, Pepper. You’d stopped by her spot like you always did, she’d disappeared a couple days ago. The cat food you left out for her untouched. Just like last night. Worry had twisted your stomach when you’d turned around to go inside. Except you didn’t remember checking for mail or going upstairs. 

But you had. You must have. How else would you have wound up asleep? 

Your body felt heavy too. Like you’d slept for an unusually long time. Hadn’t you heard your alarm? 

Where was your phone? 

Your body didn’t cooperate when you blindly tried to reach for it. Limbs tangled in sheets, your movements sluggish. A groggy sound made it past your lips, half muffled by the pillow your face was smushed against. 

Were you getting sick? Fuck no. You better not. You didn’t have time to. You’d just started compiling notes on something that looked promising. You’d been asked to summarise infos on some real estate tycoon you’d never heard off. You know, doing the research before the research, so whoever took over once you’d found something, would have it easier. 

And somehow you’d made your way to accessing financial documents and you knew fuck about finances—- but something wasn’t adding up. Money moving in ways it shouldn’t and then just disappearing from equations. 

So you couldn’t afford getting sick. Because this, this could be the break you’d been fighting for since moving here. But judging from the throbbing ache that steadily worked its way through your skull, and the heaviness in your limbs, you were on your way there. 

You must have drifted off again. Without ever finding your phone and checking for the time or if you overslept — since nobody called, yelling about your whereabouts, you couldn’t have; because something rouses you again. 

Or a lack thereof. 

There was no noise, no sound. Not the hum of your refrigerator, not the crescendo of the busy streets outside. There was just silence. Heavy, like a thick blanket covering the world. Something wasn’t right but your mind was too sluggish to connect the dots, too deluded to feel fear or a spark of panic that might have gotten you to open your eyes. Instead you were just pulled under again.

That spark came the third time you clawed your way back to consciousness. 

Not because of the lack of noise, nor because your body still didn’t quite cooperate but because you remembered something. Gravel crunching under a heavy boot, a solid body you crashed against, startled, a figure looming over you, a low voice before it had all grown dark. 

“‘m sorry babygirl.” 

──────────

You were pressed against the wall, your heart racing, your body shaking both from fear and the effort it took you to remain upright. You could taste bile— A panic response, or maybe brought on by the throbbing headache that still penetrated your skull. 

This wasn’t your apartment. Fuck, this probably wasn’t even New York anymore. A glance towards the large, floor-to-ceiling windows gave you nothing except the knowledge that you were in the middle of fucking nowhere. Surrounded by a thick green forest. No landmarks in sight. So if you would make it outside, you wouldn’t know where to go, where to run. 

Except there was no fucking chance you’d make it outside. Not that you were shackled or in some dungeon. No, the room looked nice, comfortable even. Book shelves, plants, a wall mounted tv, large windows, a walk in closet leading to a bathroom. Fuck if you wouldn’t know any better you’d think you were in some fancy hotel. 

But you knew better. 

Or enough — your mind was still sluggish, a little slow on the upkeep, but you sure as hell knew that you didn’t know where the fuck you were, how you got here and who the fuck the man was sitting between the bed and the door. 

He hadn’t moved or shown a reaction, acknowledgement aside, when you’d scrambled off the bed and to the wall farthest from him. The large black dog laying beside him, had lifted it’s head curiously. 

“‘m sorry ‘bout the headache,” the same voice you remembered, a low deep rumble. “’s a nasty side effect. But I had to make sure you’d stay asleep.” 

“Where the fuck am I?” Your voice croaked, dry from lack of use. How long had you been out?

“Water’s on the nightstand, pills will help,” he ignored your question. Like hell would you take anything he offered you. And he must’ve seen that on your face, because he offered a “’s just Ibuprofen.” And when you still didn’t make a move, he huffed “Suit yourself.”

Your eyes darted back towards the door he and the dog — a Cane Corso you think, blocked; and then back to the window. “Ain’t gonna hurt you,” he continued, his voice the same, almost soft gravely tone. You scoffed. He’d drugged you and dragged you to… wherever the fuck you were. As if you’d believe that. 

The dog shifted, looking up at him before getting up, curiously sniffing towards you. “Titan ain’t gonna hurt you either. ’s just curious. Sat here all day, watchin’ you.” You only pressed yourself further against the wall, not keen on finding out whether or not he was being honest. Watching how he snapped his fingers and the dog — Titan, settled down again, a disappointed noise accompanying his movements. “Got your cat,” he continued unfazed. “Pepper, right? ’s out back, by the barn.”

Your head snapped up, away from the window and the ocean of trees behind it. 

Pepper? 

“I—- want to see her.” You jaw set, nose turned up an inch. Showing him that you wouldn’t accept no for an answer. As if held any bargaining power here. 

“Sure. But first,” he nodded towards the glass on the nightstand and the pills beside it. Perhaps you could smash it against his head and then… and then the dog would be on you. Right, not an option. “’s just water and Ibuprofen Nothin’ else. Look,” he got up and you flinched, immediately bracing yourself for the worst but all he did was grab the glass and pills, holding them out to you. “Which one?”

“Huh?” You stared at the three white pills in his outstretched palm. He’d kept his distance, not crowding you. But he didn’t have to—- towering over you regardless. Tall, broad shoulders, a plain blue sweatshirt stretching over muscles that had dragged you out here. Wherever out here was. 

“I’d prefer you take all three but,” he huffed, “‘suppose gotta show you I ain’t poisoning you. ’n fore you argue I knew which one was the placebo…” 

You glanced toward the door again, gauging your chances. 

They were higher if you made it outside. He couldn’t crowd you there. 

“You swear you’ll take me outside to see Pepper if I take them?” Trusting the word of your abductor, how much sincerity could be behind it really? 

“I do,” he affirmed, “Titan’s my witness.” 

Right, sure. Whatever. “This one,” you pointed towards the pill closest to his thumb, and without much ado, he popped it into his mouth, chasing it with a gulp of water. Much to your surprise, he placed the remaining two pills on the nightstand again, along with the water, before sitting back down. 

He didn’t rush you to take it, didn’t force you to take it, he just—- sat there, watching you. Like he must have before you woke up. “Got all the time in the world babygirl,” something inside of you twisted when he said that. “’n case you wanna make sure’s no slow release toxin.” 

You didn’t reply, just stare him down. Watching for any changes. 

Titan, who’d watched the entire exchange, got up before strolling out of the room. When he came back, he carried a small plush bunny, a soft pastel pink with floppy ears. You watched in silence how he dropped it on the ground, before nudging it towards you. “He’s bargaining. ’s his favourite toy. Has had it since he was a pup,” Titan made a noise in agreement, settling beside your captor again. The plush looked old, well loved, but it was intact. “Picked it himself, didn’t you?” You watched how a hand large enough to crush your neck settled atop the dogs head. 

Another huff in agreement. 

The dogs ears were neither cropped nor did he have a docked tail. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen a Cane Corso with floppy ears,” you heard yourself say. 

“Don’t believe in animal cruelty.”

“Right but taking hostages apparently.” 

He laughed. He fucking laughed. “Yeah, there’s a whole lot of irony in that,” he shook his head, “More than you know babygirl.” 

──────────

You don’t know how long you stood there, watching him and Titan, who occasionally, quiet pointedly looked at the plush that laid halfway between his perch and you. But eventually wanting relief from the raging headache that still had a tight grip on you won out, over any distrust you were still feeling. You took the pills, praying they’re in fact ibuprofen and then gulp down the water, praying that it was in fact just that. Water.

