Avery crashed before we made it back to the farmhouse. Too much shit in one day. I was feeling the strain of it all too, but I wasn’t sure it could put me to sleep. Not when I had to do that knowing Stone would be sleeping in a cell until he could get an arraignment hearing hopefully tomorrow.
Doc gave me a hand with the door so I could carry her in. When we made it inside, I found Kate standing there waiting for us. Her face wasn’t blank like I’d gotten eerily accustomed to. No, she was fucking worried. As she stood there, ringing her hands in front of her chest, she looked like she was about to fall apart.
“One minute, Katie,” I said quiet enough not to disturb Avery. “Just let me put her down, yeah?”
Kate nodded by rote, but I’d have to take it.
Avery never once stirred as I carried her up the stairs and laid her in the bed. Even taking off her shoes got me nothing. That absolute exhaustion told me a lot about what she went through today.
I wasn’t the only one sunk deep here.
As much as I wanted to crawl in with her and hold her, to take comfort out of just being able to do that at all, I knew Kate needed me. Avery would too, but she was fine on her own for now.
Kate was still exactly where I left her, only now she’d rotated so those wide eyes were focused on the stairs as I came down. She didn’t move or speak as I hit the first level. She just watched like she thought I might up and disappear at any minute.
“Katie,” I said softly.
That seemed to jar her. One second, she was that still image of fear, and the next, her arms were wrapped around me as she shook against me. To all that was fucking holy, I hoped I never had to feel a woman I cared about trembling like that in my arms again.
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“D-D-Doc only t-t-told me when he took Avery to give her statement,” she choked out. “Th-Th-They came here and took you away and I didn’t even know.”
Fuck.
“Kate,” I started, but she kept speaking.
“I’m going to do better. I’m going to see the therapist and learn how to deal with this grief,” she swore.
Jesus, she thought she hadn’t known I was taken in for questioning because of that shit swirling in her head. Maybe in a larger sense she wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t wanted to freak her out or send her reeling, but it’d mostly been about not having to be taken away in front of Owen. I never wanted him to see me that way.
“It wasn’t like that,” I insisted. “I sent Avery off before they escorted me out too. I don’t want you guys seeing that shit. I didn’t know if they were going to put cuffs on me or what the fuck was happening.”
The mention of me possibly being cuffed had a little cough of a sob coming out of her.
I corralled her over to the couch and sat her down there. “Where’s Owen?”
“Ember came by and offered to watch him. I thought it was best to let her when we didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Ember had known that early, which meant it was probably Jager who got that info Stone used to sell his confession. Fuck. I wondered if the brother knew what he was setting Pres up for.
“Doc called to say they were releasing you, and I nearly lost it,” she told me. “After losing…” she couldn’t say it. I knew the fucking feeling. That was probably going to be an important place to start getting her better. “I didn’t want to lose you too. I didn’t want Owen to be without his uncle.”
God, she was killing me. I’d lived my whole life acting first and dealing with the consequences when they came. That wasn’t an option anymore. I had more than just my brothers at my back. I had people who couldn’t handle it if I didn’t come home at the end of the day.
That was fucking terrifying as much as it made me feel incredible. And that terror came from knowing I could fuck it all up in an instant. Hell, I already had. If Stone hadn’t saved my ass, it would have happened.
Kate and I sat there together for a long time. We didn’t talk much, but there was a comfort for both of us in just being together and knowing it wasn’t going to end.
Then, I heard the quick footfalls upstairs.
Shit. Avery was up.
“Go to her,” Kate assured me when I looked her way. “I’m fine.”
I ran to the stairs to see my girl round the corner at the top. She was absolutely terrified. Maybe because they came for me and I’d been arrested after all, maybe thinking me being released had just been a dream—I didn’t know, and I didn’t really fucking care. I was here, and she didn’t need to feel that fear.
Bounding up the stairs, I got to her just as she swayed and looked like she might drop to her knees.
“You’re still here,” she whispered.
“Not going anywhere, sugar. I fucking promise,” I told her, taking her weight. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
“Will you stay with me?”
