Something was wrong. I knew it. I felt it.

“Want a cappuccino?” Emily asked, looking at her phone. “Jack called Will, and he’s on his way over. He said he’d bring coffee.” She said it with a shrug. She didn’t know what I knew instinctively—that something was definitely, definitely wrong.

I shook my head and pulled at the hem of my sweater, rolling it between my fingers nervously. “Where is he?” I asked her, as though she could tell me.

“Who? Will? He’s just round the corner at the Costa.” Emily looked at me as though I had three heads.

“No. Dylan. He should be back by now.” I marched to the door of the room and flung it open. The officer who’d been checking in with us was no longer there, and I didn’t give a shit that he’d told us to stay there. I needed to know what was going on. My heart was racing. He should have been there—now I knew something was wrong.

I heard voices from a room at the end of the hall, men talking over one another, and a woman’s voice speaking over all of them. “Get Bickford on the phone now. We have to find out where they’re taking him. And follow that car, Robert, do you hear me? Do not lose them.”

I was at the door now, and I could actually feel the color drain from my face; it felt as though the life was draining from my body. Lose? As in, they couldn’t find him?

She turned around and saw me, and I was completely frozen in place.

“Your Grace, ma’am. Everything is fine—”

“Don’t lie to me. Find my husband.” The words were cold and directive. Everything, every detail of the room, every voice, every face became a muted grey, disappeared into the background. All I could sense was my own heart beating furiously in my chest.

One of the other agents approached me. “You should go back to the—”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Right then Emily and Will came up behind me—I could hear them and feel them, and Will’s voice came over my shoulder. “What’s going on?”

“Something’s wrong,” I said. “They don’t know where Dylan is.”

The woman stepped forward. “And you are?”

“Family,” I said sternly. “He’s family. And we’re staying here.” I wasn’t going to find out a moment later than I had to—whether it was good news or bad news, I was going to be the first to know.

In the meantime, I let Will pull me against him, into his other side. One of his arms was wrapped firmly around Emily, and his other around me.

“It’s going to be all right, Lydia. Dylan may be a pompous arse sometimes, but he’ll do what he has to do to get back to you.”

We stood there for a few moments while the room returned to its frantic state, and then perhaps worst of all, it settled into a thick horrible silence.

Someone brought chairs at some point—they must have, because eventually I was sitting in one.

Someone called Charlotte. They must have, because somehow she ended up in a chair against the wall, holding Emily’s hand.

Someone brought food—they must have, because I realized there was an untouched salad on the floor by my feet.

I waited. I paced. I closed my eyes, and willed time to go by faster, willed Dylan to appear in the doorway. He had to.

At some point Charlotte began pacing back and forth, agitated, and one of the agents said to her that we really shouldn’t be here. He approached Charlotte and asked her to leave the room.

“No.” I stood up and said the first words I’d uttered in over two hours. “She is his mother. Dylan is doing this because of you. He’s doing your dirty work. He’s doing this of his own accord, because he’s honorable, because it’s the right thing to do, because he believes lives will be saved by doing this. But he didn’t have to. And she,” I said, pointing to Charlotte, “raised the unbelievable man who’d do that. He is her son. And if you fuck this up, she has the right to see it happen. She’s had enough loss this year, and right now this is the closest she can get to her son, who is missing and possibly harmed. So, I suggest that you stop worrying about who is in this room and get back to work on bringing him back to us.”

Charlotte was frozen in place, but sank back against the wall. And I sank back into my chair. Emily’s hand was linked in Will’s, and her head was on his shoulder. Her eyes were closed, but I knew she wasn’t sleeping. I saw him lean down and whisper in her ear occasionally.

The computers at the front of the room continued to buzz and blink. Phones vibrated, and calls were answered, texts sent and received, maps consulted. But for what felt like days, there was nothing.

But it wasn’t days. It was minutes. Forty minutes to be exact, before the central line rang loudly into the room, and it was placed on speaker.

“He got him. Hale got the fucker. Recorded him on his mobile, got the fucker completely.” The voice was raspy and out of breath, and I could hear commotion in the background.

I flung from my seat again and ran into the center of the room. Some kind of fire spread through my limbs, like they were coming back to life.

“Where’s Hale? Where is he?” the officer in the room with us shouted into the line.

“He’s on his way back. He got him, James. We finally got King. Hale was brilliant.”

I zoned out the rest of the conversation, because I’d heard everything I needed to hear. Dylan was okay. Dylan was okay. He was coming back to me.

I ran from the room and down the hall, and I was in the elevator before I realized I wasn’t wearing any shoes. I must have taken them off at some point during the evening.

When the bell in the elevator dinged, and the doors opened, I ran through the lobby and out the door. As I exited the glass doors, a town car pulled up in front, and the passenger door flung open. Dylan, his shirt untucked from his pants, his jacket missing, his shirt ripped at the collar, burst from the vehicle with some kind of adrenaline-filled strength. Within a second I was in his arms.

