One of the bigger spare rooms was painted in train conductor stripes and the door was covered in a million handprints. All small and going every which way. Obviously that had been my son’s contribution to the project. It was sweet and I wanted to ask her if she made room for my boy not only in her home but in her heart as well.

The last stop on the tour was her bedroom. Finally, I found the source of the blue paint that had been all over Hyde and in her hair a few weeks ago. The room had been transformed from a tranquil oasis to a Caribbean villa. It was the ocean and so much more. It was her eyes and her heart all tangled up and put on the walls.

“Blue is your favorite and you’re my favorite, so I wanted them in the same place.” I turned around to look at her, not sure what to say. She shifted on her feet and reached into her pocket and pulled out something. When she opened her hand I noticed it was a house key. I jerked my eyes back to hers and blew out a deep breath.

“Sayer . . .”

She stepped closer and grabbed my hand and put the key in it before curling my fingers around the metal object. I held it so tightly that the teeth bit painfully into my skin.

“You made this house, Zeb. You’re everywhere in it. I feel you in every room. You belong here just as much as I do.” She stepped closer to me and put a hand in the center of my chest. “You were the first man I ever kissed, do you know that?”

I grunted. “You were engaged, Sayer.”

She curled around my waist and leaned her head under my chin. I wanted to hold her, but my head was still spinning. “I know, but he kissed me. I never kissed him. I wanted to kiss you, Zeb. I wanted to have sex with you. I wanted to love you. I wanted to be with you just for me, not for anyone else. Not because it was right or wrong but because it felt inevitable. It felt important and right. I wanted to be with you because I felt it . . . still feel it . . . everywhere.”

I slid the key she gave me into my pocket and put a finger under her chin in a way that made her tilt her head back so she had to look at me.

“What are you telling me?” I could see what she was trying to say on the walls and in her liquid gaze, but I still needed the words. I needed to know she had saved herself, that she was where she needed to be, or at least getting close. I needed to hear her tell me her truth before I could believe it.

“I’m telling you that I choose color, I choose happiness, I choose to be all the things I am, and I won’t feel bad about any of them. I choose to be better than my parents were and not to let them define me. I choose me and what I want. I choose to be brave and risk my heart. I choose love, Zeb, so that means I choose you and Hyde. I’m never going to be totally comfortable with all the space you take up and how much you make me feel, but I want you here, so you don’t have to push against the door anymore. I’m giving you the key to it. Being uncomfortable is a good thing. It makes me human even after all my father did to make me nothing.”

She hugged me where she was holding on to me and I finally lifted an arm to squeeze her back.

Her voice was quiet when she told me, “The walls are gone. The ground is leveled. You can build whatever you want. I’m a blank slate.” She had found a way to speak to me that I couldn’t ignore. Her words were a balm to all the wounds her actions had inflicted. She had told me I could make her mine, we could finally construct our future, together.

I swore softly and bent so I could put my cheek on the top of her head. “I love you, Sayer, and my kid loves you. If you do this, let us in, give us the key, then you have to be prepared for us to stay. I’m not letting Hyde love anyone else that might leave him, at least not if I can help it.”

“I’m not going to leave, Zeb. Whatever we build we do it together, and it’s forever.”

“Did you reach the shore?” I slid a hand under the heavy fall of her hair and gripped the back of her neck. She tilted her face up so I could put my lips on hers.

It was a sweet kiss, a soft kiss. It was a kiss of homecoming, a kiss of settling in, and a kiss of breaking ground on something lasting and unbreakable. It was a kiss that sealed our fate, sealed us together, and forged something strong and resilient that would last no matter what came at us. It was a kiss that unified us, wound us together, and spoke to how we would fight for each other, for our family, and for this beautiful, brilliant thing we chose that lived between us.

“The shore is in sight and I’ll keep kicking, but I reached you, and that was what I have been swimming toward since we met.”

“I’ve got you, Say.”

“I know you do, Zeb.” She slid her fingers through the buttons on my shirt and pressed her lower half against mine. “Can we kiss and make up now?”

I growled low in my throat and walked her backward toward the bed. “Don’t you have something you want me to fix before we get naked?”

She rolled her eyes and started pulling at my shirt. “Yeah, I need you to fix this endless and constant ache I have between my legs. It hurts all the time and only you have the proper tool to fix it.”

I tossed my head back and laughed at her. “So really, you want to fuck and make up?”

She nodded vigorously, which surprised a laugh out of me as she hit the bed with the back of her knees and went down on her back, pulling me with her. She was wrestling my shirt off my shoulders and kissing the side of my neck. It felt like her hands and her mouth were all over me, and when I tried to tell her to slow down so I could fully savor having her back in my arms, she pouted at me in such a cute way I just had to kiss her, which led to lots of tangled tongues and my dick screaming at me to be set free.

I wanted to take my time. She wanted to take me.

She wiggled until I let her up and she crawled over me so that she could pull my shirt open. The buttons popped off and clattered on the floor, which made her laugh. I leaned up enough that I could pull it off and helped her get my T-shirt off over my head. She paused for a second and used her finger to lightly trace over my lips.

“I really missed you, Zeb.”

I grunted as she scooted down and started to work on my belt and the zipper my cock was trying to push its way through. “Good thing, because I really missed you, too.”

My very eager and ready dick jumped into her palm as soon as she had my pants open.

She snickered at me. “Obviously.” Her face sobered up as she curled her fingers around my dick and rubbed her thumb around the throbbing tip. “You are the only thing I have ever wanted for real, Zeb, and that is the truth.”