“You ever think we’d get here?”
No.
Never.
Not in a million years.
There was a time I thought survival was the best I could hope for.
Now?
Now I have peace.
Love.
Family.
Freedom.
I turn slowly in his arms.
And there it is again—
that look in his eyes.
The one that still undoes me completely.
Like he sees every broken piece of me…
…and loves me anyway.
No.
Not anyway.
Because of it.
Clay brushes his thumb softly across my hand.
Right over the faded barcode scar on my wrist.
Ascension’s mark.
The thing I once hated looking at.
Now?
Now it reminds me I survived.
“We’ve been talking,” he says carefully.
Uh oh.
That tone.
“What kind of talking?”
A dangerous smile appears.