I knew it wasn’t easy for her to be vulnerable that way. She’d spent her life not depending on anyone for anything, but now she needed something only I could give her. What fucking floored me was that she trusted me enough to open up and ask for it.
“I’m all yours.”
“Good.”
She clung to me as I led her back to the bed, and never loosened her hold as we got it in together. I was pretty fucking certain I’d never be able to be just like that, with her warm body wrapped around mine, and not think what a fucking miracle Stone made for me that I’d be able to keep doing it.
“I love you.”
Did I say just being beside her was a miracle?
Fuck that.
Her soft voice wrapping around those words was the sweetest fucking miracle that could ever hope to bless a bastard like me.
I couldn’t hold back. Rolling her onto her back, I took her soft lips roughly. My tongue invaded her mouth. But my Avery soaked it right up, kissing me back just as fierce. In no fucking time, her hips were pressing up against me.
God, she was so fucking perfect.
Maybe after all the shit we’d experienced that day, after her giving me those words, it should have been soft and slow. Neither of us wanted that shit. We wanted fast, crazy, life-affirming. We wanted ripping off clothes, teeth on skin, violence and passion blending into a fucking heady cocktail.
When I had her gorgeous fucking body bare beneath me, I finally took half a second to stop and take it in. I was right there, with this beautiful woman beneath me when I should have been rotting away.
“I fuckin’ love you, Avery,” I confessed. As the words washed over her, I thrust inside and used my body to show her just how fucking much.
“Why?”
Stone looked at me, giving nothing away in his expression.
He was sitting on the back deck of the farmhouse with a beer, staring out at the yard as the sun disappeared behind the tree line. I knew exactly what he was doing, soaking up his freedom while he had it.
Yesterday, he had been released on his own recognizance until sentencing. Last night had been about being close to everyone. Today, he’d been out on his bike since before dawn.
“You had more to lose,” he responded.
Christ.
“Brother…”
“Laura’s workin’ the prosecution. Says I should only see eighteen months. Spent more time than that in worse conditions when I was serving this country. I was fortunate enough in this life to find myself brothers twice. In the Marines and in this club. Not a lot I wouldn’t do for any of you I consider my family.”
He was fucking killing me.
“Fact is, you’d have gone down for a lot longer. Knew that. Considered going to put the hurt on that asshole myself so you wouldn’t have to, but I spent too long considering and not acting. Had I done it, I’d have been in there confessing to shit I really did anyway. You got shit here you need to take care of, not be separated from for the next fucking decade or however long they’d decide to throw at you. I can sit tight for a handful of months knowing I won’t have to watch my brother do that.”
“You’re fucking crazy, Pres,” I muttered, looking out at the sky myself. When I’d first gotten out of prison, I used to do it all the time. I’d sit just like he was and bask in the fucking freedom. Of course, I’d usually cap it off with some liquor and a willing woman. Maybe even get that view and fresh air with some lips around my cock. Still, that freedom was possibly the sweetest part. I’d gotten used to it now. “And I owe you everything.”
“Could get your woman to make me some cupcakes,” he shot back, and I actually fucking laughed. “No joke. Doc’s been talking those fucking things up.”
“What you did, she’ll fuckin’ drown you in cupcakes.”
“Worse ways to go,” he muttered.
We sat there in silence. What the fuck did you say when someone gave up eighteen months of their life, of their fucking freedom, for you?
“I’ll never be able to make this up to you.”
I saw him lift his beer and take a drink from the corner of my eye before he said, “You get your head out of your ass and tell that woman she’s yours permanently, that’d do.”
Christ. Even now, he was trying to set me up with a good fucking life.
“Told her I loved her when I got back from the station,” I told him. “Got that back from her.”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “That’ll do.”
“You got the same from me, brother. ’Til the day they put me in the ground. You gotta know that.”
Stone grunted, “Debt repaid.”
Fuck, no it wasn’t. Not even close. I’d be making this shit up to him for the rest of my goddamn life. But I didn’t argue that with him.
He was making a point, and it was one I felt right down to my fucking soul.
So, I shut up and enjoyed the sweet peace of freedom with a man I owed everything to while I could.