Page 96 of Lady and the Butcher
“I love you,” I said, the words out before my brain could dress them up or qualify them. Raw. True. They landed between us like a flare in the dark, impossible to ignore.
His breath caught, just once. The muscle in his jaw ticked. “Say it again.”
“I love you,” I repeated, firmer this time, because if I had learned anything in these weeks it was that naming the truth is the only way to live inside it. “I don’t want to pretend it’s anything less. Not anymore.”
His hand closed gently around my wrist, holding it against his chest where his heart kept its steady, inexorable beat. “I love you, too, but what about the danger?” His voice was low, unflinching. “The thing that made you run to St. Augustine. The thing that had shadows following you down side streets. That’s still here. That’s still me.”
My pulse thundered against his grip, but my answer came clear. “We’ll figure something out. I know what I said before, that I couldn’t live in it. But maybe I was wrong. Or maybe I’ve learned that every life has danger, and it’s not about avoiding it—it’s about choosing who you face it with.”
His blue eyes searched mine, storm and ocean both.
“I belong with you,” I said simply. “Even if the edges are sharp. Even if the world doesn’t approve. Even if I have to keep reminding myself I’m not made of glass. I belong with you, Atticus Carver. That’s not fear talking. That’s love.”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was full—of all the things neither of us had believed we’d be allowed to say out loud, of the future pressing close, demanding to be let in.
He bent his head until his forehead touched mine, the cleaver at his throat brushing my knuckles where I still held him. “Then you’re mine,” he whispered. Not like a claim this time, but like a vow.
And I wanted that word exactly as it was.
When Atticus stepped out with the coordinator to sign a form that would make pain official, I stood in the doorway and watched him go. He didn’t look back. He didn’t have to. He moved with the clean certainty of a man who had decided and would not un-decide. The old noise hung somewhere far away like weather breaking on a different coast.
I went to Stephen’s side and took his hand. His fingers were cooler than mine. I tucked the blanket under his wrist and smoothed a wrinkle that didn’t need smoothing.
“You good?” he asked, eyes slitting open. “I might’ve overheard some of that.”
“No,” I said. “But I will be.”
“You got Carver now,” he murmured, the words lazy from meds and exhaustion. “He’ll fix it.”
“He’ll help,” I said. “We’ll fix it.”
Stephen squeezed my hand. Small pressure. Big meaning. “Love you, Sim.”
“Love you more,” I said, and there it was again. Love.
Atticus came back and the coordinator followed with a timeline that was both too fast and not fast enough. Harvest tomorrow. Pain for Atticus. Hope for Stephen.
I met Atticus’s eyes and didn’t say the words that had settled under my ribs. They could be said later, when he was through hurting and Stephen was through the worst of the beginning. For now, I held them.
I went to the sink and washed my hands the way the signs told me to. Fingers. Palms. Nails. Wrists. I watched the water run clear. I looked at my face in the paper towel dispenser and almost recognized her. A woman who could stand inside her fear and still choose the thing that made her heart beat right.
When I turned back, Atticus was adjusting the chair in the corner like he planned to stay put as long as it took. I crossed to him and tapped the back of his hand, and he looked up at me.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?”
“For being here. For choosing us. For shutting doors I never want to know the names of.”
He nodded once. An agreement.
As the day wore on, the room found a hush that wasn’t empty. I moved between my brother and the man I loved and found there was room for both. I could be the woman who tells mothers to breathe and also the woman who chooses a life with a dangerous man who has decided not to be dangerous to her.
I could be wrong and still worthy. I could be late and still useful.
I could stand here and hold the line.
33
