Holden took her hand as they headed into the Food Lion in Berkeley Springs.

She’d been quiet after her shower, like something was bothering her, but she told him she was fine when he asked. Though he didn’t believe her, he decided not to press it. He knew enough about women to know that when someone was “fine,” she probably wasn’t, but she wasn’t going to tell you what was not “fine” until she was good and ready. So be it.

As they walked through the sliding doors, his phone buzzed in his back pocket. Once. Twice. Damn it, he’d meant to leave it at the cabin. Fucking Jonah was on a rampage today.

Griselda dropped his hand and looked up at him with wide, unamused eyes.

“Shouldn’t you answer that? Might be important,” she said all sassy, reaching for a shopping basket and charging into the store without him.

Fine. Hmm.

He caught up with her in the produce section. “Something wrong?”

“Your phone’s been fascinating you all morning,” she said, gazing at the bananas like she’d never seen one before in her life.

“We can’t afford bananas,” he said gently.

She picked one up and held it between her ear and mouth like a phone receiver. “Hello? Oh, Gemma! What an unexpected surprise. Your boyfriend? Of course. He’s right here.” She handed him the banana with a sour look, then turned on her heel and started toward the apples.

Holden stood frozen, staring at the bananas. Holy shit. She was jealous? Griselda Schroeder was jealous. He forced himself not to smile as he followed her to the bins of apples.

“How about green apples?” he suggested. “Like the color of your skin.”

“And sour,” she retorted, “like your girlfriend’s disposition.”

“Well, now,” he drawled, “since my girlfriend’s yelling at me in the middle of the danged Food Lion, I guess that’s about right.”

Her face didn’t soften as she whipped around to face him, one hand on her hip, mad as hell.

“Why does she keep texting you?”

“You’re assuming a lot.”

“Oh . . .,” she said, crossing her arms over her perfect breasts and raising her eyebrows in challenge. “It’s not Gemma who keeps texting you?”

“Among others,” he admitted, unable to lie to her, but not especially anxious to tell her he’d been trading several days’ worth of insults with Jonah.

Her eyes flared open, dropping to the tallies on his arm, then back to his eyes. “Well, don’t let me keep you from the . . . others!”

“F-fuck,” he muttered as she sped away from him, realizing how she’d misinterpreted his words. He’d meant Jonah and Clinton, not other women, for Chrissakes. He had his hands full enough with her.

He followed in her wake, giving her a few minutes to shop solo and hoping she’d calm down. When she got to the frozen food aisle, he sidled up to her and nudged her with his hip. She didn’t turn around.

“I didn’t mean other women,” he said to her back.

She huffed, opening the freezer door between them and leaning inside.

“Gris, I’m not talking to any other women, but I can’t help it if Gemma texts me.”

“You could’ve broken up with her.”

He grimaced. Yeah, he could have. “Well, I didn’t. We hadn’t even spent twenty-four hours together yet. W-we hadn’t even . . .”

She drew back, slamming the freezer door, and gestured at him with a package of frozen green beans.

“What? We hadn’t even what?”

“W-well, hell, I didn’t know how things were going to go with us. I was prepared to be friends if that’s what you wanted.”

“In which case you’d be glad you held on to Gemma? As a backup? For your . . . needs?”

“No. Hell.” He stared at her, shaking his head slowly. “I can’t win today. You getting your period or something?”

If he’d thought her eyes were furious before, they quickly changed to glacial. “Because the only excuse for my being pissed about your girlfriend sniffing around would be hormones?”

“Gemma’s not my girlfriend.” Holden swallowed. “G-Gris—”

“Uh-uh. You’d best tell her that, not me! You freely admit that Gemma keeps texting you, and you’ve been texting all damn morning, and you’re sleeping with me. So pardon me if I don’t like it. Why don’t you go wait in the truck and leave me alone?”

She threw the green beans in her basket and started walking down the aisle again, and Holden stalked away in the other direction.

Twenty minutes later, she joined him in the truck. As soon as she sat down, he turned to her. “Your facts are wrong. I’m not texting her back. I’ve been deleting her messages!”

She buckled her seat belt with a loud click. “So . . . who?”

“Who w-what?” he spat, pissed that they were even having this stupid quarrel about nothing, as he backed out of the parking space.

“Who do you keep texting?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. “Eighty-somethin’ tally marks says it does.”

