Chapter 20: : Chapter 20

Six Months Later Letter #5 Ella, Ah, the dating question. I honestly don’t really date. Why? Because my life isn’t fair to any woman. We head out at the drop of a hat. And not like, “Hey, I’m leaving next week.” More like, “Sorry, I won’t be home for dinner…for the next couple of months.” Seems like a crap way to start a relationship when I never know when we’ll get home. Take this trip for example. We figured it would be a couple of months. Definitely not the multiple-stop journey it has been. I couldn’t imagine leaving a girl at home to wait through that.

So, without sounding…like a douche, I just prefer to not have long-term relationships. On some level, I’m also not sure I’m capable. When you grow up knowing nothing of a working, good relationship, it’s pretty hard to see yourself in one.

As for Robins, if you want to go, go. Don’t hide behind your life, or your kids. If you’re scared to get out there and risk yourself, then say that. Own it. What you went through would make any normal person a little gun-shy, no doubt. No one is going to think less of you. Just don’t hide behind excuses. You’ll be stronger when you identify what sets you on edge. And honestly, I’ve seen pictures of you. You’re not going to end up as the crazy cat lady, I promise.

Am I happy single? I think happiness is a relative term, no matter what the subject. I quit striving for happy when I was about five. Now I go for content. It’s easier to attain and doesn’t leave me feeling like there’s something missing. Eventually I’ll get out of the military, and then maybe we’ll see, but that’s a decade or more away. For now, this is the life I love, and I’m content. Goal attained.

Tell me a little bit about Telluride. If I came into town as a tourist, what absolutely has to be seen? Done? Eaten?

~ Chaos …

Content. I’d been looking for the right word to describe my feelings about my blur of a life lately, and that was it: I was content.

I loved Beckett with an intensity that was almost frightening. That hadn’t changed—and something told me it wouldn’t. But I also knew there were things about him I’d never know. Even seven months as a couple hadn’t filled in all the holes of who he had been before he’d shown up at Solitude.

Most of the time, he was the Beckett I knew, but there were moments when I caught him staring out at Ryan’s island, or when he woke up from a nightmare, that I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d ever know him as well as he knew me.

Maybe that was simply what came with the territory when you loved a man like him. I’d learned a few months into our relationship that love was mostly about compromise, but it was always about acceptance. There were dozens of little things about him that could annoy the socks off me, and the same went for him, but for the most part, we were who we were, and we loved each other. There was no point trying to change each other, we either wanted to grow or change ourselves, or we didn’t. After you accepted that about someone and still loved them, you were pretty much indestructible.

Beckett had accepted that I was always going to be overprotective of the twins and that I wasn’t anywhere near ready to tell them that he’d adopted them. I’d accepted that there were simply parts of him that would always remain shadowed and secretive.

But there was no denying that my choice to keep the adoption under wraps was directly impacted by the moments Beckett distanced himself when I asked about his past.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. He would die for me. For the kids. But until I knew with 100 percent certainty that he’d stay—that those shadows in his eyes wouldn’t lead to me finding his bags packed—the twins couldn’t know. God, they loved him, and even the chance that Beckett could destroy their hearts by being the second father to abandon them was too big of a risk to take. Not while Maisie was still fighting for her life.

The thought of losing Beckett stuttered my heart, and I reached across the console of the truck to take his hand as he drove us along the familiar roads to Montrose. He lifted my hand and kissed the inside of my wrist, a habit I happened to love, without taking his eyes off the road. Snow rose on either side of us, but at least the roads were clear. February was always an unpredictable month.

“You good back there?” I asked Maisie as she played on the iPad Beckett had gotten her for Christmas. It matched Colt’s almost identically except for the case.

“Yep, just working on a spelling game Ms. Steen gave me for homework.” She didn’t look up, just kept swiping away.

“Did you bring Colt?” I asked, spotting the pink bear wedged into the seat next to her.

“Yeah. He was mad that he couldn’t come, so I promised him Colt would come.” She met my eyes in the mirror and forced a little smile.

“You’re nervous.”

“I’m okay.”

Beckett and I shared a sideways glance, and we both let it go. She’d been through thirty-three days of hell a month ago. The mega-chemo had been the most vicious part of her treatment.