His musky salty smell filled my senses. I could taste his skin as my lips met his chest, then his neck, and his face and then his mouth. My hands were in his hair, on his arms, wrapped around his neck, and I was holding myself to him as though the very turning of the earth depended on my grip.

I’d always loved the strength of his arms, the way he held me and carried me with ease, but this was different. The way he held me against him, the total lack of give in his grip, communicated everything I needed to know. He was never going to let me go.

“Damsel,” he said quietly. “You’re not wearing shoes.”

I laughed a little, just enough to bring me out of my desperate hold and loosen my grip.

“I’m back, baby. It took a little more work than I’d planned, and I’m going to fucking throttle Jack, but did you honestly think I’d ever not come back to you?”

I wasn’t crying, but I couldn’t speak either. I just needed a few more minutes to revel in the certainty of his presence.

“Shhh,” he cooed as he put me down. My chest still pressed against him, but he wedged his hands between us and up my body, taking my face and forcing my gaze up his. “Baby, I’m here.”

I nodded and lifted my lips to kiss him.

“Dylan.” I started to speak, but I didn’t know what to say. That I was so scared he was somehow lost to me forever? That this had been too dangerous? That I somehow lost the one person who’d managed to tether me back to this earth after losing my father.

“I know, baby. But I’m here.”

He took my hand in his, and we walked back into the building. By the time we got to the lobby, Charlotte, Will, and Emily along with the rest of the officers were all standing there. The officers were talking rapidly and trying to shake Dylan’s hand, but he went to his sister and hugged her.

“Sorry I worried you, Em.”

She hugged him fiercely back, but then pulled away, as though she just remembered that hugging wasn’t exactly in the Hale Family Playbook. “Oh, please. Who said I was worried? Don’t flatter yourself.” But I swore she wiped something away from her eyes. He chuckled and gripped her hand one more time.

I stood back and watched as he gave Will a nod.

Then his mother approached us. She stood before us, her misty eyes fixed on Dylan. I’d never seen her look so disheveled. So unmasked. So much like a mother. Her hair was unstyled with a headband keeping the wispy strands off her face. She wore pants and a wrinkled sweater. It was the first time I’d really looked at her all night, and she looked terrible. She looked like a mother who’d been afraid of losing her son.

There was an awkward moment, during which I wondered if I was going to have to tell Charlotte where to shove it, but then she surprised me, perhaps more than anyone else ever had.

“I’m proud of you, Dylan.” She reached out to grip his hand, and I saw her squeeze it. Maybe this was as close as they’d get to a mother-son embrace, but it spoke volumes. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, and he leaned down to kiss hers. I saw him nod, almost imperceptibly.

“And, Dylan,” she continued. “I’m sorry. I’ve been monstrous. I know that. Tonight made me realize how lodged in my grief I’ve been, but it’s no excuse.” Then suddenly she was looking at me. “And I owe you an apology as well, Lydia. And gratitude. Thank you for what you said up there.” I could feel Dylan look at me, the way his head had tilted down towards mine. “My son is fortunate to have you as his wife. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that he is so loved. Forgive me for taking far too long to appreciate it. I hope you’ll pardon my behavior.”

“I—” I started to say it was okay, but when I looked at her and saw in her eyes a contrition that could have been mistaken for fear, I simply said, “Thank you.”

Then Charlotte gave Dylan an actual hug. I let go of Dylan’s hand so he could reciprocate properly, but it was back in my own hand within seconds, squeezing. By threading his fingers through mine, he said all he needed to.

It was two more hours before we were able to go home. Charlotte, Emily, and Will had left shortly after Dylan’s return—once we knew he was okay and the adrenaline rush had dissipated, everyone seemed to need to retreat and recoup. But there was no way I was leaving his side.

I’d never felt this way before, physically unwilling to let my hand go from Dylan’s. I knew it was irrational, but it was as though I felt that by holding on to him, I could somehow undo the panic I’d already felt. Or like that panic was still there, its shadow lurking, and the only way to keep it at bay was to literally not let Dylan out of my grasp. Thankfully, he seemed to feel the same way, or at the very least he knew better than to try to make me let go.

At one point, when we’d been sitting in Jack’s office for forty minutes, and Dylan was signing a statement, I finally let it sink in. How worried I’d been. How relieved I was that he was back. And what that meant. How was it possible that over the course of a year, another person could become so intimately ingrained in your world? I had always had a little disdain for the “we” couples, those people who when you asked them a question about themselves always seemed to answer in the plural, as though they no longer had an individual identity. It had seemed weird, desperate, showy.

But now I saw it differently. I had become so used to thinking about the world as a place I was moving through with Dylan that to think about only myself seemed like a lie somehow, like it didn’t reflect reality anymore. And not because I was any less my own person than I had been before, but because the person I was, the Lydia of that moment, was someone who held someone else’s dreams, fears, and loves as close to her heart just as he did. And I knew without a doubt that my own dreams, fears, and loves had become his. We had become irrevocably tangled up in each other.

