"I need to."
"Nico—"
"Let me. Please."
She's quiet. Then her hand comes to my hair. Permission.
I kiss both wrists. The left. The right. Not to heal. I can't heal this. Not to apologize. Words are for apology. This is something else. This is acknowledgment. I see what my decision cost your body. I see the evidence. I'm not looking away.
She lets me. The letting is the bridge. The act of allowing my mouth on her injuries is forgiveness delivered without the word, and I receive it the way I receive everything she gives me: on myknees, grateful, aware that I don't deserve it and committed to earning it anyway.
Then lower. My mouth traces her collarbone. Between her breasts. Down the center of her body. I pause at her stomach. Press my lips there. Stay.
Five weeks. Nothing to see. The skin is flat and warm and holds a future neither of us planned. I kiss the place where my child is growing, and the kiss is for both of them.
"I'm here," I say against her skin.
Her fingers thread through my hair. She arches when my mouth moves lower. I take my time. Relearn her. The sounds she makes, the breath that catches, the small shifts that tell me what she needs. I find her center and give it everything because I almost didn't get to do this again and I will not waste a second of the gift.
She comes slowly. A wave. Her hand in my hair, my name on her lips, the sound quiet and raw and entirely mine.
I move up her body. She pulls me to her. I enter slowly. Eyes open. Watching her face. She watches mine.
Neither of us looks away.
For a moment we don't move. The fullness. The warmth. The connection that isn't just physical, but the sum of every door knocked on, every argument, every reconciliation, every factory floor and kitchen counter that led us here.
Slow. Deep. Each stroke deliberate. Each one saying what words have been trying to say for thirty-five chapters: I'm here. I'm not leaving. I'm not sending you away.
"I love you."
"I love you."
Simple words. After everything — the power dynamics, the moral complexity, the secrets, the violence — the simplest words in the language. And they're enough.
She wraps her legs around me. I press deeper. Forehead to forehead. Breathing synchronized. The world outside — the alliance, Dmitri, Lex, the city — none of it exists in this room. Just two heartbeats and the third one too small to hear.
She comes. I watch it move through her face like light through water. I hold her gaze. Catch every sound.
I follow. Her name. The only word I know.
Chapter 41
Siobhan
* * *
After, we’re tangled. His head on my chest. My fingers are tracing the scar down his ribs. The scar I've traced so many times, I could find it in the dark. I can find all of him in the dark.
"No more armor."
"No more walls."
"Just us."
"Just us."
The exchange is quiet. A litany. A vow that means more than the one we spoke at St. Demetrios because that vow was strategic, and this one is earned. That vow was two strangers making a deal. This one is two people who have seen the worst of each other and chosen to stay.