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Tears burned my eyes, and he bent toward me at the same time I reached for him, needing to feel all of him. Because this was it—that moment I had craved all those months ago but hadn’t been able to comprehend before now.
This was the wake of our war.
And I did—I wanted to stay in the moment forever.
“I love you. I love you,” I whispered over and over again when he found his release inside me.
“Forever, Blackbird,” he vowed against my lips. “Forever.”
Chapter 41
Day 125 with Briar
Lucas
Briar looked around the workout room that weekend, her expression confused when she realized no one else was joining us. “Is the driver picking someone up?” she asked as she continued to look at the large, open space in the middle of the room I’d created for today.
“No, but he’ll be here eventually with lunch and to see how it’s going.”
She rubbed at her sore wrist from the other training we’d been doing the last two nights as she finally looked up at me. “I thought you said someone was training me how to defend myself.”
I glanced down at myself, letting my gaze flick back up to her. “I’m training you.”
She immediately stopped rubbing her wrist, her eyebrows shooting up as she realized the depth of what I was saying. “Are you afraid the other men would find out if you hired someone?”
“No.”
With William probably hiding out in his home now, plotting out his next attack, I wasn’t worried about anyone bothering to pay attention to our home life.
“Then why?” she asked, drawing out the last word.
The corner of my mouth tipped up in amusement. “Why not me?”
Every night that week, Briar and I had been training in other ways. We’d sat on the floor talking about anything to keep her mind off what I was trying to do—get her comfortable with guns. As we talked, I made her load an empty magazine into a handgun I’d given her, only to drop it, over and over again until she was no longer holding the gun between two fingers or cringing whenever I placed it in front of her.
The night I’d handed her the gun with a loaded magazine, the cringing had returned, and it had been even worse when I’d made her rack the slide to chamber a round. But I’d just kept talking to her about mundane things, every now and then prodding her to continue until she was doing it without thinking.
Load. Rack. Drop. Rack. Load. Rack. Drop. Rack.
Finger always off the trigger. Barrel always aimed away from both her and me.
Along with working to get her comfortable holding and loading a gun, the past two nights we’d spent hours at a range, teaching her how to shoot. She wasn’t the best, but I hadn’t expected her to be, and I didn’t need her to be. I just needed her to be able to defend herself if it came down to it, and now she could. I needed her not to be afraid to hold and use the weapon that might save her life, and now she wasn’t. After less than a week, I couldn’t ask for more.
When the adrenaline had faded from the first night at the range, she’d broken down in the back of the car. Tears had streamed down her face, her body shaking so badly I’d had to hold her tight against me to calm her.
Once she’d finally been able to speak, she’d started rambling about the smell and the sound, and seeing people bleeding out in alleys and on sidewalks and in bedrooms. But the next night, she’d been ready to go again and had done better than the night before. On the way home, I’d massaged her aching wrist from the recoil of the handgun and had frozen when she’d mumbled, “I don’t think I could shoot someone. I wouldn’t know how to live with myself after.”
I hadn’t responded . . . partly because she’d seemed to be talking to herself, but mostly because the answer was that every day was a struggle, and she didn’t need to be reminded of that.
But now Briar stared at me with a mixture of confusion and surprise, like she didn’t understand how I didn’t already know the answer to my own question. “B-because,” she finally said, stumbling over the word, “how am I supposed to learn anything? I won’t be able to concentrate with you, and I won’t feel comfortable hitting you—don’t you have any padding?” she asked suddenly and looked around the room again.
“An attacker won’t have padding, Briar. Besides, I’m not worried about you hitting me.” I took a few steps toward her, closing the distance between us so I could grab her hand and start massaging the wrist she’d forgotten about. “If you want me to hire someone, I will. He’ll teach you techniques that would make a drunk man who doesn’t understand the word ‘No,’ stop and think twice about coming after you. But if someone really wanted you, they wouldn’t care what techniques you know. And they won’t coddle you and release you when you land the correct hit.”
I hadn’t asked before because I knew I wouldn’t have been able to handle the images it would give me—of someone trying to take this girl from me—but I needed to know.
“What did you do when William’s man tried to take you?”
She flinched, and her eyes slipped closed like she was trying to block out the memory, but after a few seconds, she started talking in a numb voice. “I bit the hand that was over my mouth. I slammed my head back into his face.”
