TexMexDarling

. ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁ ⟡ ܁ . ⊹ ₊ ܁.

Chapter 8 - What She Hides

The black Escalade cut through Midtown traffic like a shark through water, windows tinted to absolute black, engine a low, predatory growl. Bucky sat in the back, one ankle crossed over his knee, phone balanced on his thigh as he scrolled through encrypted messages from his lieutenants. A shipment of untraceable firearms had cleared customs at the port. A rival crew in Queens was getting too comfortable moving product on his turf. A politician in Albany needed a reminder about the envelope left on his desk last month. Routine. Bloodless on paper. Necessary.

But his mind wasn’t on any of it.

His thoughts kept circling back to you—curled in his bed that morning, lashes dark against bruised cheeks, breathing slow and trusting. The dossier Sam had compiled lay open on his laptop earlier; he’d read it twice before deleting the file from his personal drive. Not because he wanted to forget. Because he didn’t need the words anymore. He had the truth carved into his memory now:

Your father’s drinking. The gambling debts that ballooned after your mother died. The way you’d paid every cent yourself—quietly, relentlessly—while working nights in places that should have never seen someone like you. The reason you’d stayed at the Velvet Room. The reason you’d flinched when Billy raised his voice. The reason you’d given away most of the cash he’d pressed into your palm.

And the address.

A crumbling walk-up in East New York—Section 8 housing, crime stats that made even his men uneasy, windows boarded on the lower floors, graffiti tags layered so thick they looked like abstract art.

He’d stared at the pin on the map for a long minute before closing the laptop.

“Change of plans,” he said now, voice flat.

Steve glanced back from the passenger seat. “Boss?”

“Take us to East New York. 472 Dumont Avenue.”

Sam’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. “Her place?”

Bucky didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

The Escalade turned east, leaving the gleaming towers of Manhattan behind. The city changed block by block—glass and steel giving way to brick and chain-link, luxury high-rises shrinking into low-rise tenements, manicured sidewalks turning into cracked concrete littered with broken bottles and fast-food wrappers. The neighborhood smelled of diesel, fried plantains, and old garbage even through the closed windows.

They pulled up across the street from 472 Dumont. The building was worse than the photos—four stories of faded yellow brick, fire escapes rusted into permanent brown, windows patched with cardboard and duct tape. A group of teenagers loitering near the stoop scattered the second they saw the black SUVs roll to a stop. Two more Escalades flanked them now—silent backup.

Bucky stared at the address plaque hanging crooked above the door.

Triple-checked.

“Stay sharp,” he told the men. “I’m going in alone. You two with me. Rest of you watch the street.”

Steve and one of the newer guys—Peter—fell in behind him. They crossed the road in formation, shoulders loose but hands near holsters. The front door was propped open with a broken cinder block. The hallway inside smelled of mildew, stale cigarette smoke, and something faintly sour. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, one flickering like it was on its last breath.

Bucky took the stairs—elevator looked like a death trap. Third floor. Apartment 3C.

The door was thin particleboard, paint peeling in long curls, a brass 3C nailed on crooked. A small, hand-lettered sign taped above the peephole read “Please knock softly—night shift worker sleeping” in neat, looping handwriting. Your handwriting.

He didn’t knock.

Peter produced a slim tool; the lock clicked open in seconds.

Inside, the apartment was tiny—one room with a galley kitchenette, a bathroom the size of a closet, and a single window overlooking an air shaft. The walls were painted a hopeful pale blue years ago; now they were water-stained and cracking. A futon couch took up most of the living area, neatly made with a hand crocheted blanket. A small folding table held a single potted orchid—ghost-white, the same kind he’d been sending you for weeks. Next to it, a stack of your performance notes, sheet music, a half-finished grocery list in that same careful handwriting.

Everything was clean. Painfully clean.

She’d tried. God, she’d tried.

A thrift-store lamp with a crooked shade. A tiny bookshelf crammed with secondhand jazz biographies and poetry collections. A single framed photo on the windowsill—your mother, younger, smiling, arm around a much smaller version of you. No other pictures. No family. No friends.

Bucky walked the perimeter slowly, boots silent on the worn linoleum. The kitchen sink had one working burner; the fridge hummed like it was dying. The bathroom mirror was cracked in the corner. The closet—barely a nook—held a few dresses (the ones you performed in), a handful of everyday clothes, and a winter coat that looked too thin for New York winters.

He stood in the center of the room and felt something dark and furious coil in his gut.

This was where you came home to. After singing for drunks and predators. After Billy took his cut. After paying debts that weren’t even yours. After hiding bruises under long gloves and stage makeup.

His woman.

Living like this.

He could picture it too clearly: you coming home at three a.m., feet aching in heels, counting crumpled bills to see if you could afford groceries or just ramen again. Locking the door with shaking hands. Curling up on that futon and trying to sleep through sirens and shouting from the hallway.

He’d asked to take you home that first night. You’d refused—eyes flickering with something he hadn’t understood then.

Embarrassment.

Shame.

You hadn’t wanted him to see this.

The realization hit like a blade between the ribs.

Bucky’s hands flexed at his sides. He could end this right now. Call in a crew. Have every item in this apartment boxed and moved to the mansion by morning. Tell you later it was for your safety. Lock the doors. Keep you where no one could ever hurt you again.

He could do it.

He wanted to.

But he pictured your face—the soft, trusting way you’d looked at him when he wiped your makeup away, the shy smile when he kissed your knuckles. The way you thanked him for every small kindness like it was a gift.

If he took the choice from you now—if he forced you—he’d lose that light in your eyes. The one that cracked his chest open every time you smiled.

He exhaled slowly.

No.

Not yet.

He would be patient.

He would earn it.

He would make you want to stay.

He turned to Peter. “We’re leaving. Nothing gets touched.”

Peter raised an eyebrow but nodded.

They left the apartment exactly as they’d found it—door locked, orchid still blooming on the table.

Bucky didn’t speak the entire drive back to Manhattan.

When he stepped back into the penthouse, the late-afternoon sun was slanting golden across the living room. You were standing near the windows, dressed in the soft loungewear he’d had delivered—pale blue joggers and a matching hoodie that still swallowed you. Your hair was pulled into a messy bun, bruises still vivid but less swollen.

You turned when you heard the elevator chime.

“Bucky,” you said softly, surprise flickering across your face. “You’re back early.”

He crossed the room in measured steps. “Heading out already, baby girl?”

You gave a small, apologetic smile. “I think… I think I’ve overstayed my welcome. You’ve been so kind, but I should get back to my place. I have things to take care of.”

His jaw tightened for half a second before he smoothed it away.

“You can stay as long as you want,” he said quietly. “As long as you need. There’s no clock on this.”

Your eyes softened. “I know. And I can’t thank you enough. Really. But I’ve already taken up so much of your time, your space…”

He stepped closer—close enough to smell the faint vanilla of the shampoo he’d left in the guest bathroom.

“I want you here,” he said, voice low. “I want you safe.”

You looked down at your bare feet. “I’ll be okay. I always am.”

He studied you for a long moment, reading every flicker of hesitation, every shadow of embarrassment you tried to hide.

“Let me drive you home, then.”

Your expression went carefully neutral for a heartbeat—unreadable. Then you smiled again, small and polite.

“That’s okay. I’ll call a cab. It’s no trouble.”

He knew why.

He’d stood in that apartment less than two hours ago.

He knew exactly why you didn’t want him anywhere near Dumont Avenue.

He didn’t push.

Instead he pulled his phone from his pocket, opened his contacts, and held it out to you.

“Put your number in.”

You hesitated—then took the phone with careful fingers. Typed your number. Handed it back.

He immediately sent you a text—a single word.

Safe.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket. You pulled it out, read the message, and looked up at him with those wide, trusting eyes.

“If you ever need anything,” he said, “anything at all—you call me. Day or night. I will always answer.”

You nodded. “I will. Thank you, Bucky. For everything.”

He walked you to the elevator. Down through the private lobby. Out to the curb where a black Town Car was already waiting—driver in place, engine idling.

Not just any driver.

One of his men. Discreet. Trusted.

You didn’t notice the subtle nod Bucky gave the man as you climbed into the back seat.

“Thank you again,” you said through the open window, voice soft. “For all of it.”

He leaned down, forearms resting on the sill.

“Anytime, baby girl.”

The window rolled up. The car pulled away smoothly into traffic.

Bucky stood on the sidewalk and watched until the taillights disappeared around the corner.

Then he turned, slid into his own waiting Escalade, and gave Steve a single order.

“Follow them. Make sure she gets inside safe. Then stay on the building. No one goes near her door unless I say so.”

Steve nodded once.

The SUV merged into traffic, keeping a careful distance.

Bucky leaned back against the leather seat, eyes fixed on the city blurring past.

You were going back to that apartment tonight.

But not for long.

He would wait.

He would be patient.

And when the time came—when you were ready—he would bring you home.

To the mansion.

To the life you deserved.

To him.

Where you belonged.

. ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁ ⟡ ܁ . ⊹ ₊ ܁.

. ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁ ⟡ ܁ . ⊹ ₊ ܁.

Chapter 7 - Healing Under His Watch

The condo was silent except for the low, steady hum of the city far below.

Bucky stepped through the private elevator doors just before dawn, the metallic scent of blood still clinging to his skin despite the scalding shower he’d taken at the mansion and the fresh clothes he’d changed into. His dark gray dress shirt was crisp, sleeves rolled to the elbows, black trousers tailored sharp. No trace of Billy remained on him—externally. Internally, the satisfaction of the kill still simmered, a dark warmth in his veins.

He moved through the penthouse like a shadow, boots silent on the hardwood. The hallway to the master bedroom was lit only by the soft blue glow of the night-lights he’d had installed years ago for security cameras, not comfort. He paused outside the door, hand on the knob, listening.

Nothing. Just the faint, even rhythm of your breathing.

He pushed the door open slowly.

Moonlight spilled across the bed from the half-open drapes, painting silver stripes over the charcoal sheets. You were curled on your side, facing away from him, knees drawn up, one hand tucked under your cheek. His black pajama shirt swallowed you; the collar had slipped off one shoulder, exposing the delicate line of your collarbone and the faint purple bloom of a bruise that hadn’t been there when he left.

Bucky crossed the room without sound and lowered himself to the edge of the mattress. The bed dipped slightly under his weight. You didn’t stir.

He reached out—slow, reverent—and brushed a strand of hair from your temple. His fingertips lingered, tracing the soft curve of your cheek, careful not to graze the swollen edge of your black eye. Your skin was warm. Alive. Safe.

His thumb stroked once, twice, along your hairline.

You sighed in your sleep—a small, trusting sound—and nestled deeper into the pillow.

Something tight in his chest loosened.

He’d done it. The man who’d hurt you no longer breathed. The world was cleaner for it. And you—his beautiful, broken angel—were here, in his bed, wearing his clothes, sleeping under his roof where no one could reach you.

He sat there for nearly an hour, stroking your hair in slow, rhythmic passes, watching the gentle rise and fall of your ribs, memorizing the way your lashes fluttered against bruised cheeks. The possessiveness that had been a slow burn for weeks now felt like a furnace. You were his to protect. His to heal. His to keep.

Eventually the sky outside began to lighten from black to bruised purple. He leaned down, pressed the lightest kiss to your temple—barely a brush of lips—and whispered against your skin,

“Sleep, baby girl. I’ve got you.”

Then he slipped out as quietly as he’d come.

Hours later you woke to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar windows.

For a blissful second, your mind was blank—soft sheets, warm light, the faint scent of clean cotton and cedar. Then reality crashed in: the dull throb in your cheek, the ache in your ribs when you breathed too deeply, the swollen tightness around your left eye. You sat up slowly, muscles protesting, and caught your reflection in the full-length mirror across the room.

Your face was a map of violence.

The left eye was nearly swollen shut, ringed in deep violet that bled into sickly green at the edges. Your lip was still split, crusted at the corner. Bruises bloomed across your jaw and throat—finger-shaped on your upper arms, mottled handprints on your ribs visible beneath the loose neck of Bucky’s shirt. You looked small. Broken.

Tears pricked your eyes. You blinked them back hard, swallowed the lump in your throat, and forced yourself to stand. Every movement hurt, but you refused to cry. Not here. Not in his home.

You padded barefoot down the hallway, following the scent of coffee and something buttery.

Bucky was in the living room, seated on the charcoal sectional with an open book in his lap—something old, leather-bound. He wore a white dress shirt, sleeves rolled, top two buttons undone, dark trousers. No suit jacket. No blood. He looked up the second you appeared in the doorway, book forgotten.

He was across the room in three strides.

“Morning Baby girl,” he said, voice thick with concern. “How are you feeling?”

You managed a small, shaky smile. “Sore. But… I’m okay.”

His eyes scanned you—face, arms, the way you held yourself like every breath cost something. “Pain level?”

“Manageable,” you lied.

He didn’t buy it. “Come here.”

He guided you to the couch with a hand ghost-light on your lower back. You sank down carefully. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of prescription painkillers and a glass of water.

“Two,” he said, shaking them into your palm. “They’re the good ones—non-drowsy.”

Your hands shook when you reached for the glass. Bucky noticed immediately. He wrapped his larger hands around yours, steadying the glass so you could drink without spilling.

You swallowed the pills, then met his eyes. “I’m so sorry this happened,” he said quietly. “For all of it.”

You shook your head. “Thank you. For… for everything. For letting me stay. For being kind. You don’t have to do any of this, Mr. Barnes.”

His brow furrowed. “Don’t call me that. Not here. Not with me.”

You bit your lip—winced at the sting. “Sorry. Bucky. I just… I don’t want to be a bother. Or inconvenience you.”

He leaned closer, eyes fierce but gentle. “You are never a bother to me. Ever. And you will never inconvenience me. Understand?”

You nodded slowly.

He studied your face for a long moment. “Can I look at you? Check the bruising?”

You gave a small nod.

He cupped your face with both hands—careful, thumbs resting just under your jaw—and tilted your head gently into the light. His touch was warm, steady. You felt the calluses on his palms, the faint ridges of old scars.

His gaze darkened when he saw the full extent of the black eye, the way the purple had deepened overnight.

Then your eyes dropped to his hands.

His knuckles were raw—split, scabbed over in places, fresh bruises blooming across the tattoos. You reached out without thinking, catching his wrists and turning his hands palm-up in yours.

Your thumbs brushed lightly over the torn skin.

“Are you okay?” you asked softly. “Did you… get these treated?”

Bucky froze.

You—bruised, battered, barely able to stand—were asking about his hands.

A slow, almost disbelieving smile curved his mouth.

“They’re nothing,” he murmured. “Just scrapes.”

You didn’t let go. Your thumbs kept moving in gentle circles.

He lifted your joined hands slowly, pressed his lips to your knuckles—soft, lingering.

You gave him the smallest, shyest smile.

Something triumphant flickered in his chest.

He stood, keeping your hand in his. “Come on. Breakfast is coming. Dr. Cho will be here in an hour to check on you.”

The food arrived minutes later—fluffy scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, fresh fruit, warm croissants, tea exactly the way you liked it (with extra sugar). Bucky made sure you ate, nudging plates closer, refilling your tea, watching with quiet satisfaction every time you took a bite.

You kept thanking him—soft, sincere. He brushed each one off with a gentle “Eat, baby girl.”

