I made a noise in my injured throat and blinked. That’s when I recognized where the guys that stepped in came from. They were the rowdy group of guys that I’d done my best to avoid and had almost flipped out over the first night I invited Wheeler up to my apartment. I had spent so much time scared of people and things for no reason. The entire world wasn’t out to get me; in fact, there were lots and lots of people that seemed interested in protecting me, and I was so very thankful for that.

“Anyways, I’ll let you rest up and check in on you in a few days. Wheeler, I need you and your grandfather to swing by the station and give formal witness statements as well. Pastor Cruz is going away for a long, long time. I’m thrilled we get to do that for you, Poppy. I hated that we couldn’t get to you before your husband hurt you.” She shook her head, dark brown eyes going soft and sad. “That’s the worst part of the job, wanting to help and not being able to.” She pointed at Wheeler again and told him, “Take care of your girl.”

Royal left the room in a whirl of police blues and fiery hair, leaving me and Wheeler alone again. If I had a voice I would have asked about the grandfather revelation Royal had just dropped. I knew the older guy looked just like my guy, but my guy was a lone wolf … at least he had been until he met me. There was a story there I needed to hear, but it wasn’t the one he wanted to tell me.

“Never been so scared of anything in my entire life.” His breath whooshed out and he lowered his forehead so that it was barely resting against mine. “Not when my mom drove away from that fire station. Not when I got bounced from my first foster home or my fifth. Not when I met Kallie’s parents the first time or when she cheated on me the first time and I realized there was no way she could love me the way I needed to be loved. Not when I bought a house knowing the woman I was buying it for didn’t want me. Not when I found out I was going to be a dad. Not when we went to bed and I realized you were it for me, you were the one I’d been waiting for, and it was never going to be me and only me again. Nothing has ever ripped open my heart and made time stop the way it did when I got that call.” He lifted his head and his eyes met mine. They glistened like blue glass under the crystal veil of unshed tears. “I could have killed him and not felt a single ounce of regret over it.”

He said that but I knew it wasn’t true and so did he. He was lying with his words but his eyes always told the truth. The reason I loved him and had let him in when all I wanted to do was keep everyone out was because he was a man that wanted to take pain away, not cause it. I loved him because the last thing he wanted to do was hurt anyone, unless of course they were a direct threat to someone he loved. He was a lover not a fighter, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t protect what was his until his last breath.

He used his heart, not his fists, to win wars.

I couldn’t respond with words, so I reached up and cupped his cheek. I tapped the spot where his dimple was missing until he took the hint and lowered his lips to touch mine. I didn’t want to waste a second worrying about what had hurt either of us in the past. Those things weren’t changing and there would always be reminders to keep us humble and keep us kind. It was the things that made up happy, the things that restored us, that I wanted to focus on from this point on.

We deserved happy.

We fought for it and we won.

He was my victory and I was his triumph.

I couldn’t tell him that I loved him, that I loved that he took better care of me than anyone else ever had, myself included in that. I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t know what a life worth living looked like before he came into mine. I couldn’t promise him my future and forever—whatever that looked like—even though I knew it would be absolutely beautiful because it had me and him right in the center of it. I couldn’t whisper that he was the best I’d ever had, that no one compared in or out of bed to him, and I couldn’t scream from the top of my lungs that the best thing that ever happened to me was him deciding he could rebuild me.

I couldn’t say any of those things because I had no voice, but I knew they were all shining out of my eyes, that he could see them, because he always saw. When I was hiding, when I was afraid, when I was worried, when I was lost and looking behind me instead of where I was going, he still found a way to keep his eyes on me. It didn’t matter that I built walls to keep him out … he walked right through them.

He was looking at me the same way I was looking at him and I knew that no matter what we faced from here on out, we would always, only, have eyes for each other.

EPILOGUE

I like the name Royce.” I whispered the words into Wheeler’s hair as he rested his head on my shoulder and closed his eyes.

It was three o’clock in the morning, Kallie’s water had broken a little over an hour ago, and all three of them—Kallie, Wheeler, and the baby—had just survived an emergency C-section that brought a perfectly healthy, seven-pound-five-ounce, furiously wailing little boy into the world. Royce Hudson Wheeler had ended up breech and no matter what kind of yoga, chiropractic, holistic healing methods, or old wives’ tales Kallie tried, the baby was stubbornly staying put. He refused to flip just like he refused to reveal his sex so that his parents could plan accordingly. It was actually Zak who suggested the name Royce. One of the first classics he rebuilt and sold was a 1944 Rolls-Royce Silver Phantom. Wheeler brought the name up to Kallie after one of his grandfather’s visits, stating that Royce could work for either a boy or a girl, and surprisingly she agreed.

I was happy to play messenger for both of them while they worked to bring their son into the world.

Kallie’s mom and dad had shown up shortly after we did and were now in her birthing suite meeting their grandson. Dixie and Church would be on the first flight out of Tupelo tomorrow and Zak and his wife, Shannon, were coming in from California sometime in the afternoon. Zak had gotten choked up when I called. He was a really nice man, one with a heart nearly as big and as pure as his grandson’s. He was overwhelmed with relief that his wife was still well enough to travel and that she was going to be around long enough to meet Zak’s great-grandson. They were good people and I hated that Wheeler’s mother’s selfish and unthinking actions had kept him from the family he was so desperately seeking his whole life. It reminded me too much of the way my father had isolated me from the kind of life I knew was out there for all of us, and forced me to live under his tyranny.