I needed to do something. Madie had already fallen into a post-orgasmic slumber, and meanwhile, my entire body was awake in painfully throbbing ways.

Slipping out from the bed, I treaded lightly to the window, scanning the street in front of Caroline's house.

I hated feeling like I was being watched. Most of my life, I'd felt that way. Watched.

In reality, I was almost certain no one watched me at all.

But it felt like they were.

When you're the slow kid with the dead mom, murderous dad, and a hardcore attitude, you feel like people are watching you. But no one actually cares. Not really.

I watched the cars drive by for a few minutes, letting the monotony of it numb my senses until they no longer burned. Until I could breathe again. Feeling and hearing Madie's orgasm had temporarily disarmed my ability to inhale and exhale normally.

I glanced over, watching her sleep in my bed. How many times over the past month had I looked at that mattress and imagined her being there? Now she was—with one leg tossed on top of the covers and her cute ass popping out the side of them.

Fuck. My breath hitched in my throat again, and I looked back at the traffic. And when that didn't quite distract me well enough, I decided to call Officer James.

Nothing like talk of an attempted murderer to cool your blood.

Luckily he answered this time. And it was to tell me good news.

"Hey, sorry," he started with. "I had a really intense case last night. But I got your message, and I think you'll be relieved to know that we've got that Devon guy in custody."

Relieved was an understatement. I sagged against the window sill, letting my forehead rest against the cool pane. Thank fucking god.

"His physical description fit pretty well with that old picture of your father, so when we saw him at the cemetery the other night, we assumed he was our guy," James said.

"So he staged himself there," I inserted flatly.

"Yeah, but I doubt he would have done it if he'd realized that there was a warrant out for his arrest. It didn't take us too long to piece together that we didn't have Luke Hadaway. Especially because your girlfriend planted a seed of doubt in our head. But then we still kept Reid for the other shit he's wanted for." James gave a humorless chuckle. "He was real surprised about that. Guess he had no clue his wife went to the police."

"So he's still there?" I asked, anxious to hear confirmation.

"He's still here. I mean, he'll get released with a court date before too long, but it still gives us some time to investigate his connections with your dad and the attempted murder on your girlfriend. Considering where we found him, and with having Luke in custody to interview, it shouldn't be too hard."

I breathed out slowly.

"How's she doing, by the way? Your girlfriend?"

I smiled and peeked over to see that Madie was awake. She'd rolled over onto her side, scrolling through her phone as she rested there. Then she put it up to her ear, saying a quiet hi to her mom.

"She's doing alright," I said when I realized I hadn't answered him. Madie distracted me. Of course. "We're back home now."

"Good."

Officer James and I talked for a few more minutes as I told him what I did know about Devon Reid, most of it having to do with Quinton and his relationship with Madie. And then I realized that Madie was watching me with wide eyes, so I hung up the phone.

"He's in custody," I said, and I couldn't help but grin at the words. Fuck, I'd been so worried that we would have something else looming over us. Or someone else. "They have him."

I didn't know if Madie heard me at first, but then I saw the tears in her eyes, and I knew she did.

Healing was slow.

Bren and I watched so many movies as my body pieced itself back together. And then my heart began to mend, too.

To be honest, we needed that time. We cuddled, and Bren would wrap himself so tightly around me that escaping seemed impossible—not that I wanted to ever escape from this boy. We took naps, too, sleeping through more than a few afternoons. We ate peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon, and Bren gave me dirty looks as he watched me lick my lips.

Much to my irritation, however, he never took it further than those dirty looks. I never got more than a naughty smirk or a flash of dark eyes. He maintained annoyingly committed to the no-sex-for-a-week rule, not even caving when I took to sending him teasing texts from the other side of the table or the couch.

I still kept sending them, though. He clearly wasn't going to give in to temptation, but his reactions were priceless regardless. They varied. Sometimes it was a distinct cough or a shift in his seat, and other times he dragged a hand over his face dramatically.

At one point, I texted Bren to ask if he could tell I wasn't wearing a bra. With one glance at his phone, he threw it on the living room floor with a groan and carefully trained his eyes onto the TV again. He then watched Derek Shepherd cross the screen with remarkable precision.

When I nudged him with my foot, he ignored me.

When I muttered his name, he ignored me, too.

"I'm serious," I ended up hissing. "I need to know if I should go change before dinner or not."

Bren's head rolled lazily in my direction, and his heated gaze traveled slowly from my face to my chest. And then he swore beneath his breath and stared hard.

Because it was definitely obvious that I'd gone bra-less. Especially considering the chill in the air.

Unfortunately, though, Caroline happened to pick that moment to walk into the living room, and she immediately flicked the back of Bren's head. "Be a little more inconspicuous, will you?" she said, laughing.

We both flushed red, and I had to choke down a fit of giggles. I hadn't heard Car come home from work, and clearly, neither had Bren.

