Page 43 of The Space Between
“I’m not going anywhere,” he growls. “Not tonight.”
He drives into me again and again, fast and deep, until my body’s arching and shaking, with every nerve burning. And then, I’m coming. Hard. My thighs lock around him as my pussy clenches and a hoarse cry rips from my throat, “Gruene,oh Gruene!Ohhhhhh…Yes… fuck yes…Oh, shit….Gruene…”
He follows seconds later with a rough, broken sound, “Blakelyn…Oh, shit… Blakelyn…” He spills inside of me before he collapses on top of me.
We lie there, tangled and breathless, our hearts pounding so loud it drowns out everything else. The only sound in the room is our labored gasps and the fan mingling with the window unit.
There are no words. We make no promises. There’s justpresence.
Him and me.
Just the weight of him pressed against me, grounding me like maybe I haven’t been floating through a nightmare all this time.
I run my hand up his back, over the scar that slices across his shoulder, and he doesn’t flinch.
Not this time. And I think—maybe—this is how it starts.
Not with trust. Not with peace. But with skin on skin, and the quiet confession of two broken people who couldn’t walk away from each other.
This matters.
Gruene
She fallsasleep curled into me like she’s always belonged there.
She has no hesitation, no guarded distance. Her breath is on my chest, and her fingers are against the scar on my side, like she knows it's there and doesn’t care.
I don’t move but I don’t sleep, either.
Something about this—her skin on mine, her scent in my sheets, her trust in my arms—doesn’t feel survivable.
Not for a man like me.
I usedto think silence was peace. Now, I know better.
Silence just makes it easier to hear the ghosts and right now, they’re screaming.
A soft exhale against my ribs.
The echo of a child's laughter I’ll never hear again.
The way her fingers trace circles where my daughter used to lay her head when she crawled into our bed on stormy nights.
It’s too much.
I don’t pull away. Some twisted part of me thinks maybe this is what I deserve—to lie here haunted and raw while the one good thing I’ve touched in six years sleeps like I won’t ruin her, too.
I get up sometimein the middle of the night. I can’t stay in bed. She stirs just before dawn. She doesn’t say anything, just opens her eyes, lifts her head, and blinks when she sees me in the chair like she forgot where she was for a second.
Then, she smiles.
Small. Soft. Fucking beautiful.
“Hey,” she whispers, voice scratchy from sleep.
I nod, saying nothing.
She stretches and I watch her. I can’t help it. Then, she grabs my t-shirt from the floor and pulls it over her, covering her nakedness. Padding across the cabin, she leans down to press a kiss to my chest. I pull back. Her face falls and she murmurs, “I—I should go.”