“Good girl,” he praised and you shuddered. 

“Don’t call me that!” You snapped. 

“But you did well, babygirl. Taking care of yourself. ’s all I want.” Your stomach lurched painfully and for a moment you thought you’d see the pills and water again but by some miracle, they stayed down. “’s fast release. You should feel better soon,” he continued like you hadn’t just almost thrown up. “You ready to see Pepper now?” 

You shoot him an irritated look, because he had said he would only after you took the pills. 

Instead of an answer, you bent down to grab the plush, watching Titan’s tail wag immediately. Maybe if the dog liked you, he wouldn’t hunt you down when you made a run for it. 

“Or you want me to explain everythin’ first?” Your head snapped up and Titan inched forward, towards you. ‘Coz I need you to understand why y’re here,” he continued, his voice the same calm, almost soft drawl wrapped into a thick southern accent. 

Did it make a difference? Why you were here? Why you had been taken. 

In the long run? No. Because you couldn’t even be sure whether or not he would be telling the truth. Which so far he had. Titan might be continuing to inch towards you and the plush you still held but he didn’t seem threatening towards you and you hadn’t dropped dead from the pills and water either. 

Yet.

And the the investigative journalist that still was very much alive in you, wanted to know.

“Okay,” you decided to bite, sinking down along the wall just as Titan had cautiously sniffed towards your fingers. The pup instantly jumped back, almost looking concerned like he’d caused this, looking back to your captor for help. “Sorry,” you immediately gave into the urge to comfort the four pawed beast of a dog that now towered over you. “Didn’t mean to startle you,” you said, offering him the bunny plush. 

He didn’t take it, sniffing your fingers instead. You’d always loved animals, and when the pup pressed his massive head into your palm you didn’t think twice about petting him. “Why am I here?” You asked, trying to ignore how pleased he looked when Titan settled beside you. 

“You’re not a prisoner,” he started out.

“Great, then let me go.” You countered. 

“Can’t. And if ya’ll let me talk ya’ll see why,” you glared daggers at him. “Good,” he breathed, “‘m Joel,” he finally introduced himself. As if you cared. As if it made a difference. “’n I work for an organisation that deals in—- problem solvin’,” he explained.”Ya know, when, say, some investigative journalist goes diggin’ at somethin’ she ain’t supposed ta.” Your mouth went dry. 

What?

No.

“I get hired, t’make sure the journalist stops diggin’,” you swallowed. Fingers curling around the plush you still held. “An t’s done best by makin’ sure the journalist won’t ever dig anywhere ‘gain.” You got what he wasn’t saying, what he didn’t want to say. 

“Hitmen don’t exist,” you blurt out. “They aren’t a thing. That’s a myth. An urban legend!” 

“Ain’t a hitman. Solve problems, ’s all I do.” 

“Right, right. But you draw the line at animal cruelty. Good to know you have boundaries.” You snapped.

“Ain’t a joke babygirl. You pissed off the wrong people, they wanted you dead,” he didn’t rise his voice, “Know’s a lot to take in, but’s the truth. You’d be dead if anyone else would’ve picked up your assignment.”

“Bullshit!” You snapped and to your surprise, Titan didn’t move an inch or respond in any form or way. His head continuing to rest heavily in your lap. 

Good. So he might let you make a run for it. 

“Whatever fucking lie you tell yourself to support this weird ass saviour fantasy of yours, doesn’t work on me.”

He didn’t seem annoyed or irritated, he just tilted his head. “You ain’t in the right ‘space for this conversation. Shoulda known. ‘m sorry for springing this on you right’way.” You blinked confused, not having expected that. “You ain’t a prisoner,” he repeated his earlier words. “This’ your room. Brought some of ya belongings an clothes, to help with the settlin’ in.” You scoffed. Yeah, right. “You’ve got free roam of t’house. Garden too,” He glanced towards the window. “Not past the fence line. For y’own safety. Forrest’s thick, wild animals roam it. Next small town’s thirty miles away.” So he had dragged you to the middle of nowhere. “No neighbours.” Go figure. “You’re safe here. Got cameras lining the property, a security system.”

“You mean you can be sure that I won’t make a run for it.” You huffed. 

“’s for your own safety. Ya’ll understand eventually.” 

Yeah, if he kept you long enough and the Stockholm Syndrome hit. You shudder. “I want to see Pepper now.” 

“Sure,” he nodded, snapping his fingers and Titan got up from your side, trotting back over to him. 

──────────

Again, he didn’t crowd you. Waiting for you by the door until you were back on your feet. “My room’s back there,” he gestured towards a door at the end of the hall and for a moment he looked like he expected you to go look. As if you gave two fucks about the house tour he apparently wanted to turn this into. “Study’s here,” he opened a door to your left. The room very much half a library, floor-to ceiling-shelves and rows and rows of books. A large window much like in your room, even if you refused to see it as that. A set of comfortable looking chairs and a couch, a heavy desk in the middle of it, another, smaller one towards the window.

Your laptop. Right beside it was your notebook and the small pencil case that had survived with you from high school to college to New York. And now here apparently. Wherever here was.

“Y’got internet access. Gotta make sure you leave no digital footprint. Closed server system, untraceable. An I hope you understand that I can’t let you access every page.” He explained. “Had to destroy your phone, but got all files backed up.”

What the actual fuck was all this? What sick and twisted game was he playing? He must expect you to try and access any help line possible? No? Closed server? What?

“Problem solution must pay pretty well, huh?” You remarked drily, taking in the space.

“Yeah,” he shrugged a little, “’s a lucrative business.”

“I’m sure.”

Downstairs pretty much was a giant living room with an open kitchen. Again, large windows everywhere, a lot of light. Dark wooden floors, a deep green couch, a fire-place, a TV, Titan’s dog bed that he marched off towards to. As if to show you. Along with a basket full of his toys. A lot of wood and warmth that didn’t fit the image you had of hitmen or the abducting type.

This all made no fucking sense. He’d abducted you, ripped you out of your home, your life. And now he was giving you a tour of his home? Like you were some esteemed guest?

As if you gave a fuck about all of this. Even if the investigative part of your brain did try to piece together the image he presented, the fact that he’d abducted you and this fucking house. 

To no avail. There was no logic or sense to it.

Wasn’t he worried you might use one of the large kitchen knives to protect yourself and harm him? Sure, he was taller than you, stronger. But if you caught him off guard? 

“Fridge’s fully stocked, pantry too,” he told you, apparently not at all fazed. Or seeing her as a threat as he led you through the kitchen.” Got yer favourites,” he explained, opening the fridge to show you it was stocked with your favourits. Sodas, iced tease, cheese sticks and that yogurt that you liked. 

You faltered, taking a step back. Had he been watching you? Observing you? But shouldn’t you have noticed him? How the fuck did he know that you had an unhealthy relationship with cheddar cheese?

“You’ve free range of either and can eat whatever. Provided you eat three balanced meals a day. Can’t live off of greasy take out and sugar forever, babygirl.”  Your skin crawled. So he would control what you ate now? You remembered how he had looked at you, pleased, when you’d given in and taken the pills.

The praise that had followed. 

Good girl.

“What the actual fuck is all this?” Your arms were crossed in front of your chest.

“My home.” Matter of fact. “Yours now too. Gotta know your way around.” Right, right, sure. Your mistake. What a silly fucking question. Your irritation must have showed on your face, because he continued. “Don’ like people. Stay away from ‘em. Built this place to make sure I don’t have to be around ‘em much,” a shrug. “Made an exception for you.”