It probably went without saying that I made a point to change before dinner. I wore one of Bren's baggy sweatshirts; I'd been borrowing his clothes all week since I didn't bring anything with me from Oakland.

Caroline relaxed with us a lot, too. It didn't seem to bother her that, more often than not, Bren had his hands all over me. Not inappropriately—unfortunately—just in those innocent ways that made my stomach flip pleasantly. Fingers playing with my hair or rubbing circles on my knee. A palm firmly settled on my hips. That type of thing.

She didn't mind. In fact, I caught her smiling at us on more than one occasion.

Caroline was comforting company. She simply had that presence about her. But I think she might have been the one who really needed comfort and companionship these past days. She didn't talk much about what had happened, but I could tell that it had shaken her badly.

We'd all been shaken badly. But being with Caroline and Bren while recovering—that was the good part about this all.

The pain was the not-so-good part.

I insisted on cleaning and re-bandaging the wound myself, despite Bren's insistence that he would help with it. There were some things I needed to do on my own. There were still minutes in the day that I needed to myself, moments I needed to reflect on the fact that I could have died. Again.

But I didn't.

I didn't die.

And I wasn't going to. Officer James called after a few days to say that they'd gathered enough evidence—and got Devon and Luke to spill enough secrets—to officially arrest Devon Reid in connection to what had gone down at Caroline's that night. The night I'd almost died.

Luke Hadaway and Devon Reid both wanted me gone. Devon, because of what happened to his son after I'd left him. And Luke, because of what happened to his son when I found him.

But the only people at fault for the pain that their sons have gone through...is them.

And I knew that.

And so everything would be okay.

Especially because, by the end of the week, I began to feel normal. Some minor soreness persisted and the beginning of a nasty scar appeared, but the damage ended there. And I couldn't complain about that.

As spring break drew to a close, something shifted—in the air, in our conversations, in our thinking. The shitty things we'd been through would always linger, but Bren and I both knew that we couldn't linger with them.

The future awaited, and it looked so much different than it had before.

It went without saying that we wanted to be together. We always wanted to be together. But Bren had finally found his footing with a job he really enjoyed. And he was understandably worried about leaving Caroline on her own after such a traumatic experience.

"She's always been there for me, Madie," he'd said. "I can't just fucking abandon her when she's just gone through all of this shit that was my fault to begin with. It's my turn to be the stubborn, annoying ass who doesn't leave her alone even when she tells me to."

And as much as I longed to see Bren every day, I couldn't find it in me to argue with that. I knew it killed him, too. It tore him up to even suggest that we make long-distance work a bit more.

There was only like a month left of the semester, though. And honestly, before the incident with Luke, Bren and I were finally on our way to figuring out how to survive apart. So we decided that Bren would bring me back to campus after spring break was over in a few days, stay for a short visit, and then return to Fresno to be with Caroline and keep working at his job.

With church-basement-girl.

But that was beside the point.

After finals, I planned to come back here and spend the summer with both of them. And god, I couldn't wait for that.

Caroline tried not to cry happy tears when we told her, but she failed. And then we got pulled into inescapable back-to-back hugs.

It was a relief more than anything; admittedly, I'd been worried that she wouldn't want two college kids hanging around for three months. But based on her reaction, that certainly wasn't the case. Which was good—really good. Great, even. Because as I jumped into Bren's car to head to Oakland on the last day of spring break, I found myself really looking forward to coming back to Fresno.

To Bren, mostly. Of course, Bren. But also to a place that felt a little bit like home.

The trip to campus went far too quick, and I enjoyed myself far too much. Bren had one hand slung over the steering wheel, and he liked to peek over at me with an adorable smirk as we drove. He looked at me as though he knew some joke that I didn't, and I probably should have been annoyed by it. It was cute, though.

The way Bren would smile and bite his lip gave me butterflies as intense as the first time he'd looked over at me from behind a steering wheel.

It was just as good as that time when he had glanced my way and said, "Baby, I think I'd go anywhere for you."

That. It was still just as good as that.

Maybe even better.

And then, occasionally, his other hand would wander over to my leg and squeeze it, and I would nearly lose my mind completely.

I just loved the whole trip—the whole two hours of it.

When I texted Nessa to let her know we were on our way, she replied that she'd stay elsewhere for the night to give Bren and me the room.

I appreciated that.

I really appreciated that.

Because when we stepped back into my dorm room, Bren picked me up, set me on top of my little twin mattress, and gave me a look that needed no words to explain. My skin prickled. My stomach flipped. Heat drenched every fiber of my being.

"Bren?" I asked, breathless.

His simmering smile grew. He grabbed my waist, skimmed his hands up my sides. He leaned in so I could smell his piney cologne and feel his breath on my lips.

"Madeline," he breathed.

I shamelessly inched toward him. "Yeah?"

He murmured the next words, and they rolled through my whole body.

"It's been a week."

🤍

xoxo amelie