Page 41 of Sweet Doe
If I want to keep her,reallyfucking keep her, then we don’t belong here.
We never did.
And the next time I come to town… it might be to buy a map of the places so far off-grid even God would forget we exist.
By the timeI get home, the wind’s gone feral. Snow falls in thick, violent sheets from the sky, hammering the roof like fists. I haul the generator fuel into the shed, toss the supply bags inside the mudroom, and kick the door shut hard enough to rattle the frame.
She’s exactly where I left her—tangled in blankets, eyes open, cuffed to the headboard. Her wrist rests above her head, limp but not tense. She doesn't look angry. Just tired. Watching the firelight flicker across the room.
Something in my chest uncoils at the sight of her. I hadn't realized how tight the fear had wrapped itself around my ribs until that moment.
She’s here.
She’s safe.
She’s still all mine.
I cross to the bed and drop to my knees beside it, the key already clutched in my fist. The cuff clicks open and slides away with a soft metal clink. She doesn't move. Just watches me with that unreadable stare that never seems to blink.
“You’re quiet,” I murmur, brushing her wrist gently with my thumb. Her skin is warm, soft, no signs of a struggle. She let me lock her down. She trusted me. That trust slices through my guilt like a dull blade.
“You’re angry,” she says, voice scratchy from sleep or silence, I can’t tell.
My eyes lift to hers. “Not at you.”
“Then at what?”
I shake my head, jaw clenched. I don’t have the words to explain it. Not all of them. So I press my forehead to the edge of the mattress and breathe her in.
“The world,” I finally whisper. “Everything that wants to take you from me.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Then her fingers move, brushing through my hair. Light. Careful. Like she knows I might shatter if she’s too gentle, or too cruel.
“What happened?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
I look up. My throat’s raw, but I force it out. “I realized I could lose you. That someone out there could see you, want you, take you, and I wouldn’t be there to stop it.”
Her eyes soften. The corners of her mouth twitch, like she might say something. Instead, she shifts, just enough to open space for me. I crawl up beside her, stretching out on the bed, and she curls into my chest without being told.
Her head tucks beneath my chin like it’s been there a thousand times before. Her breath warms the hollow of my throat. My arm wraps around her, holding her close, needing her there.
My hand slips under the hem of her shirt, fingers skating across the bare skin of her back, tracing the lines of her spine, every bump and curve seared into memory.
“You’re everything,” I murmur. “And I don’t know how to exist if I’m not protecting you. Every second you’re not near me, I see you gone. Taken. Dead. Screaming my name while I’m too far to fucking hear it.”
Her body shifts against mine, the faintest tremble. Her voice is soft. “You can’t chain me every time you leave.”
“I know.”
“But you did.”
“I had to.” The words scrape out raw. “Because if you ran, if I wasn’t here to stop you…I’d lose my fucking mind. I’d tear the whole world apart to find you, and I don’t know if I’d be fast enough.”
Her breath hitches, but she doesn’t pull away.
Her fingers curl into my shirt, gripping it like an anchor. Maybe she knows what it cost me to lock her down, how hard I had to fight every instinct to hold her instead. Maybe she forgives me. Maybe not. But she’s here.
That’s what matters.