“They don’t mean anything, Gris!”

“They do to me!” she yelled.

“F-fucking Jonah! Jonah, okay?”

She froze, her whole body going still.

“What?” she said, like he’d knocked the wind out of her with a sucker punch. “Wh—? Jonah? How? Why?”

“I listened to his f-fucking messages. I know I said I w-wouldn’t. But I was curious. He’s got a f-filthy f-fucking mouth, Gris.”

He glanced at her, and she was staring at him, slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

“So I texted him if he ever came near you again, I’d d-do something about it.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her shoulders relax and her body deflate. “You been trading texts with . . . Jonah?”

Holden glanced at her, then dropped her eyes. He stared out the windshield at a red light and nodded. He was surprised to feel the soft, warm touch of her hand on his cheek.

“Look at me,” she said.

He did.

He did, and this time all the air was sucked out of his lungs because this girl did things to his heart and his body with her eyes, with just a look.

“You ever going to stop protecting me?”

“No.”

“Shoot. Jonah.” Her lips quirked up a little, and she laughed so softly it was almost like a sigh. “I guess you’re trading insults.”

“He’s an asshole, Gris.”

She nodded but didn’t seem to want to talk about Jonah. “I’m sorry I gave you a hard time.”

“I’m sorry I made you think I was texting Gemma . . . or any other girl.”

“I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“I’m sorry I listened to the messages when you asked me not to.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t trust you,” she whispered.

The car behind them beeped, and Holden turned back to look at the road as she dropped her hand from his face. “We’ll be back at the cabin in two minutes, Gris, and I have some things to say. You’re going to listen, you hear?”

“Okay,” she said, folding her hands in her lap.

He pulled onto the dirt road that led to the cabin, and a moment later he cut the engine, parking in the gravel by the porch.

“Come on.”

“Where we going?”

“Come on,” he said again.

He got out of the truck and walked around to her side, holding out his hand to help her down. She took it, and he pulled her into his arms.

“You listening to me?” he asked, his lips close to her ear.

“Mm-hm,” she murmured, leaning into him.

“I need you to listen g-good, now.”

“I am. I promise.”

“You don’t want me to fight? I won’t fight. You want me to break up with Gemma? She’s gone. You want me to quit my shit job, give up my apartment in Charles Town, and move to Maryland? Done. You want to go to college? I’ll make it happen.

“I’ve been half d-dead for ten years, Gris, but then you walked back into my life, and I came alive again. You make me want to live. You make me want to be a better man.

“I love you, and when I say that, I mean that you’re my reason for breathing, for eating, for drinking, for sleeping, for living. I will never hurt you. I will never leave you. I will always protect you. There is no one more important to me than you, and as long as I live, there never w-will be.”

Her shoulders were shaking when he finished. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his face close and pressing her lips to his, her salty tears mixing with the taste of him. This was a different kiss than the others they’d shared—it was sad, yes, but it wasn’t tentative. In its own glorious way, it felt like a kiss of surrender, of Griselda finally believing that he belonged to her and only her, and that she could start to trust her feelings for him, and their commitment to each other.

She rested her cheek on his shoulder. Her face turned into his neck, her lips close to his skin.

It took him a second to realize that she was saying something very low.

“What, angel?”

“I got into the truck first,” she sobbed so pitifully it was almost like a child’s terrified whisper. “I got you abducted, and then three years later, I left you there while I escaped.”

“No, baby—”

“I deserve every bad and dirty thing I get. I ruined your life. I did that to you, Holden, and someday when the shock of me being alive wears off, you’re going to look at me and hate me for it.”

He held her closer, tighter, until he could feel her heart thrumming against his, the short sobs of breath fanning his neck as she wept. As clear as day, he heard his own words from long ago in his head, I w-won’t ever hate you again. I p-promise, G-Gris.

“I can’t hate you. I already promised.”

She sobbed harder, taking a ragged breath that made him clench his jaw, scrambling for a way to make her see that whatever bad had happened as a result of getting into Caleb Foster’s truck so long ago, it didn’t matter. The good in Griselda, in them together, outweighed the bad one million to one.

“Gris, listen,” he said, leaning back to look at her. She kept her eyes down, tears of shame and sorrow streaming down her face. “You gotta hear my w-words.”

“I just . . . I’m so sorry, Holden . . .”