Lucky fucking you. 

Right, fucking right. You want to snap, to scream, to push, to make a run for the knife block and grab the largest and sharpest to show him just how fucking grateful you felt. But you didn’t know how he would respond to that. Didn’t want to test before you had a weapon in your hands.

He was intimidating. Even if he didn’t try to be. 

Same calm voice and a constant distance to you.

So snark it was. “Why am I not surprised that a hitman,” you still didn’t buy that, for all you knew he was some weird, rich freak, wanting to play house with you. “Doesn’t like people,” you deadpan, resorting to dry humour. Because that was easier than attempting to wrap your mind around all of this.

Both a defence and a coping mechanism.

It didn’t help that Joel chuckled.

“I want to see Pepper now,” you reminding him. Not quite sure if he was stalling. If the claim that he had brought the cat too was just to placate you. 

“Course, cat’s out by the barn,” he lead you towards a small mud room. The sight of your coat up on a hook right beside his, like it was alwaysthere, leaving your skin crawling. He’d made space for you, for your life in his. Like you were meant to be here. 

He grabbed his coat, his boots too. While you fought hard against nausea. You didn’t want this. You didn’t want to be here. “’s cold out babygirl,” he grabbed your coat, your scarf too. And you wanted to scream at him not to touch any of it. But all you managed to do was grab the coat when he held it out to you. “Good, good girl,” he praised, “No more rushing out without a jacket in the cold, alright?” 

You didn’t say a word, too busy fighting against your gag reflex. 

──────────

The cold hit you like a slap the second the door opened. Real cold. Not the kind that bit once and then settled. No, the kind that cut deep. Straight through the coat, through your clothes all the way down to your bones.

This definitely wasn’t New York anymore. 

Wherever he had taken you, was across state lines.

You hesitated on the threshold, Titan bolting past you like a bullet fired. “Always has to check the permitter,” Joel answered a question you didn’t ask. Right, the fence. Freedom if you managed to make a run for it. 

Maybe if you ran in the opposite direction of the dog. 

Away from the gate, the road you could track along for some thirty miles. Unrealistic, but better than being at his mercy. 

Your eyes flicked towards the fence, following Titan’s direction. 

Too high. Too clean. Too intentional. 

This wasn’t just a fence, this was a fucking wall.

Impossible to scale. Impossible to get over. 

Your stomach dropped. 

“T’keep out the wildlife,” Joel had followed your gaze, “Kept messin’ with the chickens a green house.”

No. You think, to keep you in. 

You swallowed, finally taking a step forward. Out of the house. Careful to hide your disappointment, the sense of dread that nestled behind your ribs. 

“Pepper’s at the barn,” he gestured towards a large red barn. “Set her up inside. Blankets ’n such.” You nod, mechanically. Your legs like lead. The realisation that this was it. That there was no way out, bringing forth a fear you hadn’t felt before. When you’d still hoped that you could get away. “Had her checked at the vet’s too,” he continued, seemingly unaware, luckily, about your struggles. “Got a clean bill o’health.” 

Another nod, mechanical, stiff. An attempt to show him that you listened even if you had trouble to follow him the shrill, alarm-bell-like ringing in your ears, drowned him out. 

You were stuck. With a freak that had abducted you. After stalking you. To learn every fucking thing about you. Spinning some outlandish tale about how he’d safed you. How he kept you safe.

And he went off about the alley cat you’d been feeding for the last couple months that he’d taken too. Because ruining one life wasn’t enough. 

That much for being against animal cruelty. 

You were halfway towards the barn, when you spotted an orange fur ball moving through the thick grass. 

Pepper. 

Titan barrelled past you again, aiming for Pepper and for a moment you want to call out. Rush after him and intervene, but the Cane Corso stopped right in front of her. Down on his front paws, tail wagging. 

“Hasn’t quite gotten the hang of interactin’ w’her,” Joel breathed, “Think she’s tolleratin’ him.” You watched, how she studied him, tail flicking. “Means she can come inside, w’it bein’ cold ’n all. ’s only gonna get worse.”

Having grown tired of Titan, Pepper made her way towards you, unleashing a string of complaints all the way into your arms. 

The ringing stopped at once. A sense of calmness, fragile and tied to the purring cat in your arms settling over you. Because for a moment you could pretend, nose buried in her soft fur, that you were at home. In the alley behind your apartment building. That this only was a terrible fucking nightmare you would wake up from any moment. 

Except, that it wasn’t. 

Because Joel was right there, watching you, always watching you, when you opened your eyes again. 

“She’ll come inside then,” you decided, not letting Pepper off your arms when you turned back towards the house. Wanting nothing more than to outrun the fence and the realisation that had settled in with seeing it.

He only nodded. “Sure.” No arguments, no objections. Like he’d planned for this all along. Your fingers trembled, the idea that he somehow anticipated every reaction, every decision, an unsettling one. It felt like you were a pawn in a game you weren’t aware of yet. 

──────────

He left you be. Neither trying to stop you nor trying to follow you when you rushed up the stairs and back into your room, Pepper still on your arms. 

You could hear Titan on the steps behind you, until a snap cut through the air and the noise of his paws died down and then headed the opposite direction. Joel had called him back and you can hear him say something to the pup before you closed the door. Not caring enough to listen closely to make out what he said. 

No lock. 

Go figure. Of course you couldn’t lock the door. But there was a cat bed. Right, of course. A fucking cat bed. You have half a mind to throw it out the room but then you don’t want to deny Pepper her comfort, even if you carefully settled her onto the bed.

For a moment you consider to block the door, or at the very least the door handle, with a back of a chair like you’d seen in movies or on television but at the same time you were sure that if he wanted into the room, he would get into the room one way or another. So you abandoned that for the time being and dug through the room instead. 

Maybe you’d find a weapon. Anything to guarantee your safety. Something that ensured you weren’t completely at his mercy. Except, all that you find are your belongings, your books, your clothes. 

Not all. But enough. The last book you had started reading was on the desk, bookmark still tucked between the pages. Your favourite hoodie, the shirt you tended to sleep in, worn soft, a pair of sweats—- alongside it clothes that you would buy, that would easily fit into your closet to downright belonging there. Except you’d never bought them yourself. 

He had. 

Nausea twisted your stomach when you pulled open another drawer. Socks and underwear. Both bought and yours. Your fucking underwear. Your stomach lurched painfully at the thought of him touching it. But it wasn’t what had you heaving over the toilet. 

Seeing your skin care set up on the bathroom counter, placed and sorted exactly like you had it at home, was the final nail in the coffin. You threw up what little had in your stomach. Water and bile. While hot tears burned against your cheeks. 

He’d watched you. Observed you, stalked you. And then bent his life in a way that fully enclosed you. Why hadn’t you seen it coming? Why hadn’t you noticed him? How long had he watched you? Had you been too wrapped up in everything else that you hadn’t notice him? 

Fuck.

You just wanted this nightmare to end. 

“Babygirl?” He knocked, your captor fucking knocked. “You gotta eat some,” he called through the door. He had completely invaded and violated your privacy and now he knocked. 

In an attempt to create the illusion of it. A false sense of security, that you had a choice here. 

“Gonna make dinner. Figured you wouldn’t eat somethin’ you didn’t see me make…” he wasn’t wrong about that You didn’t trust him at all. Even if the ibuprofen turned out to be just that. Because your headache had dimmed. If not fully disappeared. “Babygirl?” Another knock.

