Page 80 of Thunder

And the light came, and it was awful, and it burned, and I'm still here.

Still breathing.

Still his.

The worst finally happened.

And I survived it, and I'm not alone, and tomorrow the sun comes up on a life I don't have to hide anymore.

"Thunder?"

"Mm?"

"Thank you. For making it stop for a while."

He shifts, tips my face up to his, and kisses me slow and deep, no rush left in it now, nothing but a man kissing his woman in a quiet room at the end of a hard day.

"Anytime you need it stopped," he says against my mouth, "you come find me. That's what I'm for. Rest of my life, that's what I'm for."

And I believe him.

For the first time in longer than I can remember, I close my eyes and I don't brace for the next bad thing.

The fear's been my constant company, a low hum under everything, the part of me always scanning the tree line for the next disaster.

It's gone still now.

Not gone for good, maybe never all the way gone, not in this family.

But quiet enough, tonight, that I can feel the weight of his arm across me and the rise and fall of his chest and the plain animal safety of a big man who's decided you're his to keep, and let all of it be the last thing I know before sleep instead of the fear.

I just let him hold me, and I sleep.

And I don't dream of graves, or investigators, or my father's face turning to stone.

I don't dream at all.

I just rest, for the first time in ages, in a bed I don't have to sneak out of before dawn, next to a man the whole world's about to know is mine.

EPILOGUE

Thunder

One Month Later…

Nobody can figure out where the red hair came from, and it's the best argument I've heard all year against a man ever bein' sure of anything.

Rose Earlene came into the world six days ago with a full head of it, bright copper, a red that catches the eye clear across a room, and both her parents are dark as creek mud.

Banshee's been walking around the clubhouse holding her like she might go off, staring down at that little ginger head with a look on his face I've never seen on the man in all the years I've known him, somewhere between wonder and pure dumb terror.

"My grandmother," Bex keeps saying, every time somebody asks. "She was a redhead. It skips around."

"Skips around," Banshee repeats, dazed, and he can't stop touching the baby's hair like he's checking that it's real.

Little Rose’s name is an ode to someone they both lost.

Rose, for the woman Banshee and Bex both loved and lost, the one who stitched the two of them together before she went and left a hole in both their lives.