She’d thrown up. Her skin had peeled. She’d had sores down her GI tract and had a feeding tube placed because she couldn’t keep anything down. But as soon as she’d finished that course of treatment and the stem cells had been transplanted, she bounced right back. She was astonishing on every level that a little girl could be.

I couldn’t say I was happy, not with Maisie still fighting for her life, but we’d passed the year mark in November, and she was still here. She’d had another birthday, another Christmas. Colt was taking snowboarding lessons. Solitude was booked solid through the ski season and summer, and Hailey had moved out a few months ago, knowing I could depend on Beckett, who had taken shifts between Telluride and Denver, to be wherever he was needed most.

Everything came back to Beckett. He took the worst days and made them bearable. Took the good days and made them exquisite. He picked up the kids, took Colt to school, took Maisie to local appointments, made dinner on nights I couldn’t get away from the main house—there was nothing he wouldn’t do.

So maybe I couldn’t say that I was happy, but I was content, and that was more than enough.

Chaos would have been proud.

It had been almost fourteen months since I’d lost him and Ryan, and I still had no clue why. That was part of Beckett’s past I had a nearly impossible time accepting. Only nearly, because I heard him scream Ryan’s name in the middle of a nightmare a few months ago. That scream told me he wasn’t anywhere near ready to talk.

Ryan and Chaos were gone.

Beckett was alive and in my arms, and that meant I had all the time in the world to wait until he was ready.

We pulled into the hospital parking lot, and Beckett carried Maisie through the slush-filled lot as I followed in his footsteps, thankful I’d worn boots.

Maisie was quiet through check-in and vitals, and dead silent as she had her blood drawn and went through the CT scan.

By the time we were put into an exam room to wait for Dr. Hughes, she was almost a statue.

“What are you thinking about?” Beckett asked her as he sat on the exam table.

She shrugged, kicking her feet under the chair. They’d made a deal after the second MIBG treatment—she wasn’t sitting on exam tables any more than necessary. She said they made her feel like she was a sick kid, and she wanted to believe that she was getting better. So Beckett would sit on the table until the doc came in, and then they would trade places.

“Me, too,” he said, mirroring her shrug.

“Me, three,” I added.

That earned us a little smile.

Dr. Hughes knocked and opened the door. “Hi there, Maisie!” she said to Beckett.

“Busted,” he stage-whispered.

Maisie grinned and jumped up to take his spot as he took her chair and then my hand.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Hughes asked, doing the usual physical checks.

“Good. Strong.” She nodded to emphasize her point.

“I believe you. You know why?”

My hand tightened on Beckett’s. As steady as I tried to appear to Maisie, I was terrified of what she was going to say. It seemed so unfair to put a little girl through so much and not have it work.

“Why?” Maisie whispered, her arms crushing Colt’s teddy bear.

“Because your tests look great, just like you. Good and strong.” She tapped Maisie on the nose with her finger. “You are a rock star, Maisie.”

Maisie looked back over her shoulder at us, a smile as wide as the state of Colorado.

“What exactly does that mean?” I asked.

“We’re looking at less than 5 percent on her bone marrow. No change since you left the hospital last month. And no new tumors. Your girl is stable, and in partial remission.”

That word tripped something in my brain, and it short-circuited just like it had the first time they’d said cancer, except this time it was in the joy end of disbelief.

“Say it again,” I begged.

Dr. Hughes smiled. “She’s in partial remission. It means no new treatments for the time being. I’ll probably want to do a session of radiation in a couple months to mop up any of the microscopic cells, but as long as her scans are coming back clean, I think we can give her a little break.”

Everything went blurry, and Beckett’s hands wiped at my cheeks.

I laughed when I realized I was crying.

We listened to Dr. Hughes explain that it wasn’t a full remission. She had made significant progress but hadn’t been cured. She was hopeful that the radiation treatment would wipe out the rest, and then we could schedule immunotherapy.

Then she reiterated that over half of all kids with aggressive neuroblastoma relapsed after they’d been declared in full remission, that this wasn’t a guarantee but a much-needed break. Her weekly scans could even be done locally in Telluride, and she’d review them in Denver, no need to drive to Montrose.

I wrote down everything I could process in her binder, hoping I could make sense of it all later. Then Maisie hopped down from the table, and we walked to the car. Maisie and Beckett chattered and laughed, joking about how much ice cream she was going to eat while she had a couple of months off treatment. She declared she was going to eat an entire Easter basket full of chocolate and peanut butter cups.