“I—- I will come downstairs.” You called back, your voice tight, sure that he wouldn’t accept a no. “Just a minute.” You didn’t let him see that he, that this got to you. Whatever twisted game he was playing, until you understood the rules it was better to play along.

He wasn’t waiting in front of the door, when you stepped out of the room after splashing water into your face. Pepper snuck out of the room with you, darting away to explore the house. 

Downstairs Joel was waiting for you in the kitchen, Titan getting up from his perch on the couch to greet you. Tail wagging and all. As tense as you were, this wasn’t his fault. So you did offer him a quiet “Hi,” and an ear scratch. Maybe too so, because you stalled. Not keen at all to be in Joel’s proximity.

Your legs like lead, your steps slow, dragging almost when you finally force yourself to move towards the kitchen, towards him. 

“Was thinkin’ we could do your favourite,” he offered, voice still in that same smooth tenor it had been in since you came to, to him watching you and your stomach lurched again. “Gon’ add some veggies, yeah? Makin’ it a bit more balanced. “ 

You nodded, mechanically. Not trusting your voice and terrified that you would throw up again if you opened your mouth. You didn’t step any closer either, to see what he was doing, what ingredients he was adding. Too occupied with the knife he had pulled from the block. 

Long and sharp. 

A weapon, if you got your hands on it. 

But side stepping him to make a grab for it, was no option. He would stop you in an instant. Maybe tonight. When he slept—- provided he didn’t lock the bedroom door. Just because you couldn’t lock it, didn’t mean that he couldn’t.

At the least he didn’t force you into any conversation, but you knew, that even if he was stirring in pots and pans, his attention was still on you. On the way you stood there, a good chunk behind him.

He got two plates, two glasses and for a moment you feared he’d set at the breakfast bar, forcing you to sit beside him, but he went for the dining table. Opposite one another. But still too fucking close. 

You weren’t hungry. Your stomach still queasy and so full with fear and unease that you only picked at your food. Pushing it around on the plate instead of eating. Joel on the other hand, ate. Not saying anything at first. Perhaps assuming that you weren’t eating because you were fearing he had tempered with the food after all. 

Which you did. But that was beside the point. 

“I said eat!” He snapped eventually, when you hadn’t followed his three earlier requests, fist slamming down hard enough to rattle both plates and glasses. 

You flinched, tears immediately pricking your eyes. The fragile bravado you had managed to paint onto yourself before coming down here, shattering immediately. 

“No, no,” he was on his feet and for a moment you feared he would walk around the table to comfort you, but instead he headed for the pantry. “‘m sorry babygirl,” he breathed, placing a granola bar in front of you. The kind you always had in your bag for food emergencies. “Didn’t mean—- know all o’this issa lot for you.” You eyed the sealed bar, tears still blurring your vision. “’s okay. Shoulda remembered t’start slow.”

──────────

You hadn’t managed more than a few bites of the granola bar. More nibbling away than eating, but he hadn’t forced you to eat more. Joel hadn’t insisted you linger downstairs and near him either. So you’d slipped away and upstairs into your room, a small tin of cat food — the same fucking brand you bought —in one hand and carrying Pepper in the other. 

Like hell would you let her roam the house of this lunatic if you weren’t around. 

You had no means to track the time. No clock, no phone, no remotes for the TV. He must have taken them to prevent you from watching the news and like that figure out where you were. You’d tried turning it on manually, but no chance. 

So you’d no idea how long you’d been unconscious for, let alone how late it was. Sure it was dark out now, but what did that give you? Without knowing where you were, you couldn’t assume when the sun set. 

You retreated to the bathroom regardless. The only lockable room. Even if it was easily unlocked from the outside. It was something at least. An illusion of safety. 

Pepper by your side, the damn hairbrush that looked so much like your own but was brand new stuffed into the front pocket of your hoodie. The one he had—- packed. So you had something to at least attempt to protect yourself with. Should he decide he wanted your company after all. 

But Joel didn’t come. You don’t know how long you sat there, leaning against the wall, knees tucked into your chest, until you heard what soundedlike another knock against the bedroom door. Followed by a “Night babygirl. Tomorrow’ll be better. I promise.” 

You didn’t respond. You quietly count in your head what you hope to be seconds. Waiting for what you hoped was an hour, before you got up. “I’ll be right back, Pepper,” you whispered into the quiet of the room before braving first the bedroom and then trying to open the door.

The house laid in darkness safe for a dim light at the bottom of the stairs. Good. You were just about to hold your breath and sneak downstairs, praying that the floorboards wouldn’t creek, when a noise from the end off the hallway drew your attention. 

Joel’s bedroom. He’d told you it was back there. 

The door was ajar. Not just ajar. Open. Wide enough that, the longer you stared, the  more you could make out of the room. 

Titan’s dog bed, a dark lump curled up atop it, a bed, sheets—-

Your stomach twisted, and you had to fight every instinct in you that screamed to slam the door and hide in an effort to remain quiet and disappear back into the faux security of the bathroom. 

"I waited for her..." 

You sobbed, the raw, broken sound of your voice echoing against the freezing, sterile tiles of the operating room. "I waited for her for so long. Did you see her? Did you see my beautiful girl?"

You couldn't stop crying. Joel had just reluctantly left your side, forced to follow the pediatric nurse and his newborn daughter to the recovery suite while the surgical team finished putting you back together. Without his grounding presence, and without the scorching weight of Maya on your chest, the sudden emptiness of your womb felt staggeringly real.

The adrenaline that had kept you fighting for thirty-two hours was finally crashing out of your system. You were shivering violently, your teeth chattering so hard your jaw ached.

"She is absolutely perfect, Mama. Ten fingers, ten toes, and the strongest lungs I've heard all week."

A warm hand cupped your cheek. You blinked through the continuous blur of your tears to see your labor nurse leaning over you, a soft, warm cloth moving across your face. As you looked up at her, you realized she was crying too. Her kind eyes were shining above her surgical mask.

"I thought I couldn't do it," you wept. Years of silent grief, two days of agony—it poured out of you all at once, formless and enormous. "I was so terrified my body was failing her... but she's here. I finally have my baby. My little girl."

"Oh, honey, your body didn't fail anyone," the nurse whispered fiercely, a tear of her own slipping down to soak into her blue mask as she tenderly stroked your damp, tangled curls. "Look at what you just did. You went to war for that baby, and you won. You are a mother now."

Behind the sterile drape, the surgery was wrapping up. You felt the dull, rhythmic tugging of Dr. Abbott closing the incision—painless but deeply strange, a sensation like being sewn back into yourself.

"Uterus is firm, bleeding is controlled." A tired, satisfied exhale. "We're all closed up, Mrs. Miller."

A moment later, the blue drape was swiftly pulled down. The blinding surgical lights above shifted as the nurses moved in with practiced, clinical efficiency to handle the messy, brutal aftermath of birth.

You felt entirely detached from your own form as you watched them work. Your lower half remained a paralyzed block of cement from the spinal block. You couldn't feel the touch of their hands, only the vague, ghostly pressure as they used warm, wet towels to methodically scrub the sticky orange betadine, the amniotic fluid, and the streaks of blood from your stomach and thighs.

Once your skin was clean, they worked quickly to secure a massive postpartum pad and thick mesh underwear beneath your numb hips. They slipped your arms out of the soiled gown and tied a fresh, soft hospital gown loosely behind your neck.

"Let's get you to your family," the anesthesiologist said warmly, detaching your IV from the surgical pole.

A nurse wheeled a wider, much softer hospital recovery bed right alongside the impossibly narrow operating table. "Cross your arms over your chest for me," she instructed gently. "On three. One, two, three."