Dr. Helen Cho arrived precisely on time, medical bag in hand, smile calm and professional.

Bucky stood against the wall like a sentinel—arms crossed, eyes never leaving you—while she examined you on the couch. She checked your pupils, your ribs, gently palpated the bruises. You winced once when she pressed lightly on your side.

Bucky flinched visibly. His jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked.

“Severe contusions,” Helen said quietly. “No fractures, but you’ll be sore for at least a week. Ice twenty minutes on, twenty off. Arnica cream twice a day. I’ll leave more pain meds.”

She handed you a small tube of bruise cream and a list of instructions.

When she left, Bucky followed her to the door, exchanged a few low words, then returned.

You were sitting on the edge of the couch, staring at the cream.

He knelt in front of you.

“Turn around,” he said gently. “Let me put this on the ones you can’t reach.”

You hesitated—then nodded.

He helped you slip the shirt off your shoulders, keeping the front draped modestly over your chest. His hands were careful as he squeezed cream onto his fingers and smoothed it over the hand-shaped bruises on your upper back, the mottled purple on your shoulder blades, the deep fingerprints along your ribs.

Every touch was slow. Reverent.

“You don’t have to hide them from me,” he murmured. “Not anymore.”

You shivered—not from cold.

His fingers lingered a second longer than necessary on the curve of your spine.

“You’re safe,” he whispered. “And I’m going to take care of you until every mark fades.”

Over the next few days, the condo became your world.

Bucky canceled every meeting—ruthlessly. No calls. No visitors except Helen, who came daily. He had new clothes delivered—soft pajamas in silk and cotton, loungewear, underwear, everything in your exact size. When you protested, cheeks burning, he simply said, “You need clothes, baby girl. Let me do this.”

You slept a lot—your body demanding rest. When you woke, he was there: bringing tea, reading beside you, playing your favorite soft jazz on the sound system because he remembered you loved it.

His men guarded the building discreetly—unseen, but you felt their presence like a shield.

One night you fell asleep early, curled under the covers in his bed. Bucky sat in the living room with his laptop, the only light coming from the screen.

He opened the encrypted files Sam had sent earlier—deeper background, the kind even his first dossier hadn’t touched.

The truth unfolded in cold black and white.

Your father—once a decent man—had spiraled after your mother’s death. Alcohol. Gambling. Debts piled high with the kind of people who didn’t forgive. He’d taken his anger out on you when the liquor spoke loudest—shoves, slaps, nights you locked yourself in your room. He drank himself to liver failure five years ago. The debts didn’t die with him. They passed to you—quietly, legally, relentlessly. You’d been paying them off ever since, dollar by dollar, gig by gig, performance by performance.

The pieces clicked.

Why you’d stayed at the Velvet Room despite Billy’s hands.

Why you never had savings.

Why you’d flinched at loud voices.

Why you’d given away most of the tips he’d pressed into your palm.

Bucky stared at the screen until the words blurred.

His jaw worked. His fists clenched on the edge of the laptop.

Then he closed it slowly.

He looked toward the hallway—toward the bedroom where you slept, safe, healing, wearing his clothes.

The debts were still out there.

Someone still owned a piece of you.

And Bucky Barnes did not share.

He leaned back, eyes narrowing in the dark.

Soon, he thought.

Very soon.

Those debts would disappear.

And so would anyone who ever tried to collect.

. ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁ ⟡ ܁ . ⊹ ₊ ܁.

The city moved fast enough that sometimes you forgot there was a world outside of it.

That was one of the first things you'd learned after leaving home, that there was no room for stillness here.

No room for lingering over coffee while the sun climbed above the horizon. No room for long walks on the beach collecting shells simply because they were pretty. No room for sitting on the porch with your mother listening to the waves roll in and out while she read one of her mystery novels and occasionally pointed out a pelican diving offshore.

The city demanded motion and somewhere along the way, you'd become very good at giving it exactly what it wanted.

Your phone buzzed before the elevator doors had even fully opened onto the thirty-second floor.

You answered without breaking stride.

"Hello." A pause. "Check your email."

Another pause.

"Because you asked me to review it last night."

The call ended with a sheepish thank you and you smiled despite yourself. Typical.

By the time you crossed the open-concept office, three more people had stopped you. One needed approval on a furniture selection, one wanted reassurance before a client presentation, the last simply needed help finding a file she'd somehow misplaced. You handled all three before reaching your desk. Your unofficial title around the office was the final boss. Every design proposal eventually landed in your inbox. Every presentation passed through your hands before reaching a client. You caught mistakes no one else noticed, fixed problems before they became disasters.

Most importantly, you never said no.

Need someone to stay late? You. Need someone to cover a meeting? You. Need someone to fly across the country on two days' notice? You. You'd spent years becoming indispensable. Sometimes you wondered if anyone would notice if you stopped, but the thought never lingered around long enough to stir anything up.

Your assistant appeared beside your desk.

"Car's ready for you in ten."

You glanced at the clock, right, the Henderson project at the Hilton Conference. After there's a lunch meeting downtown for a proposal for a new client. Another presentation. Another polished smile.

"Got it."

You gathered your tablet and notebook before following a group of coworkers toward the elevators. The familiar rhythm settled around you immediately. Discussion of budgets, fabric samples, projected timelines, and somebody debating lighting fixtures. You contributed automatically, barely needing to think, everything had become muscle memory at this point.

The elevator carried everyone toward the lobby. Your reflection stared back from the mirrored walls. Tailored blazer with comfortable heels, phone already in hand. You looked like someone who was successful, someone who looked like she belonged here. And that was the goal after all, wasn't it?

The doors opened as the group spilled into the lobby and headed toward the company car waiting outside. You were halfway across the marble floor when your phone rang again. You glanced down, expecting another coworker, instead, an unfamiliar number flashed across the screen.

Your steps slowed.

The area code punched a small, unexpected hole straight through your chest.

Home. Not New York. Not work. Home.

That tiny beach town you'd left nearly a decade ago after growing up on that beach that washed everything away. That town where everyone knew everyone, where there wasn't a path you could walk without picking up a handful of sand with you. That town where your mother still lived.

For a moment, the noise of the lobby faded as the ringing continued. Beside you, your coworkers kept walking toward the revolving doors while you stared at the screen. Maybe it was spam. Maybe someone dialed the wrong number. Maybe—

Something uneasy curled low in your stomach.

The phone rang. And rang.

You swiped to answer.

"Hello?"

The word came out distracted, automatic and professional. There was a pause, a breath, then a voice you didn't recognize said something close to your name. And suddenly, for reasons you couldn't explain, the world didn't feel quite so steady beneath your feet anymore.

"Hello?"

The revolving doors swept open as you stepped outside. Warm city air rushed up to meet you, carrying the familiar sounds of honking cars, distant sirens, and hundreds of conversations blending into one endless hum.

"Am I speaking with—" The woman on the other end said your name clear as day.

"Yes, this is she."

"Hi. My name is Marlene Johnson. I'm the medical examiner at Sunset Shores Hospital in San Vyranda."

You frowned.

Sunset Shores. San Vyranda. Home. A strange knot formed in your stomach.

The woman hesitated, the pause lasted less than a second but it was long enough to change everything.

"I'm sorry that this is the first time we're speaking."

Your steps slowed to a sluggish drawl, the echo of your heels dulling against the pavement. Your coworkers continued walking ahead toward the company vehicle, someone laughed about something, someone opened a car door and the world carried on.

"We received your contact information from your mother's emergency records,"

Your mother's name left the woman's mouth and for a moment, it didn't mean anything. Just a collection of syllables, a familiar sound, something your brain recognized but refused to process.

"She was involved in an accident yesterday morning."

You stopped walking entirely.

People streamed around you on the sidewalk. A businessman even bumped your shoulder, you didn't react.

"There was a truck—" The woman's voice crackled. Or maybe that was inside your head. "—intersection—" Static. "—driver failed to stop—" Thrumming. "—I'm so sorry for your loss."

Loss.

The word floated somewhere distant, meaningless and impossible. Your mother couldn't be dead, you'd just spoken to her three days ago. She'd been standing in her kitchen making blueberry muffins complaining about her neighbor's lawn, asking whether you were eating enough vegetables.

Dead people didn't do those things.

"Miss?" The woman was still talking.

You realized several seconds had passed without you responding.

"I understand this is overwhelming." Overwhelming. That seemed like a ridiculous understatement. "—need you to come down as soon as possible."

You stared at the traffic moving through the intersection. Red light. Green light. People crossing. Everything operating exactly as it always had.

"—confirm identification—" A horn blared somewhere. "—funeral arrangements—" Someone brushed past your arm. "—next of kin—"

You couldn't feel your fingers, couldn't feel your feet, couldn't feel much of anything. The city suddenly seemed very far away.

"Miss?"

"Okay." The word slipped out automatically, small and hollow. It felt nothing like your own. Nothing like the voice that had commanded the office floor no more than an hour ago. "Okay."

The lady ended the call shortly afterward, or maybe you ended it, you weren't entirely sure. The phone remained pressed against your ear long after the line went dead.

"Hey."

A hand touched your shoulder, you jumped more than necessary. The entire world around you snapping back into motion as if no time had passed at all.

One of your coworkers stood beside you with concern written across her face.

"You okay?"

The question seemed absurd. You looked at her, opened your mouth, closed it, and opened it again. Your tongue felt too large, your thoughts too slow, too scattered.

"I have to go home."

"What happened?"

"I don't… feel good." You weren't even sure the words made sense, only that they were easier than the truth.

Your mother is dead. Your mother is dead? Your mother is dead.

The sentence refused to settle anywhere inside your head, racketing and echoing off the walls with a shaking disbelief. Your coworker offered to call someone. You declined. Another suggested taking you to urgent care when they saw the shake of your hands. You declined that too. You just turned and started walking. At some point you reached your apartment, the space between those events simply vanished. Later, you'd remember flashes. The subway. An elevator. Your keys falling twice before fitting into the lock.

But mostly there was nothing, just blank space, missing time.

You sat on the couch still wearing your blazer, still holding your phone. Sunlight crawled slowly across the hardwood floor as hours passed. Then darkness with the glinting shine from the moon. Then morning. The city continued outside your windows, cars honking, people beginning their commute, the construction over on twelve that's been going on for three months.

Life. Buzzing and beating around you.

You sat perfectly still. Waiting for reality to catch up. Waiting for someone to call and explain there had been a mistake. Waiting for your phone to ring with your mother's name across the screen.

It never did.

Days blurred together afterward. Your coworkers checked on you constantly, their worry of any sickness overrun with condolences when you had told them the truth of your disappearance. Missed calls filled your phone screen, apologetic voicemails, and wilted flowers began to crowd every corner of your apartment next to takeout containers accumulating in the kitchen. You slept in fragments, and woke disoriented. Forgot what day it was, whether you'd eaten, forgot entire conversations. And then, little by little, the words started sticking. Your mother. The accident. The funeral arrangements. Gone. Gone. Gone. The true realization arrived in pieces, each one cutting deeper than the last.

You found yourself functioning on instinct. Not like the autopilot you had been able to tap into for work. This one was lethargic and unsteady. Thoughts either sticking in your head on repeat or fading into the fog the second you'd heard them. You had written out the most important things on sticky notes on your fridge. Plane tickets. Funeral home. Death certificate. Insurance paperwork. Hotel reservations for family members. Endless forms. Endless signatures. An endless nightmare you'd never thought you'd have to live.

You tried to keep it all at arm's length, to complete them all without thinking. As if handling someone else's tragedy, as if you were merely assisting with a project. Another deadline. Another checklist. Another task that needed doing. Your brain yearned for the familiar. Soon the time came and your manager approved your leave immediately, told you to take however much time you needed. Coworkers sent more flowers, cards, and meals. You thanked all of them, but you couldn't remember a single thing you said past that.

The night before your flight, you stood alone in your apartment. Suitcase packed beside the door, silence filling every room. Your eyes drifted toward your phone sitting on the kitchen counter, for a long time, you simply stared at it. Then, with shaking hands, you opened your contacts, scrolled and found her name.

Mom.

Your thumb hovered over the call button. You already knew what would happen but you pressed it anyway. The line rang once, twice, the endless trilling echoing in your ear. Then her voicemail answered.

"Hiya, you've reached—"

The sound of her voice shattered something inside you. And for the first time since the phone call, you cried. You cried until your chest ached and eyes burned, then you cried some more.

The drive into town from the airport felt shorter than you remembered. Or maybe grief simply swallowed distance whole. One minute you were staring blankly out the airplane window as clouds drifted beneath the wing. The next, you were pulling onto familiar roads lined with sea oats and weathered beach fences.

Everything looked exactly the same and completely different. The faded welcome sign, the bait shop on the corner, the ice cream stand that somehow survived every hurricane season. You recognized all of it yet it felt like looking at someone else's memories. Like peering through fogged glass. The ocean appeared between buildings as you drove. Blue, endless and unchanged.

Your chest tightened.

The sight should have felt like coming home, instead it felt like arriving too late. The funeral passed in much of the same way, a blur or a faded dream. Like you'd stepped out of your body and was watching something happening to someone else.

You remembered standing beside the casket. Remembered staring at polished wood because looking anywhere else felt impossible. People approached in waves. Old neighbors and former teachers, friends of your mother you'd known your entire life. They all said variations of the same thing.

"She was wonderful."

"She talked about you constantly."

"I'm so sorry."

"If you need anything..."

You nodded and thanked them. Accepted hugs, condolences and casseroles wrapped in aluminum foil. You couldn't recall a single face afterward. Only fragments of perfume, the scent of lilies, a hand squeezing yours and someone crying. Somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice kept insisting this was temporary. That eventually your mother would appear from somewhere and laugh about the misunderstanding.

The service ended, the people left, the flowers remained. And your mother stayed where she was.

The reality of that never fully landed, not then, not yet. A week later, you were back in the city. Back in your apartment, back in the life you'd built. At least physically, mentally, it felt as though some essential piece of you had been left behind. The apartment greeted you with silence, not peaceful silence. Wrong silence, the kind that seemed to stretch into every corner.

You dropped your suitcase near the door and waited. For what, you weren't sure. Maybe for your phone to ring. Maybe for your mother to ask if you'd gotten home safely. She always did, even after ten years, even when you reminded her you were a grown woman. Especially then. You stood in the foyer for several minutes before remembering why she wouldn't call. The realization hit like a fresh bruise, tender, immediate and cruel.

Your mother was supposed to grow old.

The thought had entered your mind and wouldn't leave, compounding itself onto every fired neuron in your brain. She was supposed to complain about her knees, supposed to start forgetting where she left her glasses, supposed to become the eccentric old woman feeding seagulls from her porch despite repeated warnings not to.

There was supposed to be more time.

Years of it. Decades.

Not this. Not an intersection. Not a truck. Not a stranger's mistake. Not a phone call in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday.

The following weeks slipped apart around the edges. Texts arrived, you ignored them. Coworkers checked in, you answered with vague responses. Friends invited you out, you declined every time. Work became something you endured, you still showed up, still attended meetings and reviewed presentations but the spark that once drove you had vanished.

People eventually noticed, you knew they did but nobody said much. Everyone seemed afraid of saying the wrong thing. You appreciated that and hated it all at once. Some afternoons you found yourself staring at a design board for twenty minutes without absorbing a single detail. Colors blurred together, furniture layouts became meaningless.

