Chapter 40

forty

Wrenlee

Dad squeezes me tightly outside the door to the spare bedroom where he will be staying before he flies home in two days. He looks down at me with haunted shadows that circle his eyes—the same haunted shadows that circle Cash’s. It’ll take some time for them to go away, I know. But I do hope it takes less time than more.

What happened to me was horrific. It’s something I’m sure will cross my mind countless times over the coming years—because forgetting about being buried alive—forgetting about the moment where you accept death, can feel the cool claws of it grazing over your fingertips only to be pulled back into the living is an experience one isn’t likely to forget. But I can move on, move forward.

I will move on.

I won’t let Alice keep taking from me, especially now that she’s behind bars.

It’s sad how far she spiraled for vengeance in the name of love. I’m mentally sound enough to know that she wasn’t. For all she’d done for Alyssa, it was over her body that they’d finally found Alice.

She’s snapped in a fit of rage when Alyssa refused to run away with her. Alyssa’s cause of death had been blunt force trauma to the head. I’d asked no more questions. I wanted no more answers.

I would do my best to push Alice and the tragedy that fell around her from my mind and life.

“Love you, Kiddo.” Dad kisses the top of my head the way he does. “So damn much.”

The emotion I hear in his voice has my own throat feeling thick. “I love you too, Dad. But you don’t have to worry anymore.” I tip my head back to look at him. To assure him. “I’m safe now. I’m safe with Cash.”

He dips his chin. “That boy loves you.”

I feel my lips curl into a small, thoughtful smile Dad’s eyes don’t miss. “He does. I know it.”

“You love him?”

No hesitation, I nod. “He’s the one. The only one for me.”

It’s Dad’s turn to nod. “I know it.”

I give him a small laugh and he hugs me again. Tight. Full of emotion. Full of everything. Then he slips into the room and closes the door.

I turn to find Cash standing in the mouth of the hall, knowing by the set to his jaw—the emotion he’s trying to keep contained in his dark eyes, that he heard it all.

I move to him without hesitation, hand on his chest when I stop in front of him. “Take me to bed, Cash.”

I don’t have to ask twice. He swoops me up in his arms, carrying me to our room where both kitties are currently curled up on the mammoth chair Cash keeps tucked into the corner, close to the windows. It’s their favorite spot.

Pivoting for the bathroom, he sets me down and strips me naked. He lights a single candle, sets the water, and steps into the shower with me. His arms are tight around me as I sway softly to a rhythm of his making, my face pressed to the hard, hot skin of his chest.

I can feel the hardness of his arousal between us, but he does nothing to initiate sex in this moment. His fingertips stroke the skin of my back, traveling the path of my spine as we stand together under the spray of water for long minutes, until steam curls around us in the glass box, wafting into the room on the other side.

When he releases me, I sense that he’s had to force himself to do so. As though he could have held me like that for the rest of his life, tucked safely in his arms. Cash has been traumatized too. He pulled me from a grave that had been dug for me, lying next to a dead woman who’d been painfully murdered by my own attacker. He’d feared at the touch of my cold body that he’d been too late. The damage that had to have done to him. I can only imagine.

The woman who had lain next to me had been named Judith. She went by Judy, however. When her husband and teenage son had visited me in the hospital, tears in their eyes, they’d told me her name was Judith (Judy) May Doyle. She spent her life with flowers and owned a small shop not far from the university. She’d been a good mother and beloved wife—and she would be dearly missed.

I had expressed guilt that she’d been taken from them because of me. Because of her car. A car she’d borrowed from her own mother, because she hadn’t wanted to drive to her husband’s family home for Thanksgiving in the only vehicle they owned—the big clunker of a decaled van she transported her flowers in.

Her husband had told me he didn’t blame me. He blamed the woman who took her and killed her—the woman who attempted and nearly succeeded in doing the same to me. He’d cried. He’d asked to hug me, and I’d accepted. Her son had stood pale close by, shaken in his new reality without his mother. They’d invited me to the funeral. I’d go.

I would see Judy lain to rest respectfully. I would bring flowers. Hyacinths. Her favorite, her husband had told me.

Pouring soap into his hands, Cash washes my hair and body with tender, big hands. He doesn’t skip an inch of me, shunning the scent of death and hospital from my skin before he quickly washes his own body.

Fully capable of drying myself, I still don’t fight him when he pulls me from the shower and towels me dry. I think he needs to care for me like this right now, and I want to give him everything he needs.

Teeth brushed, hair untangled and skin dry, Cash carries me to bed. He sets me down between the sheets, tucking me in before shifting to move to his side. Next to me, with the lamplight off and the crescent moon spilling faint light through the naked windows, he pulls me into his chest where I hear his heart thundering violently.

Yes, my man is struggling.

“Cash?” I call.

“Hmm?”

“Where’s my goodnight kiss?”

A small huff of amusement leaves his chest, and he angles his body to half cover mine. Without a word, he covers my mouth with his own, kissing me tenderly. Softly. Too softly.

When he makes to pull away, I grip his shoulder. “No.”

“Wrenlee,” my name is a vulnerable protest I refuse to accept.

“I need you, Cash.”

His hands come to either side of my face, cupping me. “Your father is in the next room, Kitten.”

“He knows we’re together.”

“Wrenlee.”

“I’ll be quiet,” I promise.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to do this.”

“I don’t.” I frown, alarmed. “Why would you think that?”

“You’ve been through—” his voice breaks. “So much.”

I lift my head to touch my lips to his, knowing I need to defeat the shadows of fear that cling to him. “I feel safest when you’re inside me, Cash.” I breathe against his mouth, inhaling the small groan he releases. “I feel like I’m home when you’re inside me.” I kiss him again, and this time he kisses me back. “I love you. I want—I want to be loved by you.”

“You are,” he vows. “You will be for the rest of my life.” There’s a pained sound to the break in his resolve. “My heart isn’t capable of beating without you. You’re the air in my lungs. The blood in my veins. The life to my lyrics. The melody to my song. Without you, I cease to exist.” He moves his body between my legs, his lips roaming the line of my jaw to my neck where he shifts to whisper against the shell of my ear. “I feel you in my soul, the strings of your life are weaved with mine in a way I know they can’t be untangled now. Wrenlee—” He lines his tip with my entrance, pushing slowly inside, filling me with all of him. I wrap my legs tight around his waist, clinging, weaving those threads tighter. Knotting them. “I’m in love with you. The all-in kind of love. The forever kind.”

Wet hits my eyes as I vow, “I’ll always be yours, Cash. Forever.”

He takes my mouth like he takes my body, claiming. Tender. Fierce. Cash.

He rocks so deep inside me, I feel like he’s trying to climb inside—to burrow—to sink into home and never, ever leave. I meet him thrust for thrust, wanting the very same things. Wanting to connect deeply, completely.

Every thrust is long and slow, agonizingly so. Every stroke of him inside me bringing me higher and higher, closer and closer to that place we find so easily together. That place where our souls connect, the threads weaving tighter.

“Cash,” I cry his name into his throat, clinging to him for dear life. “Cash.”

“Let go for me, baby.” His deep dark rumble sets me off, and I shatter around him.