With a smooth, coordinated heave using a plastic slide board, three nurses effortlessly shifted your heavy, unresponsive form over onto the new mattress. The immediate contrast was heavenly, but your uncontrollable shivering had only gotten worse. Seeing this, a nurse immediately draped two heated blankets pulled straight from the warmer over your entire body, tucking them snugly around your shoulders to chase away the freezing ghost of the OR.

The transition out of the operating room was a dizzying, surreal blur. You stared up at the passing fluorescent ceiling lights as they wheeled your bed out of the double doors and down the quiet corridors of Dell Seton. Your body felt hollowed out, battered, and exhausted beyond human comprehension, but your heart was beating with a frantic, singular purpose.

Maya. Joel.

When the bed turned the corner into Room 4, the clinical noise of the hallway fell away.

Joel was standing across the room, hunched over the clear plastic bassinet, his broad back shielding his newborn daughter as he whispered to her in a frequency meant only for the two of them.

The soft squeak of your bed's wheels made his head instantly snap up.

His hazel eyes were bloodshot, his face visibly marked by the terror of the last two days. But the second his gaze locked onto yours—seeing you safe, breathing, finally out of that room—something cracked open across his rugged features.

He crossed the room in three strides.

He didn't say anything right away. He just stood at the edge of the mattress, his chest heaving, his eyes burning. One rough hand reached out and cupped your face with an agonizing slowness. His thumb brushed your cheekbone, catching a tear.

"Hey," he finally managed. His voice had almost nothing left in it. "Welcome back, sweetheart."

You let yourself sink deeply into the mountain of hospital pillows, your heavy eyes locking onto his as fresh tears spilled over your lashes. "I'm right here," you whispered, a soft, exhausted smile breaking through your tears. "I'm right here with you."

Joel let out a long, shuddering breath, his thumb still moving, as if he had to keep touching you to confirm it.

As you leaned into his warm palm, a nurse stepped forward, pressing a button at the foot of the bed to raise your headrest to a comfortable incline.

"We're going to get you all situated and let you have some family time," the nurse said with a warm smile, efficiently checking your IV line and tucking the heated blankets securely around your hips. "We'll be coming in quite frequently to check your vitals and press on your tummy, so don't be alarmed when you see us. Try to rest when you can."

Another nurse chimed in from the foot of the bed. "For now, we're going to start you on ice chips and clear liquids. Once your stomach wakes up, we'll get you a menu for some real food. And in a few hours, when the spinal block wears off completely, we'll be in to help you stand up and take your first short walk. It's tough, but getting moving is the best thing for your recovery."

"Understood. Thank you," Joel replied, his voice rough but immensely grateful, his thumb never leaving your cheek.

"Congratulations again, you two," the labor nurse whispered warmly, giving your shoulder a final, gentle squeeze before the medical team filed out of the room.

The heavy wooden door clicked shut. The clinical world vanished, leaving only the three of you in the quiet, flower-scented privacy of the room.

You turned your head weakly toward the bedside table. Illuminated by the soft amber glow of a small lamp was a single, magnificent crystal vase. It was a custom, breathtaking arrangement of fully bloomed white peonies and blush-pink proteas—elegant, resilient, and perfectly chosen.

"Oh, Joel." Your throat tightened immediately.

"You deserve a whole damn garden, sweetheart," he murmured. "I just wanted to make sure you had something beautiful to wake up to."

Even in the middle of his terror, he had thought about the flowers.

"Where is she?" you whispered. You opened your arms toward him. "Where is my Maya?"

Joel crossed the small space, lifting your daughter from the bassinet with extreme care. Terrified of breaking something he had waited a lifetime to hold, he leaned over and gently lowered her onto your chest.

The moment that warm, sweet weight settled over your heart, the last tightly-coiled knot inside you finally released.

You buried your nose into the soft fuzz of her hair and just breathed her in.

For the first time in thirty-two hours, you closed your eyes and simply let yourself breathe.

Time in that dim postpartum suite simply ceased to exist.

The chaotic, freezing, blindingly bright reality of the operating room faded into a distant nightmare, replaced by a warm and impossibly quiet sanctuary. The heated blankets wrapped around your shoulders created a safe cocoon, but the true heat—the scorching, life-giving warmth—radiated from the breathing furnace resting directly over your heart.

You lay there in the semi-darkness, your arms wrapped securely around your daughter. Maya was a solid, comforting weight against your chest, her tiny ear pressed right over the rhythmic beating of your heart. You couldn't stop burying your nose into her dark, thick newborn hair, inhaling that intoxicating, sweet scent of vernix, warm skin, and an absolute miracle.

Joel hadn't moved from the recliner he'd dragged to the side of your bed. One hand rested on the pillow by your head, his thumb moving slowly along your hairline. His other hand covered the tiny crown of Maya's head.

"I can't stop looking at her," you whispered, your voice a raspy, exhausted thread breaking the heavy silence of the room. You sniffled, fresh tears pooling in your eyes, but this time, they were quiet tears of pure, unadulterated awe. "Joel... she's actually here."

"She's here," Joel answered, his voice dropping to a soft hush. "And she is perfect, sweetheart."

You shifted your arms weakly, gently pulling the edge of the striped hospital swaddle down just a fraction. You needed to see more of her. You needed to memorize every single detail you had fought hours to meet.

The professor vanished entirely, leaving behind only the primal, overwhelming instinct of a mother meeting her child. Your brain was a messy, beautiful puddle of pure devotion.

"You are so beautiful," you wept softly, your thumb lightly brushing over her impossibly soft, rosy cheek. "You're so tiny. Oh my god, look how little you are."

Maya let out a soft, breathy squeak, rooting blindly against the warmth of your chest.

"How did you get here?" you murmured, a watery, breathless laugh breaking through your tears as you stared at her in absolute wonder. "Did it hurt, my sweet girl? Were you scared? I'm so sorry it was so hard, baby. I'm so sorry. But mommy's got you now. Mommy's right here."

You looked up from her face to meet Joel's red-rimmed gaze.

"You came from my bones, sweet girl," you whispered to the baby—but your eyes stayed fixed on your husband. "From my blood."

You looked back down, tracing the delicate slope of her button nose with one trembling finger. "One night your daddy loved me so much that you just bloomed right inside me, my little ladybug."

Joel wiped a tear from his beard with the heel of his hand. He looked away for a second, jaw working, then looked back.

You coaxed one of her wrinkled fists out from the edge of the swaddle, pressing your lips lovingly to her soft knuckles and microscopic fingers. As you pressed a lingering kiss to the back of her little hand, your gaze fluttered up through your lashes, catching Joel watching the two of you.

The sheer emotion on his face made your chest physically ache. A huge, breathtaking smile was curving through his beard—a rare, brilliant expression that completely transformed his rugged features. His hazel eyes were shining brightly, sparkling with unshed tears and a pure, unrestrained joy you had never seen before. It was the look of a man who had just been handed the entire universe; the undeniable peak of happiness for a devoted husband and a deeply loving father.

"I shouldn't keep you all to myself," you whispered to the baby. You gently nudged Joel’s arm with your fingers, giving him a tearful, encouraging smile. "Go on. She's been waiting to meet you too."

He slid his hands under the swaddle with great care, lifted her, and settled back in the recliner. He cradled her in the crook of his arm, looking down at her the way you might look at something you weren't sure was real.

For a long moment he didn't speak.

"Hey there, little bird," he finally said. His voice had dropped to something so tender it barely sounded like him. "I'm your daddy."