Beckett hoisted Maisie into the truck, and she buckled in. Then he shut the door and caught my hand as he walked me to my side of the truck.

All at once, it hit me. Maisie had been talking about Easter, which was two months away. My vision swam, and I covered my face with my hands.

“Ella,” Beckett whispered, pulling me against his chest.

I gripped the edges of his coat and sobbed, the sound ugly and raw and real. “Easter. She’s going to be here for Easter.”

“Yeah, she is,” he promised, running his hand down my back in sweeping motions. “It’s okay to plan, you know. To look ahead to what life will be like for the four of us once she’s healthy. It’s okay to believe in good things.”

“I’ve been stuck for so long. Just living scan to scan, chemo to MIBG. We didn’t even buy presents until the week before Christmas because I couldn’t see that far into the future. And now I can see a couple of months out.” Sure, there were weekly scans, but a couple of months felt like an eternity, a gift of the one thing we’d been denied—time.

“We’ll just enjoy it and take advantage of every minute she feels great.”

“Right,” I agreed with a nod, but with the word “remission” being tossed around like a beach ball at a concert, I felt the gut-wrenching longing for more. I’d always pushed thoughts of Maisie dying to the side, but I also hadn’t thought about her living. My world had narrowed to the fight. My infinity existed within the confines of her treatment, never looking too far ahead for fear it took my eyes off the battle of the moment. “I think I’m getting greedy.”

“Ella, you’re the least greedy person I know.” His arms tightened, grounding me.

“I am. Because I’ve been begging for weeks, and now I see months and I want years. How many other NB kids have died while she fought? Three from Denver? And here I am seeing this light at the end of the tunnel and praying it’s not a freight train coming our way. That’s greedy.”

“Then I’m greedy, too. Because I’d give up anything for her to have the time. For you to have it.”

We headed home with Maisie singing along to Beckett’s playlist. Her earlier worries shoved aside for another day and another test.

My worries lingered. Wanting something that was so out of reach had been a distant thought, and now that it was a real possibility, that want was a screaming need that shoved everything else aside and demanded to be heard.

I didn’t just want these few months.

I wanted a lifetime.

For the first time since Maisie was diagnosed, I had real hope. Which meant I had something to lose.

…

Two weeks later, my back hit the wall in my bedroom, and I barely noticed. My legs were around Beckett’s waist, my shirt lost somewhere between the front door and the stairs. His fell somewhere between the stairs and the bedroom.

His tongue was in my mouth, my hands were in his hair, and we were on fire.

“How long do we have?” he asked, his breath hot against my ear before he trailed kisses down my neck, lingering on the spot that always brought chills to my skin and fever to my blood.

“Half hour?” It was a rough guess.

“Perfect. I want to hear you scream my name.” He carried me to the bed, and a few seconds and some shedding of clothes later, we were both blissfully naked.

We were experts at quiet sex, the kind where mouths and hands covered the sounds of orgasms, where you stole showers or middle-of-the-night sessions to avoid the inevitable kid interruptions. We’d long since moved the bed’s headboard off the wall.

But having the entire house to ourselves for a half hour? It was an excuse to be downright hedonistic.

He moved over me, and I cradled his hips between mine as he kissed me to oblivion. No matter how secretive he might be about his time in the military, he was an open book while we were in bed. Our bodies communicated effortlessly, and we somehow managed to get better at it every time we made love. The fire I’d half expected to fizzle out only burned brighter and hotter.

“Beckett,” I groaned when he took a nipple into his mouth and slipped his hand between my thighs.

“Always so ready. God, I love you, Ella.”

“I. Love. You.” Each word was punctuated by a gasp. The man knew exactly how to bring me to the brink with nothing more than a few—

Ring. Ring. Ring.

I forced my head to the side, where I saw Beckett’s cell phone illuminated on the floor next to his jeans.

“That’s. You.”

“I don’t care,” he said before he kissed me. Between his tongue and his fingers, I was already arching up to meet him, desperate to make the most of our time alone. These were the moments when nothing else mattered, where the entire universe melted away and nothing existed outside our bed—our love.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

Damn it. I looked again and made out the letters on his screen. “It’s the station, and if they’ve called twice…”

Beckett growled his annoyance but leaned over the bed to retrieve the phone. “Gentry.” He put his mouth to my belly, and I ran my hands over the broad expanse of his shoulders. “Don’t care. Nope.”

