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I laugh softly. “Very.”

His arms tighten around me. I kiss him once. “Put me down before my legs forget how to work.”

Locke pushes away from the wall.

Then he carries me straight to the bed.

“Locke.”

“You said your legs might not work.”

I smile. “I walked into that one.”

“Yes.”

He lowers me onto the mattress with ridiculous care and climbs in beside me.

Late-afternoon sunlight stretches across the foot of the bed. Locke lies beside me, his repaired chest threaded with new green willow, completely at ease in a space that has only ever been mine.

I roll onto my side and run my fingers lightly over the new weave. The fresh green strands are already beginning to look as though they belong there.

Somewhere beneath them, my old wedding ring is hidden inside the part of him that beats.

Once, that ring meant I belonged to someone. Now it rests inside Locke’s body, and that means something entirely different.

It doesn’t make him mine. Nothing does.

He’s here because he wants to be.

So am I.

I reach for him, and Locke comes closer without hesitation. His hand comes to rest at my waist.

“Sleep?” he asks.

I toss him a wicked smile. “Eventually.”

He kisses me, and this time neither of us is in any hurry to get there.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Rachel

I wake to sunlight and the weight of Locke’s hand resting against my waist.

I don’t move. The room is bright enough that I can see the green strands threaded through the repair on his chest, darker now than they were yesterday and already less conspicuous among the older willow. Locke is on his side facing me, his head on the pillow beside mine, and something about the ordinary intimacy of it keeps me still.

Then I realize nothing woke me.

No creaking floorboard pulled me out of sleep. No car door outside. No voice carried up the stairs and turned into Trent’s before I was fully conscious. I didn’t surface every hour to check the room or listen for movement beyond the bedroom door.

I went to bed beside Locke, and I slept.

The realization comes quietly enough that I almost miss how enormous it is.

Locke’s eyes open. “Good morning.”

“Morning.”