Maya rooted slightly against his chest, a sleepy sound escaping her.

A helpless, tear-soaked smile broke across Joel's bearded face. His expression crumpled for just a second before he got it back. He reached out with his rough thumb, lightly stroking her impossibly soft cheek.

"Yeah. You remember my voice, don't you?" he whispered, a watery chuckle vibrating deep in his chest. "We used to gossip about your mama all the time before you got here, remember? While you were cozy in there, listening to her give lectures and reading all those incredibly heavy engineering books..."

He glanced up at you briefly—a flash of love, almost shy—then back down.

"We talked all about that beautiful, stubborn woman resting right over there," he murmured affectionately to the baby. His smile faltered slightly, replaced by a look of sheer, breathless awe. "The woman whose cries you heard for the last two days. She was in so much pain, little bird... but she didn't give up. The Professor fought through hell just to bring you to me safely."

Joel let out a long, shuddering breath, bringing the bundle just a fraction closer to his face. The rugged, hardened survivor—the man who had carried the crushing weight of grief for twenty years—melted away, leaving only a deeply devoted father staring in awe at his miracle.

"I still can't believe you're really my daughter, my little one," Joel breathed out, his voice cracking with the sheer, overwhelming weight of the blessing in his arms. "I look at you, and... God, you are so beautiful. You are so perfect, and so innocent. I don't know what I did in this life to deserve a second chance like this. To deserve the two of you."

You lay against the pillows, your heart swelling to the point of bursting as you listened to his low, vibrating voice fill the dim room.

"You and your mama... you're my everything," Joel whispered directly to the newborn, his hazel eyes shining with a fierce, unbreakable devotion as he made his vow to her. "And I swear to you, little bird, as long as I have breath in my lungs, nothing in this world is ever gonna hurt you. I'm gonna give you the whole damn world, Maya. I got you. Daddy's got you."

Surrounded by the faint, sweet scent of your daughter, the low, grounding rumble of Joel's voice, and the certainty of his protection, the last of your resistance finally crumbled. Hearing his deep, resonant vows, you allowed your heavy eyelids to flutter shut, letting the sheer, perfect peace of the room carry you off into a deep sleep.

When you woke, the brutal reality of the surgery was waiting.

The nurses insisted on your first walk. Getting out of the bed felt like scaling a mountain through fire—the moment your bare feet touched the cold linoleum, gravity pulled at the fresh incision with a white-hot, desperate weight. You gasped, folding instinctively.

Joel's arms caught you immediately. "I got you. Lean on me."

Step by slow step, he took nearly all your weight. His hand on your back never wavered. When you finally made it back to the bed, breathless and trembling, he reached for your Stanley cup and held the straw to your lips, waiting patiently while you drank.

Once the nurses cleared you for real food, the hollow hunger of thirty-two hours crashed over you all at once. You didn't want clear hospital broth anymore. You wanted grease, salt, and comfort.

Joel had already solved this. A greasy brown paper bag sat on the tray table alongside a sweating cup of iced caramel latte. He sat right on the edge of your mattress, his knee pressed against your hip as he unwrapped a huge cheeseburger for you, and then pulled one out for himself.

You took that first bite of the burger, letting out a tearful, shameless groan of pure, unadulterated bliss. You chased it with the icy, sweet rush of the caramel coffee—a taste of your old life, and a beautiful, sugary shock to a system that had survived on nothing but pain and adrenaline for two days.

Joel took a bite of his own burger. With his cheek still bulging with food, he leaned forward slightly to look into the clear plastic bassinet beside the bed.

"You seein' this?" he mumbled to the sleeping baby, gesturing with his half-eaten food. "She's been running on nothing but pain and adrenaline for two days." He shook his head with a rough, fond sound. "That's your mama right there."

The gravity of the hospital room gave way to a comfortable, starving silence. You ate together in the dim light while Maya slept, and for a few perfect minutes, everything was just food and quiet and the smell of french fries.

The transition from the clinical, sterile walls of Dell Seton back into the real world felt entirely surreal.

Just before leaving the hospital, Dr. Abbott had come to your room, shaking both of your hands with that warm but professional smile. "You two did a wonderful job," she had said, her eyes drifting to Maya, who was sleeping soundly in the car seat. "I'll expect to see you back here in two weeks for an incision check and a general evaluation. Until then, you are getting plenty of rest, Mrs. Miller. Do we have a deal?"

As the Dodge Ram pulled away from the hospital and hit the road, you rested your head against the cool glass of the passenger window. Austin had always been a vibrant city, but today, it looked breathtakingly beautiful. The crisp December air had chased away the usual Texas heat, leaving behind a sky so brilliantly blue it felt almost endless. The late afternoon sun washed the grand, pink-granite dome of the Texas State Capitol in a soft, honeyed glow, and the ancient live oaks lining the streets seemed to sway in the crisp winter breeze. Even the festive lights beginning to twinkle along Congress Avenue gave the city a magical, welcoming warmth.

You had seen these streets a hundred times before, but today, the world seemed brighter, softer, entirely reborn—because you were reborn. Maya's arrival hadn't just given you a daughter; it had cracked your heart wide open, washing the entire world in vibrant, hopeful new colors.

As you took in the passing scenery, you caught your own reflection in the glass. The exhausted, terrified woman who had arrived at the hospital three days ago was gone. In her place was someone entirely different. Even with the dark circles bruising the skin under your eyes and the lingering pallor from the surgery, there was a brilliant, undeniable mother’s light radiating from your gaze. In the center of the backseat, strapped securely into her pristine new car seat, Maya was fast asleep—a delicate, warm bundle completely oblivious to the massive shift in the universe she had just caused.

When Joel turned onto your street and pulled into the driveway, he shifted into park and just sat for a moment.

"Look at the porch, sweetheart," he said.

The wraparound porch was covered—stacked gift bags, wrapped boxes, floral arrangements. Diapers from Joel's construction crew, engineering-themed onesies from the Aerospace faculty, a hand-carved wooden rocking horse beside the front door that could only be from Tommy and Maria.

"Oh my god," you breathed. Tears came immediately, shameless and quick. "Joel, look at all of it."

"They love you, baby," he said simply, unbuckling his seatbelt.

He climbed out of the truck, moving with that fierce, hyper-vigilant protector energy. He opened the back door, carefully unclicking the car seat, and carried his sleeping daughter with unbelievable care, as if she were made of glass. He opened your door next, offering his thick forearm to help you down, mindful of the fresh, aching incision behind your abdominal binder.

Together, you slowly navigated through the sea of gifts. Joel unlocked the front door, pushing it open to let you step inside first.

The house was warm, smelling faintly of clean linen and cedar. You turned around as Joel carried the car seat over the threshold. You reached out, your trembling fingers gently brushing against Maya's soft, warm cheek.

"Welcome home, my little girl," you whispered into the quiet hallway, the profound reality of the moment settling deep into your bones. "You are going to be loved so, so much here."

You walked slowly down the hall to the nursery. Joel carefully lifted Maya from the car seat; his hands easily supporting her swaddled body. He lowered her carefully into the dark wood crib he had built with his own hands.

You stood right beside him, your shoulder pressed against his bicep. Joel’s arm immediately wrapped around your waist, his large hand resting warmly over your hip. For a long, suspended moment, neither of you spoke. You just stood there, captivated, staring down at the perfect chest rising and falling in the quiet room.

Eventually, you slowly made your way to the kitchen, every step a heavy reminder of the massive abdominal surgery you had just endured. Your legs were trembling by the time you reached the kitchen island.