The things that once mattered suddenly felt very small.

You stopped cooking, stopped grocery shopping regularly. Most nights consisted of takeout eaten standing at the kitchen sink, the containers piled up faster than they should have. You'd kept promising yourself you'd throw them away tomorrow. Tomorrow kept moving.

Sleep became impossible in your bedroom. The bed felt too large, too empty. It was strange. You had never noticed it before but now it felt that there was an internal tie cut within you, and everything felt so one sided. So lonely. Things you had often, if not always, done on your own, felt empty. Even the apartment felt too hollow, the walls in your bedroom echoed differently now. So you migrated to the couch with one blanket wrapped around your shoulders, the television on low volume as lights from the city filtered through the windows.

It wasn't comfortable, but it was easier. Everything became easier when you stopped caring, like the voicemails.

The voicemails remained unheard in your phone, seven messages to be exact.

The number had burned itself in the back of your mind, a tiny red number you couldn't bring yourself to clear. They were the last parts of your mother that were left unscathed by all this. You knew most were likely ordinary, your mother reminding you to call her, telling you about a recipe she'd tried, asking if you'd seen some news story she'd forgotten to send.

The final voicemail sat at the bottom of the list, untouched. Untouched because once you listened to it, there would never be another one and as long as it remained unheard, some irrational part of you could pretend her voice was still waiting. Still alive. Still there.

Some mornings your hand reached for your phone before you were fully awake. You'd see something funny online, find a new coffee shop, see a bookstore she'd love have a sale and instinctively think: I should call Mom. The thought happened dozens of times, every day, a reflex that built over years. Each time reality followed seconds later. A delayed collision. A fresh impact. She isn't here. You'd lower the phone, swallow hard and continue with your day. Until the next time. And the next. And the next.

One rainy Thursday evening, you found yourself standing in the cereal aisle of a grocery store, frozen, staring at a box your mother always bought. Without thinking, you pulled out your phone, your thumb moved automatically, scrolling through your contacts until you found it.

Mom.

You pressed it before your brain could catch up. The line began ringing. Once. Twice. Three times. Then her voicemail answered. You hung up immediately, heart hammering, breath caught somewhere in your throat. Around you, people continued shopping comparing prices, pushing carts, living their lives. You stood motionless beneath fluorescent lights and finally understood something terrifying.

The world had not stopped when your mother died, only yours had.

You turned and left the grocery store that second, your cereal and basket of food abandoned as you darted for the the nearest exit and went back home.

Back to being alone.

The typical silence of your apartment greeted you with a bitter chill. You found yourself suddenly restless, arms unable to stay at your side, legs buzzing to break free from where they stood still. You had to do something, anything. It didn't take long for your eyes to catch onto a target and lock in on it. Soon you were kneeling beside an overstuffed bookshelf you'd been meaning to organize for months before… now it had become a monstrous pile that claimed ownership of the better half of your hallway.

The apartment had become a reflection of you. Untended, and half-finished. Stuck.

A thin layer of dust coated the shelves as you sifted through, tossing donations into a pile near the laundry-occupied armchair in the corner. The television murmured softly in the background, providing noise you weren't actually listening to.

You pulled a book free and a postcard fluttered to the floor, you almost ignored it, but then you recognized the image. The beach. Home.

You stared at it for a long moment before picking it up. The edges were worn, sun-faded and old. On the front, the ocean stretched endlessly beneath a summer sky. The very same stretch of shoreline you'd spent your childhood exploring. The same beach where your mother used to wake you before sunrise with a thermos of hot chocolate and a promise that the dolphins were out this morning.

Old memories flooded your mind as you held the cardstock in your fingers. You remembered sand sticking to your ankles, the smell of sunscreen, the weight of seashells collected in your pockets, your mother's laughter carried away by the wind. You remembered sitting beside her on the porch after long days at the beach, both of you wrapped in oversized sweatshirts watching the waves disappear into darkness talking about everything and nothing.

Back then, you'd thought those summers would last forever. Back then, your mother had seemed immortal.

The postcard trembled slightly in your hands. Without warning, something inside you cracked. In one fell swoop, enough to let everything spill through as you sank against the wall, the postcard clenched in your fist. The apartment suddenly felt suffocating, the walls too close, the city too loud. The life you'd spent years building suddenly looked unfamiliar, as though it belonged to someone else. You glanced around the room at the expensive furniture, the carefully chosen decor, framed certificates. The polished version of yourself you'd spent years creating. None of it mattered. Not anymore.

The thought arrived quietly, then rooted itself deep. What am I still doing here?

The answer never came, instead another thought followed, simple but dangerous. If I leave everything behind, maybe none of this has to be real.

You didn't examine it too closely, didn't question the logic, didn't even give yourself time to. Because if you did, you might realize it wasn't healing you were after, it was escape. The decision happened quickly after that. Three days later your manager stared at you across the conference table with your letter of resignation laying between you.

"You don't have to make any permanent decisions right now."

You understood what he meant, that grief wasn't the time for life-altering choices, right next to tattoos or drastic haircuts. People always said that. You smiled politely, then quit anyway.

Furniture disappeared next. A couch purchased after your first promotion, the dining table you'd spent months saving for, bookshelves, artwork, decorative pieces. One by one, strangers carried them out the door. Each departure left the apartment looking less like a home and somehow that felt like relief. You donated bags of clothing, kitchenware, boxes of things you'd once convinced yourself were important.

The pile that remained grew smaller until eventually your entire life fit into three boxes. Ten years condensed into cardboard in the back of your trunk. You stood outside your apartment for a long while, looking up at the windows that shed so much light into your life over the years. It should've felt more ceremonious. Instead you just shrugged into the car and drove away.

The drive home took nearly twelve hours. You spent most of it staring at the road, not even the radio turned on. The silence felt appropriate. By the time you crossed the town line, evening had begun settling over the coast, the sky glowed orange and gold as the ocean flashed between buildings.

It felt familiar, almost patient as if something in the blue crashing waves could sense you were back, could sense the ghost haunting you. You refused to look at it for long, instead, you focused on the road or on the steering wheel, or on anything else.

Soon the beach cottage appeared at the end of a narrow lane, exactly as you remembered. Weathered cedar siding, white trim, a wraparound porch softened by years of salt air, the porch swing your mother refused to replace despite its constant squeaking. Your chest tightened and for a moment, you considered turning around, driving away and finding a new city to start back over, pretending none of this had happened. You swallowed thickly and put the car in park, hands twitching as you unbuckled your seatbelt. Silence greeted you as you stepped from the car, no porch light humming, no music drifting through open windows, no mother waiting inside.

Just stillness.

The key turned easily in the lock, the door opening with a familiar creak and suddenly you were standing inside your childhood home. Everything remained exactly where she'd left it. A mug beside the sink, a cardigan draped over the back of a chair, reading glasses resting atop a stack of books. The house looked less like someone had died and more like someone had stepped out for groceries and simply hadn't returned yet. Frozen and waiting.

You carried your boxes inside and set them in the living room, then stopped. You couldn't bring yourself to unpack, not really, not yet. A toothbrush in the bathroom, a few clothes in a dresser. Essentials, nothing permanent because permanence meant acceptance. And acceptance remained impossible. This wasn't forever. You told yourself that repeatedly. Just a few weeks, a month, maybe. Long enough to figure things out, to catch your breath, to decide what comes next. Not forever. The lie settled comfortably inside your chest. You avoided the hallway as you walked further into the house, specifically one door, your mother's bedroom. You passed it without looking, passed it the next day too, and the day after that. The door remained closed and you remained unwilling.

Outside, waves rolled endlessly against the shoreline.

You could hear them through the walls as you laid on the couch, the sound should have been comforting, instead, you shut every window and closed every curtain. Blocked out every glimpse of blue water, every reminder of childhood, every reminder of her. The cottage grew dim and shadowed as days passed, then more. You rarely ventured into town, rarely spoke to anyone. The grocery store clerk received brief answers, neighbors received polite waves, nothing more. Connection required energy and you had none left to give so your world became very small. Just you, the house, and the beach beyond it.

A life narrowed down to its simplest form.

You stood on the porch one evening as the sun disappeared behind the horizon. The ocean stretched endlessly before you, beautiful, the type of scene you see movie proposals filmed in or a romantic fervent confession of long withheld feelings. You stared at it for only a second before stepping back inside, closing the door and locking it.

As though keeping the world out might somehow keep your grief out too. As though both weren't already living inside the house with you.

By the seventh day, you were running out of excuses. The refrigerator contained half a carton of milk, questionable leftovers, and a bottle of ketchup that had probably survived three presidential administrations. The pantry wasn't much better, bearing a sleeve of crackers, instant coffee and a can of soup. You'd spent the whole week moving between the couch, the porch, and every room in the cottage except one.

The walls had started feeling closer, the silence heavier so when you finally grabbed your keys that morning, it felt less like an errand and more like surrender.

The town looked exactly as it always had. Sun-bleached storefronts with flower boxes beneath windows. Locals sitting outside the diner with coffee mugs in hand. Everything familiar and unchanged. You hated it a little for that. How dare the world stay the same?

The grocery store came first. You moved through the aisles quickly avoiding conversation, and eye contact, and Mrs. Patterson from three streets over who've you known you since kindergarten. You escaped with two bags and a brief wave. The hardware store came second. The front porch light had burned out two days ago and one of the kitchen cabinet hinges had started pulling loose, plus the screen door stuck every time you opened it. Your mother would've fixed all three before breakfast.

You bought supplies you weren't entirely sure you knew how to use as the teenage cashier wished you a nice day. You nodded and walked out, the warm ocean air greeting you and for the first time all morning, you felt almost accomplished. You'd left the house, you'd bought groceries and nothing terrible had happened. Maybe tomorrow wouldn't feel quite so impossible.

Balancing two bags and a cardboard box against your hip, you climbed into your car, started up the engine, adjusted the mirror and took three deep breaths. Sometimes being in the car made you sick, not the kind where you'd lose your lunch, the kind where you'd lose your mind if you thought about all the possibilities for a second too long.

You let out your last breath and shifted into reverse.

Crunch.

The sound froze your blood and you slammed on the brakes. For a moment, everything went completely still.

No.

No, no, no.

Slowly, dread pooling in your stomach, you looked into the rearview mirror and saw a motorcycle crookedly the ground behind your bumper. It looked big, and big most likely meant expensive.

Your eyes squeezed shut, head hitting the headrest behind you.

"Shit." The word escaped in a whisper.

You threw the car into park and climbed out to inspect the damage. It wasn't catastrophic, the motorcycle had fallen on its side, a scrape on the fender, a fresh dent where one definitely hadn't existed five minutes ago. You'd managed to survive the worst months of your life only to immediately become the kind of person who backed into parked vehicles.

Fantastic.

You crouched beside it as if staring hard enough might somehow reverse time when a voice murmurs behind you.

"Please tell me that's not mine."

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath. Right. The owner. Straightening, you turned to the voice. The man stood several feet away carrying paint supplies beneath one arm. He was tall, bearing a faded henley rolled up on one side. Broad shoulders with dark hair that was once cropped short and now it looks like it can't tell if it wants to be longer or not.

The expression on his face suggested he'd already decided this interaction was going to be annoying, and you couldn't entirely blame him.

"You're the owner?"

He glanced between you and the motorcycle. "Depends."

You stared. He stared back.

"Depends on what?"

"Whether you're the person who hit it."

The irritation in his voice immediately sparked your own, because somehow you were already exhausted by this conversation.

"Well, I wasn't aiming for it."

His eyebrow lifted. "Oh, good."

You blinked. "What?"

"Just checking."

You exhaled sharply, the sound could've almost been a laugh, almost. Instead it emerged somewhere closer to annoyance.

"Look, I'm sorry." You offered vexed, trying to extend the first branch of peace. "I genuinely didn't see it."

"That makes me feel much better."

"Would you stop doing that?"

His brow furrowed. "Doing what?"

"Being sarcastic. I said sorry."

His gaze dropped to the motorcycle, the dent and scraped fender, then back to you.

"Somebody backed into my bike."

You scowled. "By accident."

"Still happened."

Your jaw tightened and that familiar irritation that had followed you since the funeral immediately surfaced. Too close to the skin, too easy to access. You knew he wasn't actually the problem, but grief had a way of turning every inconvenience into a personal attack.

"Fine." You grumbled as you pulled out your phone and opened up a payment app. "I'll send you my insurance and pay for whatever repairs it needs."

The man looked surprised by how quickly you offered, only briefly, then the expression vanished.

"Don't worry about it."

"What?"

"It's cosmetic."

You stared and he just shrugged.

"Not worth the paperwork."

Several seconds passed and neither of you spoke. The parking lot buzzed quietly around you. A truck pulling into a nearby space, someone loading lumber, wind carrying the distant scent of saltwater. You suddenly realized this was the longest conversation you'd had with anyone all week.

A depressing thought.

"Well then," you shoved your phone back into your pocket. "Sorry."

The man nodded once. "Try not to hit any more vehicles on your way home."

There it was again, that dry sarcasm. Couldn't go two seconds without it, it seemed.

You narrowed your eyes. "Try to park them where people can actually see them."

One corner of his mouth twitched, not quite a smile but it was close enough to annoy you. You turned immediately toward your car. Conversation over, interaction complete. Exactly how you preferred it. As you adjusted your supplies next to you, you could feel his eyes on you, or maybe you imagined it, either way you refused to look back. You climbed into the driver's seat, started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. Only once you'd turned onto the main road did you realize something.

You hadn't gotten his name.

Not that it mattered, you weren't staying long, you weren't here to make friends or meet people. You were here to be alone.

By the time you got home, the sun had begun its slow descent toward the horizon, golden light spilled across the water turning the ocean into something molten, something alive.

You carried your groceries inside, put away what needed refrigeration, and left the hardware supplies in a neat pile beside the kitchen table. It should have felt normal, domestic. Instead, every movement felt rehearsed, like you were following instructions someone else had written.

The cottage settled around you with familiar creaks, wood expanding and contracting with the changing temperature. The distant hum of the refrigerator. The rhythmic crash of waves beyond the shore.

Life continuing. Always continuing.

After a while, you found yourself stepping onto the porch. A mug of coffee cooling between your palms, the evening breeze carried the scent of seaweed and sunscreen from somewhere down the coastline. The town looked different at this hour. Softer, almost, the sharp edges worn smooth by the sunset. Below, the diner glowed warmly against the darkening street, its neon sign flickered to life casting pink and blue reflections across parked cars.

And there, just near the curb you spotted it immediately. The motorcycle. Sleek, black, and large, impossible to miss.

You frowned, not because you cared. Because apparently now you recognized random strangers by their vehicles, a deeply concerning development. The memory irritatingly resurfaced, the dent, the sarcasm, the aggravating twitch of amusement he'd worn the entire conversation. Your mouth pulled into something dangerously close to a smile, brief and unintentional and gone the second it formed.

Still, the interaction lingered. Not because it had been pleasant, but because it had been different. For ten minutes today you'd thought about something other than your dead mother. And somehow that felt wrong. You stared out at the water as the waves rolled endlessly toward shore, one after another, steady and predictable.

Your mother used to say the ocean was proof that life kept going. You'd hated that phrase growing up. Whenever something upset you, she'd say it. Whenever a friendship ended, a bad grade ruined your week, or your first boyfriend broke your heart.