His tongue trailed back up to the curve of my breast, then abruptly stopped.

He sat up on his knees, and I knew before he said a single word that he was leaving, because he was already a million miles away.

“I’ll be there in ten.” He set the phone down and gave me the look—the one that said he wouldn’t go if they didn’t need him.

“It’s okay,” I told him, already sitting up.

He put his hand on my knee. “I wouldn’t go if they didn’t—”

“Need you,” I finished for him.

“Exactly. There’s been a rollover near Bridal Veil Falls, and a ten-year-old girl is missing. She was thrown from the vehicle. It’s…it’s a kid.”

Kids were the one demographic he never turned down. Even if he wasn’t on call, if it involved a child, he went in.

I leaned forward and kissed him softly. “Then you’d better go.”

“I’m so sorry.” His eyes raked down my body. “So. So. So sorry.”

“I know. I love you. Go save someone’s little girl.” I shooed him out the door with Havoc, and five minutes later, I stood fully dressed in my bedroom.

With an empty house.

The options were endless. I could read a book. I could watch something I’d DVR’d months ago. I could even take a bath. Sweet, blissful quiet.

Instead, I chose laundry.

“I’m going to start a nudist colony,” I muttered as I grabbed Maisie’s basket and headed down the steps.

My phone rang midway, and I did the basket-to-hip shuffle to get it answered. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Gentry?”

As lovely as that sounds— I shut that thought down.

“No, I’m Ms. MacKenzie, but I do know Beckett Gentry.” I made my way to the small laundry room and tossed the load in. If we ended up living here after Maisie was cured, then the first thing on my list was to ask Beckett to install a new, bigger washer and dryer.

Holy crap, I’d just made plans not only for Maisie to live but for Beckett to still be with me. Wasn’t I just the optimist today.

“Ms. MacKenzie?”

The optimist who had completely ignored the phone for her daydream.

“I’m here. I’m so sorry, what were you saying?” I poured soap in and hit start, then got the heck out of the laundry room so I could hear the woman.

“My name is Danielle Wilson. I’m with Tri-Prime.” Her tone was all business.

“Oh, the insurance company. Of course. I’m Maisie MacKenzie’s mom. How can I help you?” Man, those dishes needed to be done, too. What the heck had the kids concocted with Ada this afternoon?

“I’m calling in reference to the letter I sent to Sergeant First Class Gentry’s commanding officer. The same one copied to you as well.” She was certainly annoyed.

I thought of the small stack of insurance envelopes on my desk that detailed the paid claims. “I’m so sorry, I actually haven’t opened those in a couple of weeks. I’m usually way better about it.” But knowing we had a couple of months off treatments made me feel all reckless about not opening cancer-related mail. I felt like Ross in that episode of Friends, telling the mail that we were on a break.

Then what she said hit home.

“His commanding officer?”

“Yes. Captain Donahue? We sent him the letter last week as well, in way of notification.”

Beckett was out. He said he was on terminal leave when he got here in April, and it was already the first week of March. I didn’t know much about the army, but I didn’t think terminal leave lasted a year. Oh God, had he lied to me?

“I’d like to schedule a time to come out for a preliminary interview. Next week is available. Say noon on Monday?”

“I’m sorry, you want to come to Telluride?”

“That would be best, yes. Does Monday work, or would Tuesday be better for you?”

She wanted to come to Telluride in two days.

“Monday is fine, but can I ask what this is about? I’ve never had an insurance company visit before.”

What she said next stunned me to silence. It kept me motionless until the kids came home with Ada. Then quiet through dinner and baths. My mind went in ten thousand different directions as I got the kids to bed…and didn’t stop for hours.

It was after ten p.m. when Beckett walked through the door, using the key I’d given him seven months ago.

He was exhausted, with streaks of dirt running down his face. He stripped off his Search and Rescue jacket, hanging it on the rack by the door, and Havoc stopped by for a little rub before she headed toward her water dish.

“Why don’t I have a key to your place?” I asked.

“What?” He stopped abruptly when he saw me sitting at the dining room table amid the open insurance papers.

“I gave you a key to my place, and you sleep here most nights now. It just seems so symbolic, you know? I let you all the way in, and you keep everything locked up so damn tight. I only get to visit when you open the door.”

