Page 232 of What We Become

His cheeks go pink, which on him looks unfairly beautiful. “I thought it would help to have a record. Of good things. Of your things.”

“I love it. Thank you.”

Holden goes next. He slides a flat box across the table—leather, embossed. Inside is a new choker. Titanium, brushed to a matte finish, fitted with a hinge and a clasp that locks with a small key. It’s beautiful. Delicate enough to look like jewelry, solid enough that I could wear it every day and not worry about it breaking.

“There’s a tracker in the clasp,” Holden says, and I smile.

“Of course.” I run my thumb across the titanium. “Will you put it on me?”

Holden stands. Walks around the table. He moves like it hurts, but his hands are steady when he fits the choker around my neck and locks the clasp shut, pocketing the key. The metal sits against my pulse—cool, then warm, alive with my heartbeat.

“Beautiful,” he says. His thumb traces the line of it. “Now I’ll always know where you are.”

“You’re keeping the key,” I say.

“I am,” he says, and for the first time since their surveillance over me started, I don’t feel suffocated at the thought. I feel loved—cherished. The first tracker helped them find me in a wall, and the last tracker spent my birthday on the hall table, and we woke up in a barn. If it hadn’t been for Gloria being just as over-the-top as my men, we might never have been found. I tip my chin up so he can check the fit.

“Romantic or creepy?” Milo asks the table.

“Both,” everyone says in unison.

Eli’s gift is a key. Just a key, on a simple ring, sitting in a small box lined with blue velvet.

“To what?” I ask.

“A cabin.” He meets my eyes. “It’s not as grand as the one in Blackridge. But it’s ours. For whenever we need to disappear.”

“You bought a cabin.”

“I did. Sold my house since I didn’t need it anymore, and thought . . . Well, it needs a lot of work. I figured Knox could help me fix it up.”

Knox gives him a nod. It’s the first easy thing I’ve seen pass between them in months.

“I love it,” I say. “Eli, thank you.”

“You’re so welcome, little savage.”

Knox’s gift is last. He reaches into his jacket and places a small leather pouch on the table in front of me.

I open it. Inside is a ring. Hand-forged, dark metal, with a thin line of gold inlaid around the center.

“Knox,” I whisper.

“I like to forge,” he says.

“You made this?” I ask, and he nods.

“At the same forge I used for your knife.”

“You also made my knife?”

He nods. “I did.”

“Oh, Knox.” I stare at the ring. At the man who made it. At the hands that forged it—the same hands that pulled me out of a wall and held me in a car wreck and carried me through every dark thing this world has thrown at us.

I put it on. It fits perfectly.

“How did you know my size?”