"The tide keeps coming in, sweetheart."

As though that explained everything. As though the ocean somehow agreed with what she was talking about.

Your throat tightened and without thinking, you reached for your phone, the movement happened automatically. You unlocked the screen, opened your contacts and pressed call. The phone rose to your ear as your gaze remained fixed on the horizon. You didn't even bother to wait for the voicemail.

The words came easily. "You'll never believe what happened today, Mom. I backed into someone's motorcycle."

A wet laugh escaped, soft and shaky.

"The guy was such an asshole about it too." The ringing on the other end stretched, you kept talking anyway.

"He acted like I committed a federal crime."

A wave crashed against the shoreline, the breeze shifted and then—

"Hiya, you've reached—"

Reality caught up, brutally. The words died in your throat as you let phone fall from your ear, the screen illuminated in your hand.

Mom.

The contact photo stared back at you and your stomach dropped, feet frozen in place. Unable to move. Unable to breathe. Unable to hang up. Because somewhere deep inside, some stubborn, broken piece of you still expected her to answer.

Still expected her voice.

Still expected—

The voicemail went on, and you couldn't take it anymore, you ended the call so fast your phone nearly slipped. The porch disappeared behind a sudden blur.

No. No. No.

The phone trembled violently in your hands as a sound escaped you, small and broken. You didn't recognize it as your own. The ocean continued moving, the breeze still blowing, the world hadn't changed.

Only yours. Again.

You stumbled inside before you realized you were crying, the front door slammed shut behind you. The cottage felt too quiet, too empty, too full of things she should have been filling. Your mother's mug still sat in the cabinet, her favorite blanket remained folded over the armchair, her books lined the shelves. Evidence everywhere, proof of a life that had existed, proof of a life that no longer did.

You sank onto the couch. The same couch you'd occupied nearly every evening since arriving, phone still clutched tightly in your hand. Tears came harder this time. Not the neat, silent tears you'd cried at the funeral, not the restrained grief you'd carried for weeks. This hurt was messy and raw. The kind that left your chest aching, the kind that made breathing feel impossible. Because for one brief, careless moment you'd forgotten. You'd forgotten she was gone. You'd forgotten there wasn't anyone waiting on the other end anymore.

And somehow realizing it all over again hurt just as much as the first time.

You cried until darkness swallowed the room whole. The phone remained in your hand the entire time, her number still sitting at the top of your call history.

As though she might call back.

As though she still could.

ᴛᴀɢ ʟɪꜱᴛ › comment/inbox to be added!

She heard him dust his boots heavily on the porch, then the door opened, and he stepped inside, bringing the cold air and the smell of pine and sweat with him. His eyes found her immediately, still standing by the stove where she'd been keeping the stew warm.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

She felt her face heat under his gaze, and her hands tightened on the wooden spoon she was holding.

"You're home," she managed, and immediately felt foolish. Of course he was home. She could see him standing right there.

But his expression softened slightly, and he set down his lunch pail by the door.

"I am," The words came out rough. Like he'd been working hard. Or thinking hard. Or both.

He shrugged out of his coat, hung it on the peg, and crossed the small space between them in a few strides.

She tensed with anticipation, expecting him to reach for her, to pull her close the way he had last night. But he stopped just in front of her, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to look at him, and his hand came up to cup her face instead.

Gentle. Almost careful.

"Feelin’ alright?" he asked quietly.

The question caught her off guard. She'd expected... well, she wasn't sure what she'd expected. But not that.

"I'm fine," she said honestly.

His thumb brushed across her cheekbone, and something flickered in his eyes. Guilt, maybe. Or concern.

"Any discomfort?"

She shook her head.

He studied her face for another moment, like he was checking for signs she might be lying to spare his feelings. Then he leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead -brief, almost chaste- before stepping back.

"Smells good," he said, nodding toward the stove. "What is it?"

"Stew," she answered still processing the gentleness of that kiss. "It's been ready for a while. I was just keeping it warm."

"Sounds good." He moved past her toward the washbasin, rolling up his sleeves. "I'm starvin’."

She turned back to the stove, ladling stew into bowls, and tried to ignore the way her heart was still racing.

It was so stupid that the fact that he was careful and gentle with her still affected her, but she was still getting used to it. To matter. To have a voice. To like and dislike things and be checked on. To be cherished.

“Do you want to wash after you are done?” she heard herself ask without thinking.

He paused, his hands stilling in the basin where he'd been splashing water on his face. Then he straightened, reaching for the towel she kept hanging nearby, and turned to look at her.

"After dinner?" he repeated, like he was making sure he'd heard her right.

She nodded, focusing very hard on ladling the stew into the second bowl. "I could heat water for the tub. If you'd like."

There was a pause, just long enough that she glanced up to see if something was wrong.

He was watching her with an expression she couldn't quite read. Something between surprised and... pleased, maybe.

"Yeah," he said finally, his voice a little rougher. "That'd be good."

She nodded and carried the bowls to the table, setting them down with hands that were steadier than she felt.

Offering to heat his bathwater wasn't scandalous. It was a perfectly normal thing for a wife to do for her husband after a long day of work.

Except they both knew what had happened the last time she'd helped him bathe.

When she'd washed his back with careful hands. When he'd been sitting in the tub and she'd been close enough to feel the heat radiating off his skin. When the air between them had been charged with something unspoken and inevitable.

And now -after last night- there was nothing unspoken left.

She sat down across from him at the table, smoothing her skirt unnecessarily, and picked up her spoon.

He did the same, taking a bite of the stew and making a low sound of approval.

"This is good," he said. "Real good."

"Thank you."

They ate in silence for a few minutes. Not uncomfortable, exactly, but weighted with awareness. Of each other. Of what had happened. Of what would happen again.

Eventually, he cleared his throat.

"Had a hell of a time concentratin' today," he said, not quite meeting her eyes.

She looked up. "Oh?"

"Yeah." He took another bite, chewed, swallowed. "Miller nearly had to pull me out of the way of a fallin' log. And Davidson caught me splittin' the same piece of wood three times without realizin' it."

Her eyebrows rose. "That doesn't sound like you."

"It ain't." He finally looked at her then, and there was something in his gaze that made her stomach flip. "Kept thinkin' about last night."

Heat flooded her face instantly.

"About you," he continued, his voice dropping lower. "About comin' home to you."

She didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know if she was supposed to say anything.

But he didn't seem to expect a response. Just went back to his stew, though she could see the tension in his shoulders. The way his jaw worked as he chewed.

Like he was holding himself back from saying -or doing- something more.

They finished the meal in that same charged silence, and when he pushed his bowl away, she stood to clear the table.

His hand slowly caught her wrist as she reached for his bowl.

She looked at him, her pulse jumping.

"I meant what I said," he said quietly. "About givin' you time. Few days, at least."

She swallowed. "I know."

"But… that ain't mean I don't wanna touch you." His thumb brushed across the inside of her wrist, a slow movement that made her skin tingle. "If that's alright."

She thought about the way he'd looked at her when he came home. The careful way he'd touched her face. The kiss to her forehead that had been almost reverent.

She thought about the fact that she'd spent the entire day thinking about him too. About last night. About the future.

"It's alright," she said quietly.

His expression changed -something dark and satisfied crossing his face- and he released her wrist.

"Go on then," he said. "Heat the water. I'll clear the table."

"You just got home," she said, already moving toward the stove to check the water she'd kept simmering. " I'll handle it."

"If I help, you can get started sooner," he countered, already standing and reaching for his bowl. "And honestly, the idea of a bath sounds real good right now."

She couldn't argue with that logic.

They worked in tandem, her hauling the tub from its spot in the corner while he carried the first pot of hot water, both of them moving anticipating each other's movements.

By the time the tub was half-full, she'd settled onto the chair nearby the fire, waiting as he added the last pot of cold water to temper the heat.

He straightened, testing the temperature with his hand, then started unbuttoning his shirt.

She didn't look away.

There'd been a time when they'd given each other privacy for this. When she would've turned the chair to face the wall, or busied herself with some task on the other side of the room.

But that time had passed.

Now she watched as he shrugged out of his shirt, the firelight playing across his shoulders, highlighting the old scars she'd traced with her fingers more times than she could count. And the new ones, faint red lines down his back where her nails had raked him last night.

He glanced at her over his shoulder, catching her staring, and the corner of his mouth quirked up.

"Ain't fair, you know," he said, reaching for his belt. "You gettin' to look while I can't."

"I'm not the one getting in the bath," she deadpaned.

"True." He unfastened his belt, pushed his trousers down, and stepped out of them. Then his drawers followed, and he was bare, crossing the short distance to the tub without a hint of self-consciousness.

She'd seen him naked before. Many times, especially over the past two months. But there was something different about watching him now, in the firelight, knowing what it felt like to have that body covering hers. Inside hers.

He stepped into the tub with a low groan of relief, sinking down into the water until it lapped at his chest.

"Christ, that's good," he muttered, his head falling back against the rim.

She stood, collecting his discarded clothes and adding them to the basket near the door, very aware of his eyes tracking her movements.

When she turned back, he was watching her with an expression that made her stomach flip.

"You gonna help me?" he asked.

She raised an eyebrow. "Help you?"

"Yeah." He shifted in the tub, settling deeper. "I'm real tired. And last time you helped -when I had that cut on my hand- it was..." He paused, and she could see he was fighting a smile. "Real helpful."

She crossed her arms, trying to hide a smile. "You seem perfectly capable of washing yourself."

"Do I?" His voice had dropped lower, rougher. "Because I'm rememberin' how good it felt when you did it. Your hands in my hair. On my back."

Heat crept up her neck at the memory. At the intimacy of it, of touching him like that, tending to him.

"That was different," she said. "You were actually injured."

"I'm injured now," he said, deadpan. "Emotionally. From workin' all day thinkin' about my wife and not bein' able to do anythin' about it."

Despite herself, she felt her lips twitch.

"That's not a real injury."

"Feels real to me." He held her gaze, and the playfulness faded slightly, replaced by something more serious. More intent. "Come here."

It wasn't quite a command. More like an invitation. A request.

She crossed to the tub without hesitation and knelt beside it. His eyes tracked her movements, and when she reached for the soap, his hand caught her wrist.

Gently. Like he'd done at the dinner table.

"I promised I'd give you time," he said quietly. "And I meant it. But I want to touch you. Want you to touch me. That alright?"

She looked at him, at the heat in his eyes, at the tension in his jaw, at the way he was holding himself still despite clearly wanting more.

He was asking. Checking. Making sure she was comfortable.

Just like he had last night.

"It's alright," she said quietly.

His grip on her wrist loosened, and he released her with what looked like effort.

"Good." he said, his voice rough.

----

She worked the soap between her hands until it lathered, then pressed her palms to his back. He made a low sound -half groan, half sigh- and let his head fall forward, giving her access.

She started at his shoulders, working the soap across the muscles, feeling the tension there start to ease under her touch. Then down his spine, she let her thumbs press on either side, the way she'd discovered he liked weeks ago and felt him exhale slowly, deeply.

Her hands knew this body now. Knew the old scars, the puckered one on his left shoulder blade, the long raised line that ran from shoulder to spine. Knew the new marks too, the faint red scratches she'd left last night, already fading but still visible in the firelight.

Evidence of what they'd done. What they'd become to each other.

"Lean forward," she said quietly.

He did, bracing his forearms on his knees, and she reached for the cup sitting beside the tub.

She poured water over his head slowly, watching it darken his hair from brown to almost black, watching it run in rivulets down his neck and shoulders. Then she set the cup aside and worked the soap through the wet strands.

Her fingers found his scalp, and she began to massage in slow, deliberate circles.

The sound he made was involuntary. Deep and rough and so unguarded that it sent a flutter through her stomach.

"That's..." He trailed off, seeming to lose the words.

"Good?" she offered, her fingers still working, applying gentle pressure as she moved across his scalp.

"Yeah." His voice had gone thick. "Real good."

She took her time with it. Working the soap through every strand, her nails scraping lightly against his scalp in a way that made his breathing deepen. She'd done this once before when he'd injured his hand, but that had been different. An assistance.

This was something else.

When she was satisfied, she rinsed his hair carefully, filling the cup again and again, pouring the water slowly so the soap wouldn't run into his eyes. Making sure to get every bit of lather out, combing through the strands with her fingers.

She set the cup aside and sat back slightly, her hands stilling.

He started to reach for the soap, but she picked it up first.

His hand stilled in mid-air, suspended between them.

"I can-" he started, his voice careful.

"I know you can," she said simply.

She dampened and worked more soap in her hands until they had a lot of lather, and waited.

For a moment, he just looked at her. She could see him processing what she was offering. What she was saying without words.

That she wasn't finished. That she wanted to keep touching him.

Then, slowly, like he was afraid sudden movement might break whatever spell this was, he settled back against the tub. His arms came to rest along the rim, palms up, open.

Giving her access.

She brought the cloth to his chest, and his breathing changed immediately, deeper, more controlled, as she began to work the soap across his skin.

She started at his collarbone, tracing the hard line of it from shoulder to shoulder. Then down, over his chest, feeling the solid muscle beneath. She could feel his heartbeat under her hand, strong and steady but faster than normal.

He was affected by this. By her touch.

She moved her hand in slow, careful circles. Across to his left side, feeling his ribs expand and contract with each breath. Then back to center and across to the right. Thorough. Methodical.

But not impersonal.

She was hyperaware of every point of contact. Of the way his skin felt warm and slick from the water. The way his muscles tensed slightly when she touched certain spots. Of the way he was watching her through half-lidded eyes, his jaw tight.

His eyes had closed at some point, but she could see his hands gripping the edge of the tub, knuckles pale. He was holding himself very still. Letting her work. Not reaching for her even though she could see he wanted to.

She moved lower.

Over his stomach, feeling the muscle shift under her touch. Her hand traced the line where his torso met his hips, where the hair grew thicker, and she felt him tense.

His eyes opened.

She met his gaze -steady, deliberate- and brought her hand beneath the water.

Down, over his hip. Along his thigh.

And then, because there was no reason not to, because this was part of washing him, just like everything else, she brought it between his legs.

His breath caught audibly when her fingers made contact.

She worked carefully, the same way she'd washed the rest of him. Trying to be practical about it, though there was nothing clinical about the way her own heart was racing now. About the way her face felt warm despite the cool air in the cabin.

She felt him harden under her touch, the change immediate and undeniable, but kept her movements steady. Thorough. Washing him the way he'd need to be washed, trying not to think about the fact that she was touching him there.

When she shifted slightly to reach more thoroughly, his hips shifted forward involuntarily,  a sharp, sudden movement that made the water slosh slightly in the tub.

Chasing the contact.

He caught himself immediately, forced his hips back down, and she heard him exhale through clenched teeth.

"Can't help it, sweetheart," he said, his voice wrecked. Strained. "You touch me like that, I-"

He cut himself off, gripping the tub harder, his whole body gone rigid with the effort of not moving. Of not reaching for her. Of not asking for more than she was offering.

"I know," she said quietly, and meant it.

She could see what this was doing to him. Could see it written in every line of his body, the tension, the restraint, the way he was barely holding himself together.

But he wasn't asking her to stop, or to do more. He was just letting her touch him, letting her explore. Letting her learn him at her own pace.

