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“I wrecked you, babe? You leveled me.” He didn’t try to be eloquent. He didn’t need poetry. Shewashis poetry. “You were the chaos I never saw coming. The one thing I couldn’t control. You shattered everything I thought I needed to be, and made me feel again. You didn’t just give me love… you gave me back pieces of myself I didn’t know I’d lost.”
His arms tightened around her, voice low and reverent.
“You brought me home, Quinn.”
She stroked the bristle of his jaw, tears sliding silently down her cheeks.
He swallowed hard. “I used to think love made you weak. That it got people killed. That control was the only thing keeping me steady.” He paused, glancing toward the bedroom where the boys slept. “But you showed me it’s the opposite. Love grounds you. Love strengthens you.” He exhaled. “Somehow, you made me stronger by letting mefall.”
Quinn’s hands curled into his shirt, eyes searching his.
“You leveled me, Quinn,” he said, voice quiet now. “Then you rebuilt me.” For a moment, as he held her, he thought of Brian. Not with guilt this time. With peace.
He’d always blamed himself for losing his brother. Always carried that weight like shrapnel under the skin. But maybe Brian had brought them together in the only way he could. Letting Quinn live. Letting them both love again.
God, his team. His brothers.
They’d seen the change in him too. Not just the way he watched Quinn, not just the way he smiled more, fought less, but the way he showed up for them. Let them in. Trusted deeper.Laughed easier. He was more than a weapon now. He was a man again.
“I love you, babe.”
She looked at him like he was the axis her world had spun around without her knowing, and in that moment, she wasn’t just beautiful. She wasundoneand whole all at once, love written in every line of her face.
“I love you more,” she said softly. Then, with a wicked gleam, “Now show me some of that amazing stamina… because I want to consummate our engagement.”
She trailed her fingers along his collarbone, nipping him there as she snagged his dog tags. As her clothes slipped away, one piece at a time, she moved toward the bedroom, slow, confident, lit from within.
When he didn’t follow, she turned, bare and glowing, the tags swinging between her breasts.
“Come here, you gorgeous man,” she murmured, voice like velvet and flame. “Let’s burn together.”
His heart tripped, his dick hardening.
Yeah, he was a fucking man, and he was going to fuck her until she screamed.
And it was because of her.
Because of this life.
This hallway. These sons of his. This chaos.
This love.It wasn’t perfect. But it was theirs.From silently watching over his brother’s wife and children to standing by her in grief, without expectation to being the unspoken father of her twins, finally hearing her sayI want your child.
Their loop had started in shadows and ended in light. Not just with love, but withacknowledgment. With Quinnchoosinghim, not out of pain, but out of power.
He was always there.
Now he wastheirs.
That was it. The fire. The healing. The forever.