He sat in the chair around the corner from mine. “Ella? What’s going on?”

“You still have a commanding officer? Donahue?”

The way his expression faded to blank told me that answer. Ryan got the same expression whenever I’d asked him something about the unit.

“Were you going to tell me that you didn’t get out?”

He took off his ball cap and pushed his hands through his hair. “It’s a technicality.”

“I kind of view being in the military as a pregnant thing. You are or you aren’t. There’s no halfway technicality.” The dark, angry doubt I’d kept at bay started to cut through my chest, working its way to my heart. “Have you been lying to me this whole time? Are you still in? Are you just waiting until I don’t need you anymore to go back? Am I still just a mission to you? Ryan’s little sister?”

“God no.” He reached for my hand, but I pulled it back. “Ella, that’s not what’s going on here.”

“Explain.”

“Someone showed up right after I got here, asking me to return, and I declined. After what happened, I wasn’t really fit for returning, anyway, and Havoc might obey you guys, but she won’t take working commands from any other handlers.”

“Ah, another woman you’ve ruined for any other man,” I said, saluting him with my bottle of water.

“I take that as a compliment.” He leaned over the table, resting his elbows on the dark, polished wood.

“Don’t.”

“This…guy offered me a technicality, to take a temporary disability. It would allow me to keep everything army-wise the same without actually showing up. I could go back whenever I wanted if I just signed a set of papers that started with a one-year enrollment and could be renewed up to five. He completely worked the system, doing whatever he could to give me an easy way back in.”

“And you accepted.” I couldn’t even look at those eyes. The minute I did, he’d convince me he was staying, when all evidence proved to the contrary.

“I declined.”

My eyes shot up to his.

“But the night I realized I could put Maisie and Colt on my insurance, I knew I had to sign it. It was the only way to get them covered at 100 percent.”

“When did you do it?”

“The morning I went to see Jeff. It was exactly one day before the offer expired.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” A tiny bit of my suspicion faded.

“Because I knew you hated everything that we did, the lives we led. That you’d see me signing those papers as my getaway car for when I was done playing house here in Telluride. Am I right?” He leaned back and lifted his eyebrow in question.

“Maybe,” I admitted. “Can’t blame me, though, can you? Guys like Ryan, and you…and…” Chaos. “You all have the constant need for the rush. Ryan told me once that the time he felt most alive was in the middle of a gunfight. That everything in those moments happened in vivid color, and the rest of his life faded a little because of it.”

Beckett played with the brim of his hat and nodded slowly. “Yeah, that can happen. Once you have that level of adrenaline rushing through your system, that heightened sense of life and death, the normal day-to-day stuff feels like it’s just a little below. Like life is the monorail at Disney, and combat is the roller coaster—the highs, the dramatic lows, the twists and turns. Except sometimes people die on the coaster, and it makes you feel even luckier to get off, and a hell of a lot guiltier.”

“Then why wouldn’t I expect you to go back to that? If we’re the monorail, you’ve got to be bored, and if you’re not, then you’re going to be.”

“Because I love you.” He said it with such incredible certainty, the way someone said the world was round or the oceans were deep. His love was a foregone conclusion. “Because kissing you, making love with you? When we’re together, you eclipse all of that. It’s not even in the background, it just doesn’t exist. Combat never bothered me before because I had nothing to lose. No one loved me, and I cared only about Ryan and Havoc. I couldn’t leave you. I couldn’t go across the world and worry about you, about the kids. I couldn’t go into combat with the same effectiveness because I’d know that if I died, you’d be alone. Get it?”

“I’m your kryptonite.” That didn’t sound so flattering.

“No, you gave me something to lose. Other married guys, they’re okay, but maybe it’s because they didn’t come from such messed-up childhoods. Love for them was the monorail. You are the first person I’ve ever loved, and the first woman who has ever loved me. You’re the roller coaster.”

Well, if that didn’t just pop a pin into my anger bubble and burst it.

“You should have told me.”

“I’m sorry. I should have told you. But we were getting so close back then, and I wanted you so badly that I didn’t want to risk it.” He sat up straight and took my hand, looking into my eyes with such an intense expression on his face that chills ran down my spine. “If I ever hide something from you, it’s because I’m terrified to risk losing you. That whole roller-coaster thing? I’ve never felt like this. Never had my heart leave my body and belong to someone else. I don’t know how to have a relationship, and I’m bound to screw this one up.”