She finished washing him, moving the cloth down his thighs, along his calves, even taking each foot in turn and working the soap carefully between his toes.

When she was done, she rinsed her hands and rested it in her thighs, very aware that her sleeves were damp from the water. That her face was heated. That her breathing wasn't entirely steady.

And he was sitting there in the cooling water, his eyes on her, his chest rising and falling with breaths that were deeper than they should be.

Then he exhaled slowly and opened his eyes fully.

"Thank you," he said.

She nodded, not trusting her own voice, and stood.

"I'll get you a towel," she managed.

She crossed to the chest where they kept the linens, taking perhaps a moment longer than necessary to find one. Using the time to steady herself. To slow her breathing.

Behind her, she heard him shift in the water. Heard the quiet splash and the sound of water streaming off his body as he stood.

When she turned back, towel in hand, he was standing in the tub, water sluicing off his skin in rivulets that caught the firelight.

She could see all of him.

His broad shoulders. His chest. His stomach. The dark hair that trailed down from his navel. His thighs, thick with muscle.

And between them, the evidence of exactly how much her touch had affected him.

Still hard. Still wanting.

She felt her face heat again, felt that now-familiar flutter low in her belly, but she didn't look away, didn't drop her gaze or pretend she hadn't seen.

Just held out the towel.

He stepped out of the tub carefully, water dripping onto the floor, and reached for it.

But instead of taking the towel immediately, his hand caught hers.

Gently. The way he'd done at the dinner table earlier.

He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. Slowly. His lips were warm and soft against her skin.

His eyes held hers the entire time.

"You're gonna be the death of me," he said quietly, his voice still rough with want. With restraint. "You know that?"

She didn't know what to say to that.

Didn't know if there was anything she could say that would adequately express what she was feeling, the strange mix of power and vulnerability, of curiosity and nervousness, of wanting to touch him more and being afraid of what might happen if she did.

So she just stood there, her hand still caught in his, her heart pounding.

Then he released her and took the towel, wrapping it around his waist with movements that were just slightly less controlled than usual and walked to the bed.

"Come here," he said quietly.

She complied, and he reached for her hand, pulling her down to sit beside him. For a moment, they just sat there. Close but not touching beyond where his hand still held hers.

Then he brought their joined hands to his lap and traced his thumb across her knuckles.

"You didn't have to do that," he said quietly. "Wash me like that."

"I know."

"But you did anyway."

She nodded.

"Why?"

The question was gentle, curious. Not demanding. She considered it for a moment, then chose to be honest.

"Because I wanted to," she said finally. Simply. “Wanted to help you, and… wanted to touch you.”

His thumb stilled on her hand.

"You wanted to," he repeated, like he was testing the words.

"Yes."

He was quiet for a moment. Then: "You tell me, sweetheart. Am I pushin' too hard? Askin' for too much?"

She looked at him, at the genuine concern in his eyes, the way he was watching her like her answer actually mattered, and felt something warm settle in her chest.

"No," she said firmly. "You're not."

"You'd tell me if I was?"

"I would."

He studied her face for another moment, then nodded, seeming satisfied.

"Good," he said. "Because the last thing I want is for you to feel like you have to... like any of this is somethin' you're doin' out of duty."

"It's not," she said quietly. "I promise."

He swallowed, and she watched his throat work with the motion. Then he shifted slightly on the bed, his thighs separating just enough that the towel around his waist loosened, falling open slightly.

The evidence of his arousal was impossible to miss.

His hand tightened on hers for a moment, then released.

"Then," he said, his voice rough. "Would you be willin' to... help me with my situation?"

Her eyes flicked down, then back to his face.

She'd done this before. Multiple times, actually, in the weeks leading up to last night. He'd touched her, and both had discovered what she liked, what made her gasp and arch into his hand. And she'd explored him in return, learned the weight of him in her palm, the rhythm he preferred, the signs that told her he was close.

It had been part of learning each other. Part of him making sure she was comfortable with intimacy before they took that final step.

But somehow this time felt different. Maybe because now she knew what it felt like to have him inside her. Knew what he sounded like when he lost control completely.

"Alright," she said quietly.

His eyes darkened, and she saw relief and want on them.

She moved to stand between his knees, and he reached for the towel, pulling it away completely and tossing it aside. Then his hands came to rest lightly on her hips.

"You don't have to," he said, even though she'd already agreed. "If you're too tired, or if-"

"Bucky," she interrupted gently. "I said alright."

He exhaled slowly, and his grip on her hips tightened slightly.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, okay."

She started to reach for him, but the angle was awkward; she'd have to bend forward, lean down, and her back would start protesting within minutes.

He seemed to realize it at the same time she did.

"Here," he said, releasing her hips. "Get the stool. You'll be more comfortable."

She retrieved the small wooden stool they kept by a corner and positioned it between his knees. When she sat, his hands settled on her thighs this time, palms warm even through her skirts.

She wrapped her hand around him, and he made a sound -low and rough- that sent heat pooling down her belly.

"Christ," he muttered, his head falling back slightly. "Your hand’s so warm..."

She knew what he liked. Had learned it over the course of multiple evenings spent exploring each other, his patient instructions guiding her until she understood the pressure he needed, the rhythm that worked.

So she started the way she always did, slow and firm, her hand moving from base to tip and back again in long, steady strokes.

His hips shifted forward slightly, following the movement, and his hands tightened on her thighs.

"That's good," he said, his voice strained. "That's real good, sweetheart."

She kept the rhythm steady, watching his face. Watching the way his jaw clenched, the way his breathing went ragged, the way his eyes drifted closed.

His hands slid higher on her thighs, gripping through her skirts like he needed something to hold onto.

"Tighter," he said after a moment. "Can you- yeah, like that."

She adjusted her grip, and he groaned.

"Faster?"

"Not yet," he said, his voice tight. "Want it to last."

So she kept the pace slow. Deliberate. Let him feel every stroke.

One of his hands left her thigh and came up to cup her face, his thumb brushing across her cheekbone in a gesture that was tender despite the explicit nature of what she was doing to him.

"You're so good to me," he said quietly, his eyes opening to meet hers. "So damn good."

She felt her face heat at the words, at the sincerity in them.

His hand slid from her face down to her neck, then lower, curving around her waist. His other hand stayed on her thigh, grounding, possessive in a way that made her stomach flutter.

"Okay," he said after another minute, his breathing harsher now. "Okay, faster now."

She increased the pace, her wrist working in the rhythm she knew he needed, and felt him tense beneath her touch.

"God, yes," he muttered. "Just like that, sweet girl. Don't stop."

His hips started moving in small thrusts, matching her rhythm, and she could feel him getting closer. Could see it in the way his whole body tensed, in the way his fingers dug into her waist, in the way his breathing had turned ragged and uneven.

"Darlin’," he said, his voice breaking slightly. "I'm gonna-”

He was trying to warn her. Trying to give her time to move her hand and let him take over, grab the towel, to do whatever she needed to do.

But she didn't pull away.

Just kept moving her hand, moving, steady and sure, the way he needed.

"It's alright," she said quietly.

His eyes locked on hers, and something in his expression shifted. Went dark, intense and full of want.

"Fuck," he breathed, and then his whole body went rigid.

She felt him pulse in her hand, felt the warmth spill over her fingers as he spent, his hips jerking forward with each wave. He made a sound -low and broken- and his hand came up to cover hers, holding her in place while he rode it out.

When it was over, he slumped forward slightly, his forehead pressing against her shoulder, his breathing ragged against her neck.

They stayed like that for a moment, her hand still wrapped around him, his face buried in the curve of her neck, both of them catching their breath.

Then he lifted his head and looked at her, his eyes still dark but softer now.

"Sorry," he said, his voice rough. "Should've grabbed the towel, I just-"

"It's fine," she said.

He reached for the towel anyway, gently taking her hand and cleaning it carefully. When he was done, he cupped her face in both hands and kissed her. Slow and deep and grateful.

When he pulled back, he was looking at her with an expression she couldn't quite read.

"You should get into your nightgown," he said finally. "Get comfortable."

She nodded and stood, retrieving her nightgown from beneath her pillow where she'd tucked it that morning. She crossed to the corner near the dresser where a small peg rack hung on the wall, beginning to unbutton her dress.

----

Behind her, she heard him move, the creak of the bed as he stood, his footsteps crossing to the water bucket. The sound of him drinking deeply, then setting the dipper back with a soft clatter.

Then she heard him chewing biscuits.

She rolled her eyes. They'd just eaten. The man had put away two full bowls of stew and half a loaf of bread less than an hour ago.

More drinking. Another swallow. Then silence.

She'd worked her dress off and draped it over the peg, then the petticoat, the corset. Her fingers moved to the ties of her drawers when she heard his footsteps again.

But they weren't heading back to the bed.

They were coming toward her.

She stilled, her hands on the waistband of her drawers, and then she felt him behind her. Close. Not touching yet, but close enough that she could feel his body heat.

His hands settled on her bare skin, one at the small of her back, the other at her shoulder blade, and began to stroke her naked skin in slow strokes. She shivered despite the warmth of the cabin.

"Wanna touch you now," he said quietly, his voice rough and low near her ear. "Is that alright?"

She almost chuckled. So that's why he'd told her to change.

She finished pushing her drawers down her hips and stepped out of them, straightening fully. His hands were still on her back, waiting for her answer.

"More than alright," she said.

She heard the shift in his breathing. Felt one hand slide around to her hip, holding her in place.

"Yeah?" His other hand moved up to her shoulder, his thumb stroking along her collarbone. "You sure?"

She hesitated, feeling heat creep up her neck. Then, because he'd been honest with her earlier about being distracted at work, she made herself say it.

"You're not the only one who spent today thinking about last night, Bucky," she admitted quietly. "I was... distracted too."

His hand on her hip tightened, and she felt him step closer. Close enough that his chest was nearly pressed against her back.

"That right?" he said, and she could hear the satisfaction in his voice.

She nodded.

His hand slid from her hip upward, gliding over her side, until it cupped her breast. His palm was warm and calloused against her soft skin, and when his thumb found her nipple and began circling the areola in slow, deliberate strokes, she couldn't quite suppress the small sound that escaped her lips.

"What were you thinkin' about?" he asked, his mouth close to her ear now. "Specifically."

His thumb continued its maddening circles, not quite touching where she was starting to want him to touch, just tracing around and around until she felt her nipple tighten in response.

She swallowed, trying to find words while his hands were on her like this.

"About..." She paused, her breath catching when his thumb finally brushed directly over the peaked bud. "About how it felt. What you did."

"What I did," he repeated, his voice a low rumble against her back. His thumb rolled over her nipple again, more deliberately this time, and his other hand slid from her shoulder down to join the first, cupping her other breast. "Gonna need you to be more specific than that, sweetheart."

Both hands now, both thumbs working in tandem, and she had to brace one hand against the wall to steady herself.

"When you..." She took a shaky breath. "When you touched me. Before. And during."

"Durin’," he said, and there was something almost predatory in his tone now. Pleased. "You mean when I was inside you?"

"Yes," she managed.

His hands stilled for a moment, and then he turned her around to face him.

She found herself looking up at him, at the heat in his eyes, at the focus written across every line of his face.

"And what exactly were you thinkin' about that?" he asked, one hand coming up to cup her face while the other settled at her waist. "That… you wanted me to do it again?"

The directness of the question should have embarrassed her. Would have embarrassed her, even just yesterday.

But there was something about the way he was looking at her. The way his thumb was stroking along her cheekbone. The way he was asking instead of assuming.

"Eventually," she said honestly. "When... when it doesn't hurt anymore."

Something flickered in his expression, that guilt again, brief but unmistakable.

"It's gonna be a lot better next time," he said quietly.

"I know."

"When we do it again," he continued, his hand sliding from her waist to the small of her back, pulling her closer, "it's gonna feel good. Real good. I'm gonna make sure of it."

She believed him. Because he'd already shown her what good felt like, with his hands, with his mouth, with the patient way he'd learned what made her gasp and arch into his touch.

"But right now," he said, his voice dropping lower, "I just wanna make you feel good. Can I do that?"

"Yes," she said.

His mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.

"Good," he said. "Now come here."

He guided her backward toward the bed, and she went willingly, her heart already racing in anticipation of what came next.

He stood in front of her for a moment, just looking. His eyes traced over her, bare and exposed in the firelight, and she fought the urge to cover herself.

She'd been naked in front of him many times before. But it still made her feel vulnerable in a way she couldn't quite explain.

"Lie back," he said quietly.

She did, scooting further onto the bed and settling against the pillows. He followed, moving onto the bed with her, bracing himself on one arm beside her while his other hand came to rest on her stomach.

"You're tense," he observed, his palm warm against her skin.

"I'm not-"

"You are." His hand moved in a slow circle, soothing. "Relax, sweetheart. I'm just gonna make you feel good. That's all."

She took a breath and tried to let the tension ease out of her shoulders.

His hand moved from her stomach upward, sliding over her side, until it cupped her breast. The touch was gentle at first, exploratory, almost.

"I didn't pay enough attention to these last night," he said, almost to himself. His thumb brushed across her nipple, and she felt it tighten in response. "Was too focused on gettin' inside you."

His hand shifted, and he cupped her other breast, giving it the same careful attention, testing its weight.

"But I got time now," he continued, his voice dropping lower. "And I'm gonna take it."

He lowered his head, and she felt his breath ghost across her skin a moment before his mouth closed over her nipple. The sensation made her gasp, wet heat and gentle suction that sent a jolt of feeling straight between her thighs.

His tongue slowly circled the peaked bud, and then he sucked again, harder this time, and her hands flew to his shoulders without conscious thought.

"Bucky-"

He hummed against her skin, and his hand came up to tend to her other breast while his mouth stayed busy.

His fingers found her nipple and pressed firmly under it, making her arch slightly into the touch. Then he pulled gently, tugging just enough that the sensation rode the line between pleasure and something more intense.

She whined  -helpless and uncontrolled- and felt him smile against her breast. He switched sides then, his mouth moving to the breast his hand had been tending while his fingers took over where his mouth had been.

The pattern repeated, his tongue circling and flicking, his lips suckling, his teeth grazing so lightly she barely felt it. And his hand, always his hand, pressing and tugging and coaxing her body to respond.

She could feel herself getting restless beneath him. Could feel heat building low in her belly, her thighs shifting against each other, seeking friction that wasn't there.

"Easy," he murmured against her skin. "Not rushin' this."

His mouth stayed on her breast, working her nipple with single-minded focus until it was hard and sensitive and slick from his attention. Then he moved to the other side again, giving it the same thorough treatment until both peaks were tight and aching and she was breathing harder than she meant to.

When he finally pulled back, she looked down to find him watching her with dark, intent eyes. Her breasts felt hot from his attention, her nipples darker and visibly wet, and she felt heat flood her face at the sight.

"Look at you," he said quietly, his hand coming up to cup one breast again, his thumb brushing over the sensitized peak and making her shiver. "So responsive. My wife."

He leaned down and pressed one more kiss to each nipple -soft, almost reverent- and then his hand began to move lower.

Down her stomach. Over her hip. Along her inner thigh.

"Now," he said, his voice rough with want, "let me take care of the rest of you."

His hand moved higher on her thigh, and she felt her legs part without him having to ask.

"That's it," he murmured, his palm warm against her inner thigh. "Just like that, sweetheart."