“Listen to me, because this is the truth, Gris.” He tilted her chin up with his finger, capturing her eyes and making sure she was focused on him. “You saved my life.”

“No—”

“You saved my life,” he said firmly. “Four times now, you’ve saved me.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“It does.”

She shook her head in defeat, so he continued.

“You saved my life at the Fillmans because, for the first time since my g-gran died, I felt connected to someone. To you. And pressing my arm against yours in that stupid station wagon made me feel . . .” He shook his head, searching for the right words. “Alive.”

“That’s not—”

He cut her off. “I wouldn’t have survived the cellar without you.”

“You wouldn’t have been in the cellar without me.”

“Woulda coulda shoulda,” he shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was in the cellar, and you were there with me, and having you there k-kept me alive.”

“Holden, you’re twisting—”

“No, I’m not. I’m telling you my truth, the truth of my life as I see it. Third time? When you ran, we both survived. Gris, think back. Think back to that day in the garden right before we escaped. We were sure he was getting ready to k-kill us. And if you hadn’t run, if you’d come back with us, he probably would’ve, because he could see what we meant to each other and he hated us for it. Instead, you ran . . . you got away, and he believed I was saved. If you hadn’t run, good chance we’d have both been dead a long time ago. You ran, and it saved b-both our lives. Certainly saved mine.”

She was still shaking her head, so he cupped her wet cheeks, smiling into her face tenderly as his own eyes welled with emotion. “Stop shakin’ your head, Griselda Schroeder, because this is my truth, and I am sharing it with you, and you need to respect that.”

She looked up at him with wide, glassy eyes.

“Four times. The Fillmans’. The cellar. The river. And you saved my life again on Saturday night, when you showed up at that fight. You saved it when you walked into my apartment building on Sunday afternoon. You saved it when you agreed to stay with me for a month . . . because my life was a dead thing, Gris, and you made me want to live again. You came back from the dead and brought me back from the dead w-with you.

“And it fucking k-kills me that you ever thought you deserved some dickhead like Jonah in your life because you deserve the best, Gris. And that’s exactly what I want to be for you: the best. Exactly what you got coming to you.”

“Holden,” she sobbed, leaning forward to kiss him.

He held her face in his hands, leaning away so her lips wouldn’t touch his. As much as he wanted to get her naked and sink into the sweetness of her body, he needed to see it in her eyes first—that she believed him, that she would allow herself to love him and consider a future with him.

“No, sweet girl. N-not yet.” He smiled at her tear-streaked face, letting his thumbs swipe away some of the wetness. “First I need to know you heard me.”

She searched his eyes, her bright blue ones circled with pink from her tears, huge and glistening.

“You mean it?”

“Every word.”

She licked her lips, clenched her jaw, and sniffled, taking a deep, shaky breath that made her breasts push into his chest. “You think I saved you?”

“I know it. You’re my savior. My angel.”

Her eyes were searing as she stared at him, as though seeking a glimpse of his soul to verify that his words were true. The almost imperceptible nod of her head was his first indication that she’d found it.

“I’m your angel?”

“I got the wings on my skin to prove it.”

“You going to marry me, Holden Croft?”

“As soon as you say yes.”

“You going to help me go to college?”

“I’m going to insist.”

“You going to be the father of my babies?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, the idea making him so hard, so fast, he felt dizzy with desire for her. “Hell, yes.”

“Then I think we should get in some practice,” she said, finally smiling at him with her whole face, sassy and confident, finally—finally—believing what Holden had known from the first time he’d laid eyes on her: they belonged to each other, and they always would, until the end of time.

***

Griselda stepped away from him and took his hand, leading him into the cabin, walking purposefully through the small common room to the tiny back bedroom, which was bright and sunny.

Standing just inside the room, she didn’t know if it was the heat of Holden’s body behind her or the warmth of the mid-morning sun that made her skin feel so hot. Her heart throbbed with anticipation and longing. Her eyes closed slowly as she felt Holden’s hands land on her shoulders. Pushing away the hair on the back of her neck, he dropped his lips to her skin, nuzzling and sucking gently as one of his hands looped around her waist, resting warm and flat on her abdomen, just beneath her breasts.

