Page 100 of Lady and the Butcher
“What are you instead?”
“Quiet,” he said. “Distance. A man who knows men, but doesn’t stand in front of them when they’re deciding whether to be stupid.” He rolled one shoulder like it still carried weight it hadn’t forgiven him for. “There are ways to run a thing so it doesn’t bleed on what you love.”
“And if it tries?”
“Then I sell it for scrap.” He said it like a matter of fact. “Or I let it sink.”
The river sighed. Somewhere behind us, a car door thudded and laughter skittered like beads.
“It won’t be clean,” I said, because I wanted truth.
“No,” he agreed. “It’ll be honest.”
I turned toward him. “And me?”
“You’re the part that doesn’t negotiate.” I’d learned his eyes like a language. “You’re the line. I won’t cross it. I won’t let anyone else.”
I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until the exhale made me lightheaded. I stepped into him and he stepped into me and the place we met felt like two halves of a door finally finding their hinge. He didn’t kiss me right away. He put his palm under my jaw and his thumb at the corner of my mouthand waited until my body remembered that waiting can be better than getting.
“I asked for danger,” I said into the space between us.
“You did,” he said. “And I gave you the truth of me.”
“You’re giving me something else now.”
“Yes.” His voice went softer. “I’m giving you a life.”
It could’ve sounded like a line. It didn’t. It sounded like a man who’d decided on a thing and would rather rip up the world than fail at it.
He kissed me slow. A promise pressed into skin. “Come with me,” he said quietly. “One more drive.”
“Where?”
“Home,” he said, meaning mine.
The drive back to my house felt different than all the others. Not furtive. Not temporary. Just steady. Atticus’s car pulled into the cracked driveway like it belonged there. Like he belonged there. Movers were already out front, hauling boxes that didn’t look like his world of glass and steel but like someone’s life about to be unpacked into mine.
I stood on the porch, watching as strangers carried his weight across my threshold, and something deep in me unclenched. He could have chosen any of his three places to crash, or whatever other luxury accommodations he liked. He chose this. My uneven steps. My too-narrow kitchen. The house that smelled like wood smoke in winter and lemons in summer.
When the last box came in, he dismissed them with a nod that landed like command. Then it was just us.
“You’re sure?” he asked, standing in my doorway with a carton in one hand and his gaze on me like I was the only thing in the room that mattered.
I stepped forward and put my palm on the box, pushing it down to the table. “I’m sure. I want you here. With me. Not visiting. Not waiting outside in a car. Living.”
Something softened in his shoulders. “Then here is where I’ll be.”
Later, when the boxes were stacked like patient soldiers against the wall, he took me in my bedroom the way men take land they plan to protect forever. His mouth was rough, his hands steadier than I deserved. I stripped his shirt, ran my nails across the muscle that had saved me a hundred ways, and he growled low in his throat, pinning me against the wall like it was always meant to be this way.
The first thrust made me gasp, his hand braced at the back of my neck, his body carving itself into mine. He fucked me like he was memorizing the angles of my house through the way I cried his name. My fingers dug into his back. His teeth found my shoulder.
We were messy, holy, completely ours.
When I came, it was with my whole body—legs wrapped tight, voice breaking. He followed with a shudder against my chest, burying himself deeper as if he could brand the walls with us.
Afterward, we collapsed into the bed that suddenly didn’t feel too small at all. Sheets tangled. Sweat cooling. His arm anchored across my waist like he’d never let me slip sideways again.
Staring up at the ceiling, I thought of the moon circle. The candles. The laughter. The ache of wanting something I couldn’t name back then. I had thought I needed to be remade in the company of women, in the rituals of safety. But maybe what I’d really needed was a man who could step into that circle without mocking it, without trying to own it, just existing in the space with me.