But then his other hand joined the first, and he pressed gently, urging her to open wider, spread more. She expected him to lower his head. To put his mouth on her the way he'd done before, the way that had made her forget her own name.

But he didn't.

Instead, he just... looked.

His thumbs traced along her soft curls, and then he gently parted her. Spreading her open. Exposing her completely to his gaze.

She felt her whole body tense with something that went beyond nervousness into outright mortification. It was one thing to let him touch her. To let him use his mouth on her. She'd gotten used to that over the past weeks, had learned to relax into the pleasure of it.

But this was different.

This was him looking at the most intimate part of her body with the focus he usually reserved for checking a piece of wood for flaws.

"Bucky," she managed, her voice thin. "What are you-"

She tried to close her legs, instinct taking over, but his hands stayed firm on her thighs.

"Wanna look at my wife proper," he said quietly, his eyes still fixed between her legs. "Wanna see if… if you're hurt. From last night."

The admission made her relax a little. He was just checking on her, making sure he hadn't done more damage than he'd realized.

"What's bothering me is inside," she said quietly. "I don't think you can see it."

He looked up at her then, and she saw something flicker across his face. Maybe the realization that he wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for.

"Right," he said after a moment. "Yeah, that makes sense."

He seemed almost sheepish about it, and despite her discomfort, she felt a small flicker of affection.

Then his thumbs moved again, stroking gently along either side of her entrance.

"I'm not gonna use my fingers today," he said, lowering his head. "Just want to make you feel good. That alright?"

"Yes," she managed.

And then his mouth was on her.

The first touch of his tongue made her gasp, a broad, flat stroke that started low and dragged upward with deliberate slowness.

He did it again. And again. Long, slow licks that covered every inch of her, and made her remember with what made her twitch, what made her breathing hitch, what made her hands fly to his hair without meaning to.

His tongue circled her entrance gently, and she tensed slightly at the sensation.

He must have felt it, because he moved away immediately. Shifted his focus higher, to the small bundle of nerves that made her fall apart when he paid it the right kind of attention.

He settled there now, his tongue working in slow, deliberate circles while his hands held her thighs open. Keeping her spread for him. Keeping her exactly where he wanted her.

"Bucky," she breathed, and she felt him hum against her in response.

His hands moved from her thighs to her hips, holding her down. Not rough, but firm, keeping her still while he worked.

His tongue flicked faster now, more focused, and she felt that familiar tension start to build low in her belly. The sensation coiled tighter and tighter with each pass of his tongue.

She was dimly aware that her fingers had tightened in his hair. That she was making sounds she couldn't quite control. And he just kept going. Patiently. Thoroughly.

Like he had all the time in the world and was determined to use every second of it, making her feel good.

She gasped hard when he started to suck gently, his lips closing around that sensitive spot and creating pressure that made her vision blur, her hips grinding shamelessly against his mouth.

"Let go, sweetheart. I got you." He murmured against her skin.

His tongue returned to its work -circling, flicking, pressing- and she felt the tension reach a breaking point.

And then it snapped.

The pleasure hit her in waves, rolling through her body in pulses that made her arch off the bed despite his hands holding her hips. Made her cry out -his name, maybe, or just an incoherent sound- while he kept his mouth on her, working her through it with gentle, steady strokes.

When the waves finally subsided, she collapsed back against the pillows, boneless and breathing hard. He pressed one last soft kiss to her entrance, then another to her inner thigh, before pulling back.

She looked down to find him watching her with an expression of deep satisfaction.

"Good?" he asked, his voice rough.

She could only nod, still trying to catch her breath.

He moved up the bed, settling beside her and pulling her against his chest. His hand stroked lazily up and down her back while her breathing slowly returned to normal.

"You did good," he murmured into her hair. "Real good for me."

She made a sound that might have been agreement or just exhaustion, and felt him chuckle quietly. They lay like that for a while, the cabin quiet except for the crackling fire and their breathing.

Eventually, he stirred.

"Should get you into that nightgown," he said. "Before you fall asleep like this and wake up freezing."

She made a noise of protest, but he was already moving, retrieving the nightgown from where it had fallen to the floor and helping her sit up enough to pull it over her head.

Once she was covered, he settled back down beside her, pulling the blankets up over both of them and tucking her against his side. She felt his fingers trace idle patterns on her shoulder, his breathing deep and even. The warmth of his body, the weight of the quilts, the dying fire, it all started to pull her toward sleep.

She was just beginning to drift when his voice rumbled quietly through his chest.

.

"Been thinkin'," he murmured against her hair. "Tomorrow's Sunday. We could head into town if you want."

She stirred slightly, her hand settling on his chest. "Oh. Is the reverend coming?"

He let out a quiet laugh.

"He ain’t. That's exactly why we're goin'."

She lifted her head enough to swat his arm lightly. He didn't even flinch, just kept that amused expression on his face.

"The boys at camp were sayin' that with winter comin' on, a lot of the commercial traffic's gonna die off," he explained. "So the shopkeepers and folks in town decided to open on Sundays for the next few weeks. Give the logging crews and the miners from up the mountain a chance to stock up on what they need before things get real bad."

"That's very convenient," she said.

"It is," he agreed. "They're clearly doin' it to make money, not charity, but it works out for us."

She was quiet for a moment, then asked, "Is there something you need?"

"Few things," he said. "Root cellar could be fuller."

She tensed slightly against him, and he felt it immediately.

"Ain’t your fault," he said before she could apologize. "You came from the city. You got no idea what winter's like out here. How much we need to have stored up."

His hand stroked along her back, soothing.

"Plus," he added, "I've been eatin' more since you got here. Means we're goin' through supplies faster."

She relaxed slightly at that, settling back against him.

"So, provisions," he continued. "Anything that'll keep. And..." He paused. "You're gonna need warmer clothes."

"I have-"

"Not warm enough," he interrupted gently. "What you brought from back East ain't gonna cut it when it really starts snowin'. We're gonna be inside most of the time, sure, but there'll be moments we need to go out. Tendin' to the horse, clearin' snow, fetchin' firewood. And even inside..." He pulled her a little closer. "There's gonna be times when the fire alone ain't enough. You're gonna need layers. Real warm ones."

She was quiet for a moment, processing that.

"I feel silly. Didn't realize it would be that cold," she said finally.

"It gets real cold," he confirmed. "We'll keep the fire goin' day and night, but the cabin’s living space ain’t precisely small. Heat doesn't reach everywhere equally."

He felt her shiver slightly at the thought, and he tightened his arm around her.

"We'll manage," he said. "Just need to be prepared. That's all."

"Alright," she said quietly. "Then we'll go to town tomorrow."

"Also," he added, and she could hear the smile in his voice, "wanna show you off a little before we get snowed in."

She snorted against his chest. "Show me off?"

"It's true," he said, unrepentant. His hand slid from her back down to her hip, then lower, giving her rear a gentle squeeze through the nightgown. "We haven't been able to go into town together much. Just that first time, and Thanksgiving. Want folks to see us together proper."

"Oh, Bucky…"

"Want 'em to see you on my arm," he continued, his tone softening slightly. "Want 'em to see that you're mine and I'm yours."

She felt giddy at the quiet possessiveness in his voice. The pride.

"And," he added, "thought I might take you for a drink at the saloon. If you're amenable."

She lifted her head to look at him, one eyebrow raised. "Are you planning to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me?"

His eyes gleamed in the low firelight, and his mouth curved into something wicked.

"Hm, are you concerned?" he asked, his voice dropping lower. "Or are you askin' me to?"

She felt heat flood through her body, -embarrassment and something else entirely- and she buried her face back in his chest.

"That's not- I didn't mean-"

She could feel him laughing, the vibrations rumbling through his chest beneath her cheek.

"If that's what you want," he said, clearly enjoying himself, "I'll let you drink all you want. That way you can tell me again how handsome I am and how you can't stop lookin' at me."

She made a strangled sound and covered her face with her hands, even though he couldn't see her anyway with her face pressed against his chest.

"Oh my god," she mumbled into her palms.

His laughter softened, and she felt his hand come up to gently pull her hands away from her face.

"Hey," he said, his voice losing that teasing edge. "Look at me."

She lifted her head reluctantly, expecting to see him still grinning at her expense.

But his expression had changed. Still warm, but serious now.

"I was glad to hear that, darling," he said quietly. "Real glad. It’s nice to know it ain’t only me who's smitten with you. That you feel somethin' for me too."

"You made it easy," she maintained his gaze. "To care about you. You are patient with me. Kind. You never made me feel like I was a burden or an obligation, even though that's exactly what I was at first."

His hand cupped her face more fully. "You were never a burden."

"I was," she insisted. "I showed up unannounced, caused a scandal, forced you into a marriage you didn't want-"

He huffed.

“I put a sign, woman. I was pretty much interested in gettin’ married”

“But we didn’t get to court properly, you didn’t know where you were getting into-”

“I think things turned out pretty well.” he interrupted gently, his thumb stroking along her jaw.

She huffed. "You can't possibly have known that when you agreed to marry me. I could have been awful. Lazy, or mean, or-"

"You ain't."

"But you didn't know that."

“No," he said finally. "I didn't know. But I had a feelin'."

She waited, feeling the warmth of his palm on her skin, grounding her.

"When you were standin' there in that room," he continued, his voice low and thoughtful, "lookin' terrified and tryin' so hard not to show it... and then you looked at me with those eyes of yours and said yes anyway." He paused, his thumb brushing the apple of her cheek. "I thought, this woman's got courage and sense. And I liked that."

She felt something flutter in her chest, but forced herself to speak.

"That's not much to base a marriage on," she mumbled.

"Maybe not," he agreed. "But then you didn't flinch when I was sick. Didn't complain when you had to live in a place that ain't nowhere near what you deserved.” His hand pressed against her heart. "And every day, you gave me more reasons. The way you hum when you're concentratin'. Mendin' my shirts even though you hate sewin'. How you look at me like..." He trailed off, and she saw something flicker in his expression, raw and unguarded.

"Like what?" she whispered.

His jaw worked for a moment, and she could see him gathering courage for whatever he was about to say.

"Like I'm worth somethin'," he said finally, his voice rough. "Like I'm more than just a logger with a cabin and a horse. Like you see me.”

She pushed herself up slightly, needing him to see her face, to understand that she meant every word.

"You are worth something," she said firmly, her hand coming up to rest against his chest. "You're worth everything, Bucky. You're the most attentive, kindest man I've ever known. You're honest, and hardworking, and you-" Her voice caught slightly. "You made me feel safe when I had nowhere to go. You made me feel wanted when my whole life I'd been treated like a burden."

His expression had gone very still, his eyes locked on hers.

"You took care of me when you were sick yourself," she continued, her thumb stroking over his heart. "You taught me things without making me feel stupid for not knowing them. You listen to me. You make me laugh. You-"

"And good lookin'?" he interjected, and she could see the corner of his mouth twitching even as his eyes remained suspiciously bright.

She huffed out a breath that was half laugh, half sob, and swatted his chest lightly.

"Yes, damn you," she said, "And ridiculously handsome. Unfairly so. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

His grin was crooked and devastating. "Just checkin’."

But then his hand came up to cradle her face, his thumb catching the tear that had slipped down her cheek, and his expression turned serious again.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "For seein' all that. For sayin' it."

She leaned into his touch. "It's the truth."

"I gambled followin' my gut," he said quietly, his eyes holding her gaze. "And every single day since, you've proven me right. You're everythin' I didn't know I needed, darlin’. And-" He paused, and she saw his throat work. "And I'm in love with you."

She couldn't speak for a moment, couldn't do anything but stare at him as the words hugged her, warm and solid and real.

And then it hit her, not like something new, but like something she'd known all along and only now had a name for. The way her heart lifted when she heard his footsteps on the porch. The way she'd started thinking of this cabin as home not because of the place, but because he was in it. The way even now, with her body still tender and her heart wide open and vulnerable, she felt safe.

"I love you too," she replied, and her voice came out steadier than she expected, considering her emotion. "I think- I think I have for a while now.”

His eyes searched hers for a moment, and then a slow smile spread across his face, the kind that made her stomach flip.

"Do you, now?" he murmured, his voice dropping lower.

She nodded, unable to look away from him.

He kissed her then, slow and deep and thorough, his hand still pressed over her heart like he could feel it beating just for him. When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against hers, both of them breathing a little harder.

He shifted slightly, just enough to tilt his head, and she felt him smile against her temple before he pressed a kiss there, soft and lingering. Then another at her cheekbone. Her jaw. Like he was mapping her with his mouth, taking his time, savoring.

She closed her eyes and just felt it -felt him- until her breathing evened out and matched his.

"So," he said after a moment, his voice warm with contentment. "Tomorrow. Town, supplies, that drink at the saloon, and whatever else you want."

"Just… being together sounds perfect," she said softly.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead, his arms coming around her securely.

The fire had burned down to embers, and outside, she could hear the wind moving through the pines and the distant call of an owl. But inside, wrapped in Bucky's warmth with his heartbeat steady beneath her ear, everything felt exactly as it should be.

She let her eyes drift closed, a smile on her lips, and let herself fall into sleep knowing that tomorrow -and every day after- she'd wake up exactly where she belonged.

Small stone, at that.

He tilted his head back once, studying the face of a structure looming over the street, and felt something close to vertigo.

The bricks -if that was even the word- were absurdly small, identical, and stacked in rows so precise they might have been drawn with a ruler and simply willed into permanence. Higher than any keep he'd laid siege to. Higher than the bell tower at Wintermouth Cathedral, which had taken forty years and three master masons and had still needed scaffolding twice in his lifetime.

How does it hold?

She stopped in front of one such building, smaller than its neighbors, though smaller was doing considerable work in that sentence, and mounted three steps to a set of doors.

She pulled one open without ceremony, without announcing herself to anyone, without a steward or a porter to bar entry to a stranger, and walked inside as though the building belonged to her the way a woman owns a shawl.

He followed, because there was nothing else to do, and stepped into a hall.

Marble underfoot, or something convincingly like it. A row of small brass boxes set into one wall, each with a slot and a number, they purpose entirely opaque. Light again without flame, hanging in a glass fixture overhead, steady and shadowless.

This is not a florist's household, he thought.

He knew what it was to walk into a great house as a guest and be received as one. He knew, with rather more bitterness, what it was to walk into a great house as staff, had spent enough of his squireship fetching, carrying, standing at attention in halls not unlike this one, waiting to be noticed or ignored, whichever suited the lord in question that day.

Was that it, then? Flowers by morning, service by evening? some second position in a household large enough to warrant it, explaining the marble, the brass, the strange indifferent grandeur of the place?

He said none of this. He had learned, in the space of one morning, that his conclusions about this century had a poor survival rate once spoken aloud. So he held his tongue and followed her toward a narrow staircase at the back of the hall.

The climbing did nothing to improve his opinion of the day, since each step was a constant reminder of the state of his bruised ribs. He kept his breathing even through will alone, one hand trailing the rail, and said nothing.

She glanced back once, near the second landing, some question half-formed on her face. He gave her nothing to work with, so she turned around and kept climbing.

By the third floor, sweat had gathered along his spine beneath the ruined shirt, and his vision had gone a touch too bright at the edges, a warning he chose to ignore in favor of counting doors instead of stairs.