So in those few horrible hours when I thought there was a chance he was gone, I was panicked, not just because I would have found myself grieving the single most important man in my life for the second time within twelve months, but because I would have no idea how to reassemble myself in his absence.

It was after midnight when we were riding back to the house in the car, and I was falling asleep on Dylan’s lap, my head resting on his shoulder, his long arms wrapped around me. Feeling like home.

When the car door opened, Dylan somehow exited with me in his arms, and I found myself being carried to the door. “Women can walk you know,” I said, yawning, eyes closed, my arms tightening around his neck.

He laughed and hitched me a little higher. “As though I’d let you go.”

Dylan carried me up the stairs, and I was in and out of wakefulness until he placed me in the overstuffed armchair in the corner of our room. My eyes fluttered open, and I curled up in the chair, watching him move about the room.

He took off his shoes, and placed them in the closet. His eyes kept fluttering back to mine as he removed his socks, his belt, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. My body was slowly waking up, heating up, the warmth coming from the looks between us. I was lost in him, and suddenly he was standing before me, in just his pants and his dress shirt hanging open. I looked up to him and saw everything I wanted. The moonlight was casting through the tall windows, lighting up his familiar beautiful form, almost making me question if he was real.

I worked my way up to kneeling in the chair, grabbed him by the belt loops, and pulled him towards me. “I love you,” I said, burying my head in his abdomen, inhaling him, letting the smell of him calm me, bring me back to center. His hands were in my hair, his lips on the top of my head.

“I love you too, damsel.” He whispered the words, slowly, taking his time. It was like it was our first time again. The very same chair. The same moonlight. But a whole new version of us.

My lips found their way to his bare skin and pressed against the hair on his chest, taking in the heat of him.

Dylan stepped back and took my hand in his own, giving me the space to stand on the floor. When I did, I instinctively raised my arms and let him lift the drapey black shirt over my head. In return, I smoothed my hands inside his open shirt and pushed the crisp material over his shoulders. He quickly unfastened the cuffs, and the shirt fell to the floor. My bra followed suit in a matter of seconds, and then Dylan was on his knees before me.

I went to unbutton my jeans, but Dylan’s hands grabbed my own. “Don’t. I’ve been thinking about this ever since I saw you in that bloody bikini.”

That’s what he’d said the first time we were in this room, and I laughed out loud as he dragged my jeans down my body. I shivered when he ran his fingers and mouth over my bare pussy. “Only this time, no knickers, and…Christ, you undo me, Lydia.” He kissed below my belly button, just a featherlight peck.

We moved to the bed, Dylan leaving his pants behind him, and we proceeded to consume each other, find each other, kiss every corner, run our hands along each other’s bodies, roll to each get a better advantage. But we always returned to our mouths, to those kisses that made me feel like we were trying to show each other what forever looked like, even though we’d said it.

This was different. It was new. It was old. It was perfect.

Covers had bunched at the foot of the bed, and every sensation or concern outside of us was forgotten. When, mid-kiss, I landed on top of him, straddling him, he interlaced his fingers with my own and brought them to his lips to kiss.

He paused our continuous movement just to look at me, my hair falling over us, creating a tent. He moved one of his hands to tuck it behind my ear, allowing the moonlight to brighten the space between us, and he looked at me as though he was seeing me for the first time.

“What?” I asked, the first word to pass between us in what felt like hours.

“I…I want…” He paused and I saw his throat move with a gulp. “When I get back…” I’d almost forgotten he was leaving the next day. I felt like I’d just gotten him back, which was ridiculous.

“What?” I asked again. But I saw this expression change, leaving whatever “want” he was about to express behind.

“Come here, baby,” he said as he rolled us over, him landing on top, caging me in. I wrapped my legs around him, and took in the reverent expression in his eyes. It was as though he was laying me bare with only his gaze. It was almost too much, and I looked away towards the light. “No, damsel, I want to see you. Look at me. Look at us.” I snapped my eyes back to his just as he lifted my hips and entered me. I gasped, shocked at the fullness, as though we didn’t do this daily, as though he’d never been deep inside me before, but it was as though he was focused on nothing other than binding me to him. His rhythm was steady, intense, and dedicated to getting me off. I could feel him tilting me, angling me, looking for that sweet spot that would have me careening towards an orgasm.

“Dylan,” I said, letting his name become part of my exhale, and tightening my legs around him.

“Baby,” he said in return, and he kissed me on the nose. Our bodies were warm, sweat making us slick against each other. And there were hands in hair, nails in skin. But none of that amounted to the usual dirty desperation. This wasn’t wild frantic fucking, and it wasn’t overly sweet lovemaking. It was equal parts intense focus and intimate tenderness. And there was something about it that had my skin humming, an orgasm originating from so deep within me, I hadn’t known I could feel there.

“I love you.” I wasn’t sure if those words were mine or his. They seemed to be shared between us, uttered on each other’s breath as we came together.