He walked over to the large stainless-steel refrigerator and pulled the heavy door open. From where you were standing, you had a clear view inside, and you froze.

The refrigerator was packed to the brim. There were glass Tupperware containers and pots stacked on every single shelf. And on each one of them were masking tape labels written in neat, familiar handwriting:

• Chicken Enchiladas (Not too spicy for Mama!)

• Slow-Roasted Brisket

• Wild Blueberry Cobbler

• Mashed Potatoes & Gravy

You just stared at the mountain of your favorite foods.

"Tommy and Maria," Joel said, before you could even ask. He leaned one hand on the refrigerator door, looking at the shelves. "While you were laboring, Maria cooked and Tommy cleaned the whole place." Something moved across his face. "They wanted you to come home to this."

You didn't even know what to do. Without thinking, you reached into the pocket of the loose maternity cardigan you had worn home from the hospital and immediately dialed Maria's number. She answered on the first ring.

"Maria," you sobbed into the receiver, abandoning any attempt at composure. "Maria, the fridge... the house... I don't even know what to say. Thank you. Thank you so, so much."

"Oh, sweetie, don't you dare cry," Maria's warm voice, filled with fierce maternal affection, echoed through the speaker. "You are a beautiful, exhausted mother. I know what you went through in that delivery room, my brave girl. You fought so bravely."

"This is all just too much," you cried, leaning your weight against the cool marble counter. "You didn't have to do all this."

"Of course we had to," Maria insisted, her own voice growing coarse with emotion. "You are our family. We'll come by to see the little bug, of course, but you need to recover a bit first. All you have to do right now is rest, heal your body, and spend time with your beautiful girl. Do you understand me?"

"I understand," you whispered, a bright, watery smile breaking through your tears. "Come over, we'll be waiting... I love you so much, Maria."

"We love you too, mama. Now go rest."

After hanging up the phone, Joel grasped your shoulders with his large hands and turned you to face him. His rough, calloused thumbs wiped away the tears slipping down your cheeks with incredible tenderness.

"They're right," he said softly, his voice carrying a soothing timbre that came from deep within his chest. "Now..." he murmured, resting his forehead against yours. "Why don't you go take a nice shower? Wash away all the cold and exhaustion of that hospital. Don't you worry about a thing, I'll keep an ear out for Maya."

The idea sounded like heaven. You nodded slowly in agreement and planted a grateful kiss on his shoulder. Then, as much as your stitches would allow, you made your way toward the master bathroom with slow, heavy steps, waddling like a little penguin.

Stepping inside, you found the bathroom in the exact same peaceful state you had left it days ago. The smooth, matte hexagonal tiles beneath your feet were surprisingly cool and soothing, as if drawing all the fever of the past few days right out through your soles. The bright Texas sun streaming through the windows bathed the room in a golden warmth; the light refracting off the impeccably clean tiles lent the space an almost ethereal glow.

You stripped off your hospital pajamas, cardigan, and the surgical binder, catching a glimpse of your battered, exhausted body in the mirror. The bruising, the swelling, the fresh, terrifying red line of the C-section scar... It was a brutal map of the thirty-two-hour war you had waged. But as you stepped under the hot water, letting the steaming spray cascade over your shoulders, you felt triumphant.

You closed your eyes, letting the scalding water wash away the sticky, orange residue of the surgical betadine, the clinical stench of sterile hospital soap, and the freezing, lingering ghost of the operating room.

A few minutes later, a sound cut right through the white noise of the running water. A thin, waking-up cry coming from the nursery down the hall.

You reached for the faucet, ready to shut it off and rush out, but a sharp, deep ache in your lower abdomen stopped you. The dragging sensation in your pelvis and the sudden, warm rush of postpartum blood slipping down your bare, wet thighs were stark, visceral reminders of your own fragility—a physical echo of the brutal hours your body had just survived.

Before you could force yourself to push through the pain, you heard it. The muffled thud of Joel’s steps hurrying across the hardwood floor. You paused, leaving the water running, and pushed the glass bathroom door open just an inch to listen.

The crying stopped almost instantly, replaced by your husband's deep, resonant rumble echoing down the hallway.

"Shh, hey... I'm here. Daddy's right here."

That single word—Daddy—hit you straight in the chest, stealing the air right out of your lungs.

Stepping out of the shower, you simply pulled a plush robe tightly around your shivering, naked, battered frame. Heavy drops of water dripped from your dark, tangled curls, trailing down your neck and collarbone as you padded barefoot down the hall. You moved slowly, clutching the thick fabric of the robe over your stomach to support the aching emptiness and the tender incision hidden beneath, uncaring about the warm mixture of shower water and blood tracking down your bare legs.

You stopped at the cracked door of the nursery, holding your breath as you peeked through the narrow opening.

Joel was standing right in the middle of the lit room. He had already taken the time to change out of his travel-worn hospital clothes into a clean, soft grey t-shirt and a pair of worn-in flannel pants. His silver-streaked hair was slightly messy, pushed back from his forehead, giving him a relaxed, fatherly air you had never seen before.

The sight of him paralyzed you, rooting your bare feet to the floorboards. His arms had pressed that swaddled bundle flush against his broad chest, cradling her with a terrifyingly gentle precision. He was swaying slowly from side to side, looking down at his daughter with such unguarded worship that your heart physically ached with the sheer weight of it.

"We finally got a minute alone, didn't we, little bird?" he whispered.

His voice had dropped to a frequency so fragile it barely seemed to belong to him. Standing there in the shadows of the hallway—naked beneath the robe, blood running down your bare calves, utterly exhausted, and dripping wet—a profound wave of emotion swallowed you whole. You watched the rugged man who had been your immovable, unbreakable monolith during the hardest days of your life melt into a puddle for a tiny baby girl.

A hot tear slipped down your cheek, mingling with the cold shower water dripping from your curls. In that quiet, sunlit hallway, bearing the raw and beautiful wounds of motherhood, you realized you had never loved him more than you did right in this exact second.

"You really exhausted your mama, you know that?" Joel murmured, a sad, deeply loving smile settling on his bearded lips. "She was in a lot of pain, but she never gave up. She fought for you like a warrior, Maya. She was so, so brave..."

Joel stopped swaying for a second. He pulled the small bundle just a fraction closer to his heart.

"When she saw you..." His voice cracked—genuinely cracked, the sound of something that had been held together a very long time finally letting go. A tear caught in his beard. "When she finally saw you... it was like she was reborn. I watched it happen. Like something in her just... came back on." He exhaled slowly. "You saved her, Maya. You saved us both."

You pressed your hand tightly over your mouth, stifling the beautiful sob threatening to tear from your throat.

"You are my little bird, Maya," Joel wept softly, pressing his lips to the crown of her dark hair. "I am going to love you so, so much. I swear to God, I will protect you with my life. I won't let anything ever hurt you."

He took a slow, trembling breath and returned to his gentle, cradle-like swaying. He looked down at her perfect face; the shadows of a twenty-year-old ghost were finally stepping into the light.

"You know..." he started. Then stopped. Started again. "I had another little bird once." His voice splintered on the word like dry wood. "Her name was Sarah."

The name fell into the quiet nursery like a stone into still water.

For twenty years, that name had been a ghost haunting the corners of his mind, but as it fell from his lips in the quiet of Maya’s nursery, the rust finally gave way to a heartbreaking, crystalline clarity.

The devastation in your chest made your knees weak. You leaned your wet back against the doorframe, crying silently, feeling your heart open up for the man you loved.

"She was so beautiful," Joel barely managed. "But... they broke her wings. A long, long time ago."