---

She'd clocked it two flights ago, the careful, deliberate way he was breathing, the hand that never quite let go of the rail, the fact that a man who'd crossed half of Camden without complaint had gone very quiet somewhere around the second landing.

She didn't say anything. She had a feeling he'd sooner collapse on her stairwell than admit to needing a minute, and there was something in the set of his jaw - stubborn, absurdly proud, entirely unbothered by what it was clearly costing him - that she found herself, against her better judgment, a little charmed by. Which was not a thought she had time for right now, with a bleeding stranger three steps behind her and a landing still to reach.

She kept climbing. Slower than she strictly needed to. Just in case.

----

A corridor stretched ahead of them, narrow, lined with identical doors, and identical brass numbers screwed into identical wood.

He catalogued it out of habit -the width, how many doors stood between them and the stairs- before it occurred to him that there was likely nothing here worth defending against, and the habit still refused to switch itself off.

From behind one door, there was music. Not lute or pipe, but something layered and strange, a woman's voice threaded through with instruments he couldn't place.

From another, the smell of onions frying, rich enough that his stomach gave a low, traitorous rumble.

He frowned at that second door as they passed it.

The kitchens were on the third floor. It made no sense.

Kitchens belonged low, ground level, or below it if the house could afford the excavation, close to the well and the fuel stores, far enough from the sleeping quarters that smoke and grease didn't creep into a lord's bedding.

Every keep he'd ever served in, ever laid siege to, ever simply visited, kept its kitchens low. He turned it over, half convinced he was missing some obvious explanation, and came up with nothing.

Unless this household ran differently. Unless the entire logic of the place inverted itself the way everything else in this century seemed determined to.

She stopped in front of a door indistinguishable from the others save its number, and drew a ring of keys from her purse, finding the right one without hesitation, the ease of long habit. The lock turned, and the door opened onto a narrow entry, dim and modest, but unmistakably a dwelling.

He stood in the corridor a moment longer than necessary, his gaze moving once more down the row of identical doors stretching in both directions. Service quarters, he decided.

"You may introduce me to your employer at your convenience," he said, following her through. "I would prefer not to be mistaken for an intruder in his household a second time today."

She turned to look at him with an expression he was rapidly learning to be wary of, the kind that came right before she informed him he'd misunderstood something, in a manner she found simultaneously exhausting and, despite herself, a little bit funny.

He didn't yet know what he'd said wrong. That, too, was becoming familiar.

"My employer," she repeated.

"The lord of this house." He gestured back toward the corridor and its row of doors, already bracing -without quite knowing why- for the ground to shift under him again.

She closed the door behind him and looked at him a moment, one hand still on the latch, working through how precisely to explain something she'd clearly never had to explain to a grown man before.

"Mr. Barnes," she said slowly. "There is no lord."

"Then whose house-" He stopped himself. Every theory he'd voiced aloud today had met the same fate, and he saw no cause to expect this one would fare better.

"This is my apartment." She said the word carefully. "It's mine. I pay rent on it every month, out of what the shop makes. Every one of those doors you just walked past, that's not one household. That's a different family behind every single one. A different kitchen, different bathrooms. Strangers to each other, mostly, sharing a staircase and nothing else."

He stared at her, and felt the shape of the building rearrange itself in his mind. It was not a great house at all, but something closer to a hive. Dozens of lives stacked one atop the other with nothing holding them together but shared stairs and walls.

"An entire building," he said slowly, "of strangers."

"Yes."

"Stacked."

"...Yes."

She was watching him, but with an attention that had nothing to do with the conversation they were having, and he felt it land somewhere just beneath his collar before he'd decided what to make of it.

"Hey," she said, softer than before. "You look like you're about to go down again. Sit for a minute?"

She gestured toward a low, upholstered thing pushed against the far wall. Two cushioned seats joined into one continuous piece, the fabric a bright, unrepentant orange.

He had never seen its like. Not a bench, not quite a settle, too soft-looking for either, its cushions plump and uniform in a way no upholsterer he knew could have managed by hand.

It looked, if he was honest, extremely inviting.

It also looked new. Unmarked. The kind of thing a household kept for guests of consequence, and he was aware, with some discomfort, of exactly how far he fell from that description at present.

"I would ruin it," he said.

She blinked. "What?"

"The seat." He gestured at himself, at the dried blood, the dirt ground into the linen, the general catastrophe of a man who had crossed six centuries without the benefit of a bath. "That fabric will not survive contact with me. And I am not dressed to sit in a lady's parlor regardless."

Something flickered across her face, not quite amusement, but not quite exasperation either.

"It's not a parlor," she said. "It's just the living room. And it's a couch, Mr. Barnes, not a coronation throne. It'll survive."

"All the same." He held his ground, aware even as he did it that the ground in question was faintly ridiculous: a man arguing etiquette while swaying on his feet in a stranger's home, in a century that had already proven it cared nothing for the rules he knew.

He couldn't seem to let go of them regardless. They were, at the moment, nearly the only thing of his own he still had. "If you have something less consequential."

She studied him a moment longer, then exhaled through her nose in a way he was beginning to recognize as her particular flavor of surrender. "Fine. The kitchen, then."

She led him into a smaller room with a tiled floor, pale and clean, a window over a deep basin, and, against the wall, a small table with two chairs, their seats covered in the same relentless color as the couch, though blue instead of orange.

He lowered himself into one carefully, his ribs complaining the entire way down, and studied the chair beneath him.

Bright, even, unfaded blue. The kind of pigment that, in his experience, cost more per yard than the chair itself was likely worth.

For kitchen furniture.

"Water?" she asked, already moving toward the far wall.

He nodded, distracted, still cataloguing the room: the smoothness of every surface, the absence of soot anywhere. Then she opened a tall white cabinet set against the wall, and he stopped cataloguing anything at all.

Cold air rolled out of it. He felt it from where he sat, and some old instinct, the one that had kept him alive through winters of campaign, sat up and took notice before the rest of him had caught up.

"What," he said slowly, "is that?"

"The icebox?" She glanced back, one hand still on the door, a bottle in the other.

"It has no ice."

"It doesn't need ice, it's electric. Keeps things cold on its own."

He rose, forgetting his ribs for exactly as long as it took three steps to carry him there, and looked into the cabinet himself before she could object.

Shelves. Bottles. A bowl of eggs, pale and ordinary, sitting beside butter, unmelted, in a room warm enough that any butter he'd ever known would have long since gone soft and glistening on a table.

He found himself wanting, absurdly, to touch it, to confirm with his own hand what his eyes were telling him couldn't be true.

"How?"

"I don't actually know," she admitted, and there was something almost sheepish in it. "Something with wires, a motor… I don't know the mechanics of it any more than I know how a telephone carries a voice across town. It just works. You plug it in, and it's cold, and that's as far as my understanding goes."

He stared at the shelves a moment longer, at the ordinary miracle of butter refusing to soften, and felt something very close to wonder. And beneath the wonder, quieter, something that felt uncomfortably like grief.

Traveling through centuries, he had arrived at a place where a woman kept the dead of winter locked in a box in her kitchen and thought nothing of it.

She poured water into a glass -clear, flawless glass- and set it in front of him as though it were nothing at all.

He was hardly positioned to complain, since she had taken a bleeding stranger into her home and fed him besides, but he found himself glancing toward the cabinets regardless, expecting a jug of small ale, a pitcher of cider, anything a household of any means offered a guest before water.

Water alone, had killed men he'd known. Good men, careful men, who'd survived worse than a bad well and gone down anyway with their guts turned to fire. Almost every house's table poured ale or wine for that reason as much as for taste.

That this place, with its marble hall and its brass boxes and its indifferent grandeur, should hand him water and nothing else struck him as strange enough to notice.

He lifted the glass and drank anyway, telling himself that whatever this century had done to its water, it had also apparently solved the preservation of food in a cool box, and a man who trusted one miracle might as well trust the other.

The taste caught him off guard. It wasn’t unpleasant, but strange. No hint of the barrel it had traveled in, no faint rot at the back of the throat that a man learned to drink around.

It tasted, as far as he could tell, of nothing at all. Clean. He'd never had water that tasted that clean, and some old, wary part of him kept waiting for the sickness to follow regardless.

"Is it safe?" he asked, careful to keep the question light, a thing he was merely curious about, rather than a thing he genuinely needed answered before his next swallow.

"Perfectly. It's tap water, comes straight out of the faucet, city runs it through filtration before it ever gets to a pipe. You could drink it all day and never think twice."

Faucet. He turned the word over, another one for the stack, and said nothing.

She caught the blankness on his face and rose, crossing to the basin set into the counter.

"Here. If the jug ever runs dry and you want more, don't wait around for me. Just do this." She turned a small metal handle.

Water came. No need to pour, carry, or draw it up on a rope from some hidden well; it simply arrived, a clear, steady stream falling into the basin, as though the house itself had a vein opened somewhere and this was where it bled.

He was on his feet before he'd decided to be, some part of him needing, absurdly, to see the mechanism of it, as if enough looking might finally make it make sense. "Where does it come from?"

"Pipes. Underground, runs under the whole city, connects to a reservoir north of here. Every building's hooked into it." She watched him with open curiosity now. "You want it hot instead of cold, there's a second handle."

"Hot?"

"Mm-hm."

He looked at the two handles. Looked at her. Looked back at the water, still running, and felt the day's tally of impossible things tip over into something he no longer had the will to keep counting.

"You are telling me," he said slowly, "that every house in this city commands its own well. Hot and cold both. Without a servant, a bucket, or a rope."

"That's the general idea, yeah."

He said nothing for a long moment, turning it over, what a man could build, what a man could stop needing, if he never again had to haul water himself.

He thought, unbidden, of every squire and servant he'd ever sent down to a well at dawn, or even gone himself when he squired, and wondered what those boys would have made of this.

She reached past him and shut the tap. The water stopped as abruptly as it had come, and the silence that followed felt, absurdly, louder than the sound itself had been.

----

She watched him sit back down, slower than he probably wanted her to notice, and felt her own worry sharpen in response.

He was pale under the bruising. Worse than in the stockroom, now that the adrenaline of the street and the stairs had burned off and left him with nothing to run on but stubbornness. She was starting to suspect stubbornness was mostly what he had left today.

He needed a bath. Badly. And rest, and quiet, all of which she could actually provide here, behind a locked door, away from patrolmen and gossiping bakery owners. That part, at least, she could manage.

What she couldn't provide was clothes, and that was the part actually nagging at her.

He couldn't wear what he had on; there was no version of a corner grocery where a six-foot-something man in a laced medieval tunic and thigh straps walked in without every head turning. She'd been running through options since the stockroom and kept landing on the same one.

"I can wash what I'm wearing," he offered, apparently following the direction of her thoughts more accurately than she'd expected. "It only wants soap and water. I've done worse with less on campaign."

"It's not really a laundry problem, Mr. Barnes." She said it as gently as she could manage, not wanting to make him feel worse than he already seemed to about needing help. "Even clean, that's not something a man wears walking down Camden Street in this year."

"I have nothing to offer you outright," he said, after a moment, "but I could part with something of value. The belt. The leg straps." He nodded down at the heavy leather still buckled across his hips and thighs, the only thing of worth currently on his person. "The leather alone is good work. It should fetch enough for whatever I need."

She wasn't sure whether to be touched or exasperated, and settled, after a second, on both at once. There was something almost unbearable about how hard he was working to make sure he didn't owe her anything. "I'm not taking your pants apart for scrap, Mr. Barnes."

"It is not scrap. It is craftsmanship."

"I believe you. I'm still not doing it. I know a place. Charity, secondhand, mostly donated. You don't have to pay, and you don't have to give me your belt to make yourself feel better about not paying. It's fine."

He didn't look like he agreed that it was fine, but he said nothing further, which she was coming to understand was as close to agreement as she was likely to get from him. She'd take it.

"Stay put and drink your water," she said, smoothing her skirt. Then she crossed to a basket near the icebox and drew out a cloth bundle with biscuits, plain and slightly dense.

"You're probably still hungry. One sandwich isn't much, considering whatever it is you've been through today. Eat those while I'm gone. I'll be as quick as I can."

He looked at the plate, then at her, something in his face she couldn't quite name, and she decided not to push for a name for it.

"Thank you," he said, quiet enough that she almost missed it over the sound of her own keys. "And… Bucky." He said it almost before he'd decided to. "Please. Call me Bucky."

She paused with her hand on the door, caught off guard. It was a small, private surprise hearing a man this formal hand her something informal on purpose, like he'd decided she'd earned it.

"Alright then," she said. "Bucky."

She was out the door before she could decide what to do with the rest of it.

----

She took the stairs two at a time, bags of flour-sack cloth knocking against her hip with every step, and allowed herself a small, private satisfaction over the haul.

Two pairs of trousers, both plain, both in decent shape. Two undershirts. Three button-up shirts, all in the largest size the donation bin carried; apparently the largest size was also the least popular, because she'd had her pick of three, tags barely worn off. Socks, a few pairs, unmatched but clean.

She'd even swung by the little men's shop on the corner for the one thing charity boxes never carried enough of, sliding two pairs of short underwear across the counter to a clerk who hadn't so much as blinked. Small mercies.

Not bad, she thought, climbing the last flight. Not bad at all for forty minutes and whatever cash she'd had folded in her coat pocket.

The apartment was quiet when she let herself in, quiet enough that her stomach gave one small, unpleasant lurch before she registered why. The living room was empty, and for one dumb second her mind went straight to worst-case: gone, hurt because he meddled with something unknown, collapsed somewhere she couldn't see.

She set the bags down just inside the kitchen doorway and leaned in.

There he was. Exactly where she'd left him, same chair, same table, the plate of biscuits reduced to crumbs and one lonely survivor. Relief hit before she'd even fully processed why she'd been braced for something worse.

His head had tipped back against the wall at some point, throat exposed, mouth slightly open, one hand still loosely curled around the water glass as though he'd meant to keep drinking.

He hadn't heard her come in. Whatever was going on with him, and whatever had actually happened to leave him bruised and half-convinced he was a knight out of a storybook, the exhaustion was real, and something about seeing it made her chest ache a little more than she felt entitled to on a few hours' acquaintance.

She crossed the room slowly, quiet out of some instinct she didn't examine too closely and stopped a few feet away. He frowned in his sleep, and she found herself wondering what a man like him dreamed about. Nothing good, probably.

It was, she noted with some irritation at herself, deeply unfair how good-looking he still managed to be while doing it. Even bruised, even filthy, even asleep in a kitchen chair with his neck at an angle that was going to cost him.

Great, she thought. That's exactly the thought you needed to be having right now.

She shook it off, mostly, and refocused on the more immediate problem: he was going to wake up with a crick in his neck to rival his ribs if she let him stay like that much longer.

"Hey," she said, gently, crouching down to something closer to his eye level before she reached out. She touched his shoulder. Lightly, carefully, and tried to say his name again.

It happened faster than she could track.

One second her hand was on his shoulder, his name half-formed on her lips for the second time, and the next, his eyes had snapped open, his hand had closed around her wrist like a manacle, and his other hand was at her throat.

Not gripping, not yet. Just a half-second suspended somewhere between reflex and intention, fingers pressed light but certainly against her skin, the pressure of a man who knew exactly where to close his hand and how much force it would take, poised on the edge of applying it.

Her whole body had gone very still, some animal part of her taking stock of the situation faster than the rest of her could catch up.