She leaned back, into him, tilting her neck to the side to give him better access to her throat, to the pulse there that rocked and throbbed. He pulled her closer, his erection bumping her backside as his hand drifted lower, over her belly, into her shorts, under her panties, his longest finger landing effortlessly on her aching clit. She let her head fall back on his shoulder as the pad of his finger rubbed and circled, pulling breathy whimpers and urgent moans from the back of her throat as she thrust shamelessly against his digit. Two of his fingers dipped lower, slipping into her drenched sex and making her gasp with the sudden feeling of fullness as his thumb continued pressing and rubbing her clit. His other hand let go of her hair, smoothing over her shoulder and down her chest, into her bra, cupping her breast and freeing it to gently pinch her nipple into a tight, aching point.

“Holden,” she gasped, every part of her body electric, on fire, aware of his every movement, inside, outside, rubbing, stroking, pinching.

“What, angel? Tell me,” he murmured, his lips like a feather touch under her ear.

“I want . . .,” she said, her breathing quicker and more ragged as her body, his plaything, gathered, bunching together in anticipation of imminent release.

“What do you want?” he asked, taking the soft lobe of her ear between his teeth and biting.

She fell apart standing up, supported by his arms, her sex convulsing in ripples and waves, her head a dead weight on his shoulder as her knees buckled. Suddenly she was swept up in his arms, and he was placing her in the center of the bed, unbuttoning her shorts and slipping them down her legs. He raised her arms over her head and a moment later her bra and shirt joined her shorts on the floor and she was completely bare, bathed in the warm sun, staring up at the love of her life, who quickly shed his jeans and threw his T-shirt on the ground.

He reached for her legs, spreading them slowly before kneeling on the bed between them, the mattress depressing a little from the solid mass of his body joining hers. Reaching forward, he ran his fingers from her clit to her opening, letting the slick of her recent orgasm coat his skin. Holding her eyes, he touched himself, circling the tip of his shaft until it was shiny with her essence, and fuck, but it was the most erotic thing Griselda had ever seen in her entire life.

“What do you want?” he asked again.

“I want you,” she panted, her body clenching with arousal, desperate to feel him moving inside her.

“Who do you love?”

“I love you.”

“Who do you choose?”

“You,” she said, letting go of the tightness inside that had made her so cautious of looking beyond tomorrow.

“Forever, Gris,” he said, placing his hands on her hips and pulling her toward him, lifting her pelvis a few inches off the bed and resting her backside on his knees as he guided her sex to his.

“Forever, Holden.”

Pulling her forward with one swift yank, he buried himself to the hilt. She gasped with surprise, but her eyes held his with a tenderness, an intensity, that humbled him because he could read them so clearly, and he knew that she had finally surrendered everything to him. She wasn’t holding back anymore. Her heart, her life, her future—it all belonged to him.

“I want you,” he said, pushing her hips away, then pulling them back again until they were perfectly joined.

“I love you,” he said, sliding her back and forth on his hard, swollen, pulsing dick.

“I choose you,” he said, placing his hands under her back and raising her up into a sitting position on his knees, keeping himself lodged deep inside her body.

Her breasts were crushed against his chest, and he thrust up slowly, taking his time, watching her eyes roll back in her head before he leaned forward to capture her lips with his. His tongue swirled around hers, and he felt her ankles lock around his back, her legs flexing tighter and tighter around his waist as the walls of her sex clenched around his penis, which moved faster with each thrust.

“Wait for me,” he breathed, feeling the gathering, the heat, the swirling in his belly, the stars behind his eyes that told him his climax was building, was almost ready to burst.

“I can’t, Holden . . . I . . .”

His hands skated up the damp skin of her back, cradling her skull from behind, forcing her to look at him.

“I jump, you jump,” he said, the words falling off his tongue easily, even though they’d originally been hers. He searched her dark, heavy-lidded eyes. “Wait for me, Gris.”

“Come with me, Holden,” she gasped, her inner muscles so tight their bodies were truly one.

“I am,” he rasped “Now!”

Wrapping his arms around her body and thrusting one last time, they came apart together, clasping and crying out each other’s names as their bodies moved to a primal rhythm of love and surrender and pleasure.

“Forever, angel,” he whispered against her shoulder, gently laying her back down on the bed, then pulling out of her and rolling behind her. He drew her into his arms, profoundly grateful, deeply in love. He was whole, happy, alive, back in captivity, his heart and soul owned by hers. Then, now, and . . .

“Forever,” she answered, curling her body against his and falling asleep in his arms.