She laughed when I nudged my chin toward what she’d been reading before. I kissed the inside of her palm, inhaling the cocoa butter on her skin.
“A demon possessed me,” I whispered, sobering.
Rae’s smile faded. “Then, we created a prison in the stable.”
I nodded, vaguely remembering. “And I hid in the cabin.”
“The cabin?”
“My safe space. An anchor until I figured out how to make my way home.”
At first, I’d been trapped inside and in silence for days. The demon left, ripped away by whatever Rae and her team had done. But I couldn’t go outside of the cabin anymore because nothing existed outside of it. Everything had gone dark. The demon had taken parts of my inner world with him, leaving behind a void. So as the days went by, I had to rebuild.
I lived in the cabin, stitching together old memories. Rae’s necklace warmed me throughout the process, a source of power to maintain my sanity. Another anchor to the real world as I built my bridge and reclaimed my mind.
She held my hands between hers, pressing them to her chest. “You made a shelter, you saved your mind, and now you came back.”
“To you,” I said. “Because I had one question that kept bugging me when I was in there.”
Rae tilted her head to the side as she studied me. “What’s that?”
“Do you always keep that sticky note in your pocket?”
She straightened and almost laughed. “What?”
I gestured for her to reach into the pocket. “I saw it when we were all on the porch that night.”
She released a laugh and pulled out the crumpled sticky note with my name on it.
“I’m Octavia.” I smiled down at the sticky note.
“That’s cheating,” she murmured, letting me hold it.
“Just needed a little help.” My stomach did flips. She’d been carrying this around for months.
“It’s almost fitting,” she teased.
I looked up. “Hm?”
“The name. It’s almost as pretty as you are.” Rae tucked a loc behind my ear. She kissed me, and it was a lengthenedwelcome home, welcome back to where you belong,and athank you for giving me you; it’s enough. Now, have me.
I playfully bit her lower lip, accepting her offer before pulling away.
“But we fit just right,” she murmured against my lips.
I slipped the sticky note back into her pocket. “That’s one thing I’ll always believe in.”
EPILOGUE
One year later
“He’s twenty minutes out!”I announced when Octavia got inside the house. She nearly tripped over her feet as she shed her boots and coat.
“I can barely see straight,” she lamented, hurrying into the kitchen to wash up before returning to the living room.
Her eyes were heavy with exhaustion from a long day tending to our latest boarders. I pushed aside my laptop, opening my arms for her to crawl into my embrace. She did so without a care, snuggling her head into the crook of my neck as she released a sigh against my skin. There was a calm unlike anything I’ve ever experienced whenever our bodies folded into one another like this. I lived for the end of days when she came back to me.
“Everything’s sore,” she whispered as she hugged my waist. Her fingers slipped underneath my shirt, searching for the skin-to-skin contact neither of us could resist for long.