I brushed my thumb over the underside of his wrist. “You’re doing fine. We’re doing fine. Come to think of it, this is my longest relationship, too. Just don’t keep things from me, okay? I can always deal with the truth, and lies…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Lies are my hard limit. I have to be able to trust you.”

And I still did, even though he’d hidden this detail from me.

“There are things about me that would change the way you look at me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” He was so certain.

“Try me.”

The muscle in his jaw flexed, and he looked like he just might—

“How did you know about my commanding officer?”

Or not.

Disappointment flooded my stomach. “The insurance company called. They’re sending someone out on Monday to interview us.”

“What? Why?”

“I guess the amount of Maisie’s bills tripped some internal alarm with her recent enrollment. They’re investigating us for insurance fraud.”

His eyes closed slowly, and his head rolled back. “That’s just fantastic.”

“Beckett…”

He pushed back from the table and took his hat, tugging it on. “I think I’m going to sleep at my place tonight. It’s not you, just the rescue, and I need…”

“Did you find the little girl?” I asked, shame lowering my voice because I hadn’t thought to ask before now, too consumed with my own drama.

“Yeah. She should make it, but it was close.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Then I’m glad you went in.”

How different this conversation was from the one we’d had a few hours before when he’d left.

“Me, too.”

“Stay. Please stay,” I asked softly. “I know sometimes you get nightmares after you do rescues. I can handle it.” If I wanted any future with this man, I had to prove to him that I wouldn’t turn away when he showed the parts he purposely kept hidden. “I told you, there’s nothing that would make me look at you differently.”

“I killed a child.”

He said it so quietly that I almost didn’t hear him, but I knew he wouldn’t repeat it even if I asked. So I sat as still as possible and simply watched his face.

“It was a bullet ricochet. She was ten. I killed her, and our objective wasn’t even at the location we’d had intel for. I killed a child. Still want to sleep next to me?”

“Yes,” I answered quickly, tears prickling at my eyes.

“You don’t mean that. She had brown hair and light brown eyes. She’d seen us coming and was trying to get her little brother out of the way.” He gripped the back of his chair. “I still hear her mother screaming.”

“That’s why you go for every child rescue, no matter what.”

He nodded.

Maybe it was part of the reason he was so determined to save Maisie, too.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Don’t ever say that to me again,” he snapped. “I pulled that trigger. I knew the risks. I killed that child. Every time you see me with Maisie or with Colt, think about that, and then you decide how much you really want to know about how I’ve spent the last decade.”

My heart broke for him, for that little girl and her mother. For the brother she’d tried to pull out of the way. For the guilt Beckett carried. I wanted to tell him that he couldn’t scare me. That I knew who he was down to his soul, and he was a phenomenal man. But the look on his face told me that wasn’t an option tonight—he wasn’t ready for anyone’s absolution.

In case no one ever told you—you’re worthy. Of love. Of family. Of home.

Ryan’s words from his last letter to Beckett hit me. He was the only person who might have known Beckett better than I did, and I had a feeling that while I knew all the beautiful sides of Beckett, Ryan had known the shadowed ones.

I stood and held out my hand, waiting for him to make his decision.

After what felt like a lifetime, he took my hand and went upstairs with me. Once he’d showered, and we lay together in the darkness of my bedroom, Beckett pulled me against him, holding my back to his front.

“I didn’t give you a key because you own the cabin, Ella. I figured you already had one. Maybe I should have told you to use it whenever you wanted, but I guess I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“You gave me your key when we reached the point in our relationship where you trusted me, then I was allowed access to you.”

“Right.”

“I had to earn your trust. But you’ve had mine since day one. You already had a key to me. I know the attic door is a little jammed, but just give it some time.”

I turned in his arms, remembering every time he’d asked if he could help me. The day he’d found Colt at his house. The night I’d walked in to read Ryan’s letter…and then again the night of the adoption. When he’d first come, I was the one who’d shut him out.

“I love you.”

“I know, and I love you,” he told me. Then he spent the next hour showing me with every touch of his hands and kiss from his mouth.

Like I said, we were experts at quiet sex.

Mind-blowing, earth-shattering, soul-shaping sex.