Page 151 of Hot Shot

I draw a heavy breath, shifting so he’ll shift too, and I’m smashed against him again, this time higher up. His pulse flutters in his neck, and I breathe him in.

“Have you slept at all?”

“Not really. You?”

“In and out.” His big hand strokes my back through the silence. “What are we gonna do, Cass?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t get the sight of her trying to get back to me out of my head. When she asked me not to leave her, I—” His Adam’s apple bobs.

“I know. It’s going to be okay—they just need a minute. They’re scared shitless. Did you see Paul? He’s not cruel, Wilder…he’s terrified. She ran away. We fought. He found outthis whole thing started out on a foundational lie, and he feels conned. Which, to be fair, wedid. But you have proven in a thousand ways that you are and will be an exemplary father. On top of being her biological father. You have every single right to her, even if you hadn’t already filled Ashley’s requirements. I mean, maybe if I hadn’t locked you down…”

He chuckles, the sound a comfort to me, a reminder that it really will be okay. “You locked me down in middle school. When you came back to town? I was doomed. Woulda walked right up to you and told you to cuff me, if it wouldn’t have sent you running.”

It’s my turn to chuckle, and when I shift in his arms, he rolls onto his back, bringing me with him. I rest on his chest, rising and falling with his breath, admiring him as he shoves another pillow under his head, sliding his hand behind his neck. We lay like that for a little while, watching each other in the moonlight.

He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear and lowers his hand to rest on my arm.

I can’t believe there was ever a life that didn’t have him in it. I’ve been living in black and white, and Wilder is 4K, HD, Dolby fucking Digital.

God, I love him.

“God, I love you,” he whispers.

My smile is quiet. “I love you.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without you today. I don’t know how I’d survive right now without you.”

“Like you did before, I suppose.”

“But I wasn’t. Somehow, I didn’t realize I was walking around with a piece of me missing, faking life. Faking happy. Trying to fill that space with anything. Everything. Baseball kept me from seeing it for a long time. Felt like I was full and whole and had purpose. But when I lost that? When I came home?” He shakeshis head, his thumb shifting on my arm. “You weren’t here, and I couldn’t figure out why that felt so wrong.”

“But then I came back.”

“Then you came back to marry somebody else. And that space didn’t fill up—it flooded, washed everything out. It destroyed me. All the way up until you changed your mind. Then you filled up that space perfectly, clicked into place like you belonged there all along.”

“Because I did. I do. Just like you belong with me. It’s like you were saying—the world makes sense with you, because of you. All you have to do is exist, and my life is better for it. The world could fall apart, but if I’m in your arms, I’m safe. Life is easy.”

“Easy?” he says on a laugh. “I have not made your life easier.”

I shrug. “You have in the ways that count. All that time I was gone, I could have found you out there existing, and I could have had this. I amsucha dummy.”

His lips tilt.

“Could have been any time, any place, any situation. This one just happened to be messy as all hell.” That earns me a laugh, the flash of his smile in the soft light making my heart flutter. “But we’ll be okay. We’ll get through this and to better times. Even now, even with everything on fire, I am held together with the knowledge that I have you. We’re going to figure all this out. And while we do, we can love each other, just like this.”

Somehow, he manages to pull me up to him so he can kiss me, his arms winding around me, bringing me close enough that he can embrace me and still play with my hair, stroke my skin. He tells me how he loves me in the ways words can’t, and I love him back, overwhelmed by the certainty that I will share this life, this love with him, for all my days.

And in the end, we finally find the peace of sleep.

CHAPTER 56

CU NEXT TUESDAY

CASS

When I finally wake for the day, it’s closer to lunch than breakfast, and my first thought is how grateful I am that I finally fell asleep. Vaguely, I remember Wilder leaving when it was still dark out, kissing me gently before he went to work.

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