Page 75 of Say You're Mine

He keeps me tucked close to his side as we navigate the chaos of the wedding turned crime scene. There are police everywhere, guests being interviewed, the strobing red and blue of sirens painting everything in a nightmarish light.

But June doesn't falter, his stride purposeful as he leads me through the throng. No one tries to stop us. One look at the steel in June's gaze, the blood on his knuckles, is enough to make them shrink back.

The cool night air hits my face as we finally break free of the crush, and I gulp it down greedily. It tastes of salt and sea and something wilder, a promise of freedom after the cloying confines of the church.

June bundles me into the car, his hands infinitely gentle even in his haste. The slam of the door is like a gunshot, making me flinch. He's beside me in an instant, the engine roaring to life under his touch.

We peel out of the lot, tires squealing, leaving the pandemonium behind. But even as the church recedes in the rearview mirror, I can't shake the feeling that we're being pursued. That Elaine's malevolence is a living, breathing thing, a miasma that will follow us no matter how far or fast we run.

June's hand finds mine, his fingers lacing through my own. "It's going to be alright," he says, but I can hear the strain beneath the reassurance. "I won't let anything happen to you, Cara. To either of you."

His other hand drops to my belly, to the small but insistent curve that shelters our child. Even now, even with the echo of violence still ringing in my ears, the touch undoes me.

Tears spill down my cheeks, hot and stinging as the wind from the open window whips through my hair. The sobs come harder now, shaking my shoulders, stealing my breath. It's too much, all of it. The love, the fear, the desperate relief and the gnawing dread. I'm a livewire of emotion, raw and exposed.

June pulls over to the side of the road, gravel spraying as we skid to a stop. He's out of the car and around to my side before I can blink, pulling me into his arms as I stumble from the passenger seat.

I bury my face in his chest, breathing in the scent of him. He smells of sweat and gunpowder and something metallic that might be blood. But beneath it all, there's the smell I've come to associate with home. With love and safety and utter belonging.

"I've got you," he murmurs into my hair, rocking me gently. "I've always got you, Cara."

We stay like that for a small eternity, clinging to each other on the side of a deserted coastal road. The sound of the waves crashing against the cliffs is a distant roar, a wild symphony that slowly, inexorably, begins to soothe my fractured nerves.

Eventually, my sobs taper off, easing to shuddering breaths and the occasional sniffle. June pulls back just enough to cup my face in his hands, his thumbs sweeping away the last of my tears.

"There's my girl," he says softly, the curve of his mouth tender and a little sad. "My brave, beautiful Cara."

I lean into his touch, pressing a kiss to his palm. "I don't feel very brave right now. I feel... I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams."

He rests his forehead against mine, his breath warm on my skin. "You're the bravest person I know. You've been through hell, and you're still standing. Still fighting. That's true strength, baby."

I take a shaky breath, trying to absorb his words. To believe them, even as a voice in my head whispers that I'm weak, that I'm a liability.

"What if she comes after us again?" I ask, my voice small and thin in the night air. "What if she tries to take the baby? June, I can't... I can't go through that again."

His jaw clenches, a muscle ticking with barely-restrained fury. "She won't. I won't give her the chance. Cara, I will burn the world down before I let her lay a finger on our family again."

There's something in his voice, in the absolute conviction of his words, that makes me believe him. That makes me believe in us, in our ability to weather any storm.

I nod, letting his strength flow into me, shoring up all my broken places. "Okay," I whisper. "Okay."

He kisses me then, soft and lingering, a promise sealed with breath and lips and the aching tenderness of a love that's been tested in the fires of hell and emerged tempered, unbreakable.

When we finally break apart, he tucks me back into the car with exquisite care, smoothing a hand over my hair before closing the door with a decisive click. As he slides back into the driver's seat, as the engine rumbles back to life, I feel something settle deep in my bones.

A certainty, a rightness, a soul-deep understanding that this is where I'm meant to be. By June's side, come hell or high water.

He glances over at me as we pull back onto the road, his profile limned in silver by the moonlight. "Let's go home."

Home.

The word wraps around my heart like a balm, soothing the raw, ragged edges of my fear. Because for the first time, I understand that home isn't a place. It's not four walls and a roof, not a picket fence and a perfectly manicured lawn.

It's him. It's us. It's the life we've fought for, bled for, the love we've nurtured in the darkest of soils until it bloomed fierce and radiant and true.

I reach over, twining my fingers with June's on the gearshift. And as the miles unspool before us, as the night rushes by in a blur of shadow and starlight, I hold tight to that truth.

To the bone-deep certainty of us, and the beautiful, imperfect, hard-won future that stretches out ahead, limitless and luminous with promise.

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