As we got ready for bed, it felt like we were going through the motions. When he lay beside me and stared up at the ceiling, it seemed like we only coexisted. Though we still reached wordlessly for each other in the middle of the night, this felt different. More desperate. Despondent. A last-ditch attempt to cling to something normal, something real. But nothing was normal. And I questioned whether or not it would ever be normal again.

By the following night, I had convinced myself that Jude was gearing up to tell me something. To tell me we were over. After all we’d been through.

Now that the threat was finally gone and we could live out in the open, we were finished. Maybe he wanted to start a new life someplace else, far away from the people who used him as a pawn. Maybe it would help him finally feel free. To at least breathe more freely.

Perhaps he felt guilty that I’d been waiting on him and now he wanted to leave. The fear of hearing those words from him was so enormous; it felt like a lead weight pressing directly on my chest and crushing my soul.

After another quiet night sitting on the back porch, Jude finally looked at me. Really looked at me. As if seeing me for the first time. As if he’d stumbled out of a dense fog.

“What’s wrong?” he said, shocking me out of my own head.

“I . . . what do you mean?” I mumbled. “Nothing.”

“Then why haven’t you tried talking to me?”

“What?” I said, completely confounded by his question. “I was just giving you space. Time.”

“Give it to me straight,” he said and there was a steely resolve in his eyes.

It seemed as if a full minute had gone by as we stared each other down.

“I guess . . .” I swallowed roughly. “Guess I was just preparing myself.”

The hands on his lap turned into tight fists. “For what?”

I broke eye contact with him and studied the floor. “For you to tell me good-bye.”

His shut his eyes and inhaled a deep breath. “Why the bloody hell would you say that?”

“Thought maybe you want to start off fresh. New town, new people. I might remind you too much. . . .” I sucked air through my nose. “I can take Chopper. You can make a different life for yourself.”

He stood up suddenly and stalked over to me. “Do you know what I was thinking about when Elias was holding me prisoner?”

I lifted one shaky hand to my hair. “I can only guess . . . I was afraid you were going to find a way to . . . to . . . after what you told me about never being hurt by him again . . .”

“Fucking Christ.” He knelt down in front of me, his hand reaching for mine. “I thought about you. Hoping you were all right. That you were waiting for me. Hoping like hell you were waiting for me.”

My breaths were harsh and choppy.

“I was thinking that since my mum was killed, I haven’t belonged anywhere. To anyone,” he said. “And there you stand. Like the keeper of all of my dreams. And suddenly there’s someplace I desperately want to belong.”

I felt a tear roll down my cheek and he swiped it with his thumb.

“Goddamn, Cory.” He rushed his fingers through my hair. “I imagined what you were going through and how it would be so much worse if I . . . if I . . . So the thought of you waiting for me kept me going.”

I bit my lip hard, trying to keep all of my emotions in check. So that I didn’t slide to the floor in a boneless heap.

“And when Malachi told me you were okay, I felt such bloody relief,” he said, closing his eyes. “But then I instantly felt fear. That you . . . that all of this was too much for you . . . that maybe you didn’t want me—this—after all. The guilt of everything I’d put you through completely paralyzed me.”

That was why he hadn’t been responsive to me. I was waiting on him and he was fucking waiting on me. Goddamn it.

“Jude—”

“Thing is,” he said, cutting me off. “I’d go through it all over again if it meant I got to have you.”

His head sank to my lap and I heard a whimper burst from his throat. I burrowed my fingers in his scalp as he opened the floodgates and finally allowed himself to cry.

For himself. His sister. His mother.

His shoulders shook as he wept openly. As if he’d been holding it in for years.

I looked up at the stars in the night sky and thanked the universe for bringing this incredible man into my life.

“Baby, I’m not going anywhere,” I said, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and pulling him into my chest. “I want to be with you so badly it physically hurts.”

“I need you to show me,” he said, grabbing my face and smashing his lips against mine. There was an overwhelming desperation in that kiss and I felt it so viscerally, like a direct blow to my gut. “Show me I belong to you. Please fucking show me, Cory.”

And then realization dawned on me. I understood what he wanted and what he needed. I stood and pulled him with me, gathering his face, and devastating his mouth with a deep and bruising kiss.

I led him to the bedroom and took my time undressing him, feathering tender kisses over every part of his beautiful body. I got him ready for me. My mouth was on his cock. My fingers were in his ass. My heart was in my throat. I was nearly blinded by how profoundly I wanted him. In my life. Forever.

I laid him on his back and knelt between his legs.

I rolled on a condom and slicked it with lube. He lifted his knees as I pressed inside of him. Slowly and deeply I filled him as his nails embedded into my thighs. I nipped and kissed his neck and shoulders and lips, relishing the moans emitting from his throat.