He lifted his hand, very slowly, and stroked Maya's cheek.

"If she were still here," he whispered, "she would've been the perfect big sister. She would've loved you so much, little bird."

Maya let out a soft, sleepy sigh; her innocent eyes fluttering shut as she nestled her head directly over the rhythmic beat of Joel's broken, but now-healing, heart.

Joel rested his cheek against the crown of her head and began to hum—low, wordless, vibrating through his whole frame.

You slipped away from the doorframe as quietly as you could. You retreated to the master bathroom, your bare feet making no sound on the hardwood, leaving Joel to put his daughter in her crib.

You closed the door slowly and leaned against the cool wood. You covered your mouth with both hands, letting those silent sobs wrack your chest.

You cried for yourself—the terrified woman trembling alone in that hospital room.

You cried for Joel—carrying the ghost of a little girl with broken wings for twenty years.

And you cried for the baby sleeping in the next room, who had somehow, without knowing it, become the balm for both of you.

You stepped back under the steady, scalding stream, letting the water mix with your tears and the sheer relief washing over you. Reaching for your own shampoo—the familiar scent of coconut and vanilla finally replacing the sharp, clinical stench of the hospital—you worked the lather into your dark, tangled curls. You took your time, meticulously massaging your scalp, letting your fingers untangle the knots left by sweat, tears, and the sheer exhaustion of the past two days.

Grabbing the soft loofah, you moved down, your hands tracing the new, unfamiliar landscape of your postpartum body. You washed with extreme, reverent care, your fingers brushing feather-light over the deflated, swollen skin of your belly and the waterproof bandage protecting your fresh incision. You closed your eyes, feeling the warm water cascading down your back and legs, watching it pool at your feet. It carried away the last remnants of the hospital, swirling it all down the drain until the porcelain ran perfectly clear.

By the time Joel came to find you, you were rinsing the last of the soap down the drain. You heard the bathroom door open and saw his familiar silhouette settle onto the edge of the tub through the fogged glass.

You reached out, wiping a small circle on the wet glass to peer out. Joel was sitting there, his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the shower enclosure as if he were guarding the most precious thing he owned.

As the thick, fragrant steam filled the bathroom, you finally shut off the faucet. You pushed the glass door open, shivering slightly as the cool air hit your damp skin. His hazel eyes locked onto yours immediately—and you saw the shimmer there, the rawness still close to the surface.

"God, you are so beautiful," he said quietly. He didn't move for a moment. Just looked at you. "I still can't believe you're mine."

You stepped out into the cool air. He was already there with the warm towel.

He wrapped the toasty towel around your shoulders, pulling you into the radiating heat of the fabric and his own frame.

He dried you with an impossible gentleness—careful around the incision, feather-light over the bruising. Once you were dry, he helped you secure the thick postpartum pad and the rigid abdominal binder you needed, his touch incredibly tender and patient. Then, he dressed you in those cool, dark satin pajamas you had picked out together months ago. He guided your arms through the sleeves, buttoning the silk over your chest with deep, furrowed concentration, treating you like you were made of the finest, most fragile glass.

When he was finished, he stepped seamlessly into your space, wrapping his arms securely around your waist. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, there was no baby bump standing between you. He pulled you flush against his solid chest, his large hands easily overlapping at the small of your back.

He let out a long, shuddering breath, burying his nose deep into your damp hair to take in your sweet, clean scent.

"I couldn't even hold you close this last month without squishing her," he murmured. A soft exhale, almost a laugh. "Look at you. You fit right back."

He held you for a long time. The trembling in his frame had almost nothing to do with relief and almost everything to do with the memory of the last thirty-two hours.

"I love you," he whispered fiercely. "My beautiful girl. My sweet professor." He let out a ragged breath, pressing another warm kiss against your temple. "Watching you in that kind of pain," he said quietly, his mouth against your temple, "and not being able to do a damn thing about it... that wrecked me, sweetheart."

A pause.

"I love you so much."

Eventually, he guided you to the bedroom. After arranging a mountain of pillows, he helped you settle against them. Then, he sat behind you and picked up the wide-tooth comb. He began to slowly, painlessly comb through your silver-flecked curls, which were still damp and fragrant from the shower.

He worked through the remaining tangles carefully, his movements steady and unhurried. The gentle, repetitive motion broke the last of your walls. You felt yourself go slack, your head falling back against his broad chest.

You reached up and caught his wrist.

"I heard you, Joel," you whispered suddenly, your voice echoing with a tremor in the quiet sanctuary of the bedroom. "While I was in the bathroom... I heard what you said to her."

His breath stopped. The easy warmth that had been radiating from him shifted abruptly—you felt him go exposed in a way that didn't happen often, the armor dropping all at once.

He set the comb down slowly.

He moved from behind you to the edge of the mattress, turning to face you, his knee pressing against your hip. He leaned in close, needing to be in your space—needing to look into your eyes.

"What can I say..." Joel whispered, his voice cracking beautifully right down the middle, stripped of all its rough armor. The edges of his hazel eyes had already begun to shine with fresh tears. "I just love you so, so damn much."

A sob broke from your throat and you leaned into his hands as he reached up to cup your face.

He pulled you carefully into his chest—arms around your upper back, chin on your head, holding you the way you hold the things you nearly lost.

"When I signed that university contract," he said quietly, after a long time, "I had this feeling. Didn't know what it was back then." He pressed his lips to the crown of your head. His voice dropped to almost nothing. "That feeling is now my wife and my little girl."

His shoulders shuddered once, hard.

"I am truly a man who has been given a second chance," Joel vowed, the words a raw, sacred promise echoing against the walls of the room he had built for you. "And I swear to you, sweetheart... I will hold onto this until the exact day I die."

You closed your eyes, wrapping your arms securely around his neck, clinging desperately to him. You held onto him and didn't let go for a long time.

Eventually, Joel pulled back. He wiped your face gently with his thumb, the sorrow already giving way to that steadier warmth beneath it.

"Cobbler," he said.

You laughed—a real one, surprised out of you.

"And warm milk with honey," he added, with some dignity.

"Could you bring her to me?" you whispered, your voice laced with longing. "I miss my little bug so much already. I just need to hold her and breathe her in."

A soft, smitten smile spread across Joel's face. "Your wish is my command," he said.

He stepped out of the bedroom and returned moments later, cradling a tiny, swaddled bundle against his broad chest. He approached the bed and carefully transferred your sleeping daughter into your waiting arms. The moment Maya's weight settled over your heart, you closed your eyes and breathed her in—warm skin and clean powder and something impossibly sweet.

Joel stood watching the two of you, hands on his hips, with a look on his face like a man who had been handed the whole world and was only now beginning to believe it was real.

"I'll get the cobbler," he said softly. He pressed a kiss to your temple and left.

In the quiet and the dim light, you looked down at the face resting against your chest. You brushed the back of one finger along her soft, rosy cheek.

"Hi Maya," you whispered softly, your voice trembling with pure awe as you tasted her beautiful name on your lips. "My sweet, perfect Maya."

At the sound of her name, she sighed. Her fingers found yours in the dark, curling around your index finger with a grip far stronger than anything that small had any right to be.

You lifted her tiny hand to your lips.

Down the hall, the refrigerator opened. The ice machine hummed. Heavy, familiar footsteps.

You listened to your husband moving around the kitchen your family had stocked for you, in the house he had built with his own hands, and you felt—in your chest, in your bones—the specific, unshakeable warmth of a life that had finally become exactly what it was supposed to be.