Page 158 of Covenant

Yeah, everything is going to be fine. I had nothing to worry about. I’m sure I’ll have more questions along the way, but that’s okay. I know Matt will answer them, and everything will be good.

Now that we’re together we can get through anything.

36

WYATT

“You really saved all these photos?” Matt asks me, the two of us cuddled up outside, a blanket over our entwined bodies. It’s not raining right now, so we’ve taken the opportunity to be in the sunlight.

I’m happy.

I’m so fucking happy.

Matt is scrolling through my phone, through our story. The memories we made as kids. The foundation we built.

I’d thought it was rotten. Gone. But I was wrong. It’s still there. It was battered and broken, but we fixed it. Turned it into something stronger.

Something that can never be destroyed.

“I did. I kept them all. I wanted to delete them, but I couldn’t.” I pause before confessing a secret. “I’ve looked through them so many times. Not just these past few months, but before. Even when I was with Jen.”

Matt looks at me in surprise. “You did?”

I nod. “I couldn’t let you go, Matt, even when I thought I hated you.”

“You did hate me.”

“No,” I correct him, thumbing at his lip. “I didn’t. I hated what we’d become. What I thought you’d done to me. But I don’t think I hated you. Not really.”

A large, black raven swoops past us through the garden, so similar to the one I saw in the graveyard that fateful night. I don’t curse at it this time.

I just smile. It makes me think of Matthias.

He kisses me, and I sigh happily. I’m so grateful we found our way back together.

I’m never letting him go again.

Matt grins and goes back to flicking through the photos. He stops on a selfie of us sitting outside the shelter where we used to hide during storms. “God, we were so young.”

“We were.” Young and full of naive hope. “Things didn’t go as we’d planned.”

“No,” he says darkly. “They didn’t.”

“But we got here,” I say. “That’s all that matters.”

Matt smiles down at the photo. “True. And I don’t think seventeen-year-old Matt imagined we’d end up likethis.Not unless I was jerking off. Then I imagined all sorts of filthy things about you.”

“Really?” I drawl, pressing a kiss to his neck. “Maybe later you should tell me about them. See if there’s anything we haven’t done yet.”

“I doubt there is, but I’m happy to revisit them with you.”

I snuggle into his side a bit more as he continues scrolling. Revisiting the past sounds good. It reminds us both that it wasn’t all bad. In fact, there had only been a single bad day between us. The one that had torn us apart.

Which we both now know was neither of our faults.

I’m fucking thrilled that Matt’s dad is dead. After finding out what he did to Matt, I think I would’ve killed him myself if he hadn’t been. Wouldn’t have bothered asking The Firm either.

I can do my own dirty work if it means protecting or avenging the man I love.

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