Then he saw her. Not whatever ghost his sleeping mind had conjured in her place,  and his hand recoiled from her throat like he'd touched a stove.

He let go of her wrist a half-beat after, both hands snapping back, and shoved himself away from her so hard the chair legs shrieked against the tile.

"I'm sorry." Low, fast, wrecked. "I'm sorry- I didn't- are you hurt, milady? Did I hurt you?"

Milady? Well, at least it wasn’t wench.

"I'm fine." She kept her voice level, even though her pulse hadn't quite caught up with that fact yet, one hand coming up unconsciously to touch her own throat, still warm from where his'd been. "I'm… fine."

He didn't look like he believed her, and honestly, she wasn't sure she believed herself either. Not shaken by what he'd done, exactly, but by how close it had come, and how little time there'd been between his eyes opening and his hand finding her throat with that kind of certainty.

He was staring at his own hands now, jaw working, color gone from his face in a way that had nothing to do with the morning's injuries.

"May I see?" His voice had dropped, quiet and careful, stripped of all its usual formal armor. "Please. I need to see that I didn't-" He didn't finish it. "Please."

She lowered her hand and let him look, some instinct telling her this wasn't a moment to argue with him about it, that he needed the proof more than she needed the space.

He stepped close, close enough that she could feel him not quite touching her, his eyes moving over her throat, but there was nothing to find. The barest ghost of pressure, gone already, nothing that would leave a mark.

She was abruptly, uselessly aware of how near he was standing, and annoyed with herself for noticing it now of all moments.

He looked at her face once he was satisfied, and whatever was in his eyes in that moment, she didn't have a word ready for it.

"I shouldn't have grabbed you like that," she said finally, quiet. "Waking someone up out of a dead sleep, I should've known better. My fault too."

"No." His answer was fast, firm, and with no room in it for argument. "It is not. A man does not require permission to be startled to see reason before he raises a hand to a woman who has done nothing but show him kindness. No excuse covers what I nearly did. I won't let you make one for me."

She opened her mouth to push back  -some instinct to smooth it over, to meet him halfway- then closed it again, because the look on his face told her plainly this wasn't a fight she'd win today, maybe not ever.

"I'm sorry," he said again, and this time it landed somewhere lower and more tired than the first two.

She let it sit a moment before she moved. Then she nodded toward the doorway, toward the bags still waiting where she'd left them, glad for once to have somewhere else to point his attention, and hers.

"C'mere. I want to show you what I got."

It wasn't subtle, the redirection of the topic, and she suspected he knew exactly what she was doing. But he let her do it anyway and followed her the few steps to the kitchen table, watching her upend the flour-sack bags across it with something that might, in a better hour, have been curiosity.

Trousers. Shirts, still stiff with the fold-lines of whoever had donated them and never worn out. Socks in mismatched pairs. A single undershirt he picked up and turned over in his hands, studying the cut like it was a garment he half-recognized, and half didn't.

"They're not much," she said, "but they'll get you through the next few days. We'll figure out the rest as we go."

He set the undershirt down and looked over the rest of the pile with careful attention.

"Thank you," he said. She was starting to lose count of how many ways he'd found to say it, and how much he seemed to mean it every time and how much, against all reason, she was starting to like hearing it.

"Don't thank me yet." She managed something close to a smile, enough to pull the air in the room back toward ordinary. "You still have to survive a bath. And getting dressed. I have a feeling that's going to be its own adventure."

He looked at her like he had no idea what she meant by that.

She decided not to ruin the surprise.

Next Chapter

. ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁ ⟡ ܁ . ⊹ ₊ ܁.

Chapter 6 - Favorite Takeout and Secrets

The penthouse kitchen smelled like safety.

You sat on one of the high leather stools at the marble island, still wrapped in Bucky’s oversized black T-shirt and a pair of his drawstring sweatpants that you’d had to roll three times at the ankles. The city lights glittered thirty floors below through the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning the Hudson into a ribbon of liquid gold. It was past midnight, but the kitchen felt warm—soft under-cabinet lighting, the low hum of the Sub-Zero fridge, the faint scent of cedar from the open pantry. Everything here was expensive, deliberate, and strangely calming.

Bucky moved around the space like he belonged in every shadow. He’d changed into a clean black Henley and dark jeans, the sleeves pushed up to show the tattoos crawling along his forearms. A few minutes earlier he’d stepped into the hallway to make a quiet call, and now the doorman was delivering bags from Carbone—the real one, not the knock-off. He unpacked them with careful hands: two steaming containers of chicken parmesan (extra crispy cutlets, extra marinara, just the way you liked it), spaghetti with garlic and oil on the side, warm garlic knots wrapped in foil, and a small tiramisu in a crystal dish. Your stomach growled before you could stop it.

You stared at the food, then at him.

“How… how did you know?” The question slipped out before you could catch it. You’d never told anyone your go-to order. Not even the girls at the lounge.

Bucky’s blue eyes met yours, soft in a way that made your chest ache. He set a plate in front of you with the same gentle precision he’d used wiping your face earlier.

“I pay attention,” he said simply. No smirk. No evasion. Just truth. “Eat, baby girl. You must be hungry.”

You didn’t press. Part of you was too tired to wonder how a man like James Barnes knew the exact comfort meal that reminded you of your father’s Sunday dinners. Another part—the part that was already leaning toward him like a flower toward sunlight—didn’t want to know. Not tonight. You picked up the fork with fingers that still trembled faintly and took the first bite.

The flavors exploded—rich, cheesy, perfect. A small, involuntary hum left your throat.

Bucky’s mouth curved, just a fraction. He sat across from you with his own plate, though he ate slowly, mostly watching you.

For a while the only sounds were silverware and the distant city hum. 

“Have you always wanted to be a jazz singer?,” Bucky said, breaking the silence. 

“Yes. I’ve always loved that genre of music,” you said quietly, twirling spaghetti around your fork. “Since I was little. My dad used to play old records—Ella Fitzgerald, Blossom Dearie, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan. I’d stand on the coffee table and pretend the broom was a microphone.” A soft laugh escaped you. “He said I sounded like an angel who’d wandered into the wrong neighborhood.”

Bucky’s eyes never left your face. “He was right.”

You blushed, ducking your head. “It’s not… I don’t know. It just feels right. When I’m on stage, everything else disappears. The notes take the weight off my chest for a little while.”

He nodded, understanding flickering behind his gaze. “What made you start singing at the Velvet Room?”

You hesitated, fork pausing mid-air. The question was gentle, but it touched the edge of something you weren’t ready to open. Your hands shook harder for a second; you set the fork down.

“I needed the money,” you admitted. “Badly. The tips were… supposed to be good. And Billy said he’d pay me under the table, no questions.” Your voice cracked on the name. You swallowed. “I didn’t have a lot of options after… after my dad.”

You didn’t tell him the rest—the late rent notices, the medical bills still haunting your credit, the way you’d sometimes gone to bed hungry so you could keep the electricity on. You didn’t want pity. Especially not from him.

Bucky didn’t push. He simply reached across the island and brushed his thumb once over the back of your hand. “You don’t have to say more if you don’t want to.”

But the words kept coming anyway, like a dam with a slow leak.

“He… he started taking pieces of my pay. Said it was ‘house fees.’ Then he’d get angry when I pushed back. Said I owed him for giving me the job.” Your voice cracked again. Tears welled up, hot and sudden. “He’d…. He’d hit me. Not every night. Just when he was drunk or when the register was short. I tried to leave once. He… he made sure I knew what would happen if I tried again.”

A tear slipped down your cheek and landed on the marble.

Bucky’s jaw tightened so hard you heard the faint click of teeth. His eyes darkened, but his voice stayed velvet-soft when he spoke.

“No one,” he said, low and fierce, “Will ever lay their hands on you again. Not him. Not anyone. I promise you that, baby girl. On everything I am. You’re safe now. You’re safe with me.”

You looked up at him through blurry eyes and believed him. The kindness in his voice, the steady way he held your gaze—it cracked something open inside you. This man who could terrify an entire city was looking at you like you were the only fragile thing left in the world worth protecting.

For the first time in years, you felt seen.

Bucky cleared his throat and shifted the conversation gently, giving you space. He told you sanitized stories—carefully edited pieces of his life. How he and Steve used to cause trouble as kids in Brooklyn, racing bikes down steep hills until the cops knew them by name. How he’d once spent three months in Europe “on business” and fell in love with the way the light hit the canals in Venice at dusk. He left out the blood, the bodies, the power. Just enough truth to make you smile.

You laughed softly at the story about the stolen rowboat in Prospect Park, and Bucky’s chest tightened in a way he wasn’t prepared for. Your kindness—your sweetness, the way you listened like every word mattered—slid past every wall he’d built. For the first time in his brutal life, the ruthless king of New York felt… vulnerable. Exposed. Like your gentle heart was rewriting the rules inside his own.

It was terrifying.

It was addictive.

The plates were long empty when the clock on the wall read 2:17 a.m. You yawned, eyelids heavy.

“Come on,” Bucky murmured, standing and offering his hand. “Let’s get you to bed.”

He led you down the hallway to the master bedroom—his bedroom. The room was masculine and vast: dark wood, a king-sized bed with charcoal sheets, a single reading lamp casting a warm pool of light. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the sleeping city. He pulled open a drawer and took out one of his softest fresh pair of silk pajamas. 

“These’ll be big, but they’re clean,” he said. “Bathroom’s yours.”

You hesitated, fingers brushing the fabric. “Are you sure? I can—”

“I’m sure.” His voice was gentle but final. “Go change, baby girl.”

You disappeared into the marble bathroom. When you came out, swimming in his pajamas, he was waiting with a package of gentle makeup-removing wipes. He gestured to the edge of the bed.

“Can I sit with you?” he asked.

You nodded.

He sat beside you—close but not crowding. “Can I wipe your face? Your makeup’s run from earlier. I don’t want it irritating your skin.”

Your heart fluttered. No one had ever asked permission like this. “Yes,” you whispered.

He opened the packet slowly, pulled out a wipe, and cupped your chin with the lightest touch.

“Tell me if it hurts,” he said.

It didn’t. His movements were achingly tender—gentle circles under your eyes, across your cheeks, along your jaw. He talked the whole time, voice low and soothing.

“You’re never going to have to worry about him again. Never going to have to flinch when someone walks too close. Never going to have to hide bruises under stage makeup.” The wipe brushed the corner of your split lip; you winced only a little. “Shh, easy. I’ve got you. You’re safe here. You’re safe with me.”

Tear after tear slipped free. He wiped those too.

When your face was clean and soft, he set the wipe aside and rested his hands lightly on the sides of your arms. His thumbs stroked slow, soothing arcs.

“Goodnight, baby girl,” he murmured. “If you need anything—anything at all—my men are right outside the door. Or call my name. I’ll hear you.”

You looked up at him, exhausted but warm. “Goodnight, Bucky. Thank you… for everything.”

He lingered in the doorway for a long moment after you slipped under the covers, watching the way you curled into his pillow like it already belonged to you. The woman who had haunted his dreams for weeks was finally here—in his bed, in his clothes, in his world. And he had no intention of ever letting you leave it.

He closed the door with a quiet click.

Then he moved.

Bucky stepped into the hallway and spoke to the two men standing guard—voice low, lethal. “She doesn’t leave. She doesn’t want for anything. If she wakes up scared, one of you comes and gets me immediately. Understood?”

They nodded. “Yes, boss.”

He took the private elevator down, slid into the waiting Escalade, and gave the driver a single word.

“Mansion.”

The drive north took forty minutes. The city lights gave way to dark highways, then winding roads lined with ancient trees. His estate sat on twenty secluded acres in northern Westchester—stone walls, wrought-iron gates, motion sensors, armed patrols that never slept. The main house rose like a modern fortress: three stories of dark glass and limestone, floodlit subtly against the night sky.

Sam was waiting on the front steps in sweatpants and a hoodie, yawning.

“Boss,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “It’s three-thirty in the morning. You sure you want to do this now?”

Bucky didn’t even slow down. “Open the cells.”

Sam’s jaw tightened, but he fell into step. They descended the hidden staircase behind the wine cellar—two flights down into the bedrock. The underground complex was a world unto itself: concrete corridors lit by harsh fluorescent strips, soundproofed rooms, cells with reinforced steel doors. The air smelled of damp stone, bleach, and fear.

Billy was in the farthest cell—chained to a metal chair bolted to the floor, already stripped to his boxers, face swollen from the earlier beating. A single bulb swung above him.

Bucky stepped inside alone.

The door clanged shut.

Billy’s head jerked up. One eye was swollen shut. The other widened in pure terror.

“Mr. Barnes—please—please, I can explain—”

Bucky didn’t speak at first. He simply removed his Henley, revealing the full map of tattoos across his chest and shoulders, and rolled his shoulders like a fighter loosening up. Then he walked forward and drove his fist straight into Billy’s already-broken nose.

The crack echoed.

“You harmed my girl?” Bucky’s voice was quiet. Deadly.

Billy screamed.

Another punch. Then another. Bucky’s rings split fresh skin. Blood sprayed across the concrete.

“You put your hands on her.” Punch. “You bruised what belongs to me.” Punch. “You made her bleed.” Elbow to the jaw—teeth flew.

Billy sobbed, snot and blood mixing. “I—I was angry—she owed me—she—”

Bucky grabbed a pair of pliers from the tray on the wall. He clamped them around Billy’s left pinky.

“You think you could touch her?” He twisted. The finger snapped. Billy howled. “My girl? The one who sings like heaven and smiles like she’s never seen hell?”

He broke the next finger. Then the next. Methodically. Slowly.

Billy begged between screams. “Mercy—God, please—mercy—”

Bucky set the pliers down and picked up a scalpel. He carved a shallow line across Billy’s chest—shallow enough to sting, deep enough to scar forever if the man had lived.

“You made her flinch when you grabbed her arm,” Bucky whispered, voice almost tender. “You made her curl up like a scared animal. You made her cry.”

He pressed the blade deeper. Blood welled.

Billy thrashed against the chains. “I’m sorry—I swear—I’ll never—”

Bucky dropped the scalpel and picked up a small blowtorch. The blue flame hissed to life.

“You’ll never what?” He brought the flame close to Billy’s thigh—just close enough for the skin to blister. The smell of burning flesh filled the cell. Billy’s scream tore raw from his throat.

For more than an hour Bucky worked in silence—fists, blades, flame, the occasional kick to ribs that cracked like dry wood. Every strike was precise. Every word was for you.

“You thought you could own her.”

“You thought you could break her.”

“She’s mine now.”

When Billy was barely conscious, slumping in the chains, blood pooling beneath the chair, Bucky finally pulled the pistol from the small of his back.

He pressed the barrel to Billy’s forehead.

“You harmed my girl,” he said one last time.

The gunshot was muffled by the soundproofing.

Billy’s body jerked once and went still. Blood poured from the wound, spreading across the stone floor in a dark, glistening lake.

Bucky stood there, chest heaving, covered head to toe in Billy’s blood—splattered across his bare chest, dripping from his hands, soaked into his jeans. His eyes—cold, empty, satisfied—stared down at the ruined corpse.

The woman he loved was safe.

And the man who had hurt you would never breathe again.

. ܁₊ ⊹ . ܁ ⟡ ܁ . ⊹ ₊ ܁.