We move in sync—quiet and slow—stripping down as we make our way to the bedroom, discarding the day piece by piece. I pull back the covers and climb in first. He follows a beat later, warm and solid, sliding up behind me until our bodies are flush.
He wraps around me, draping his hand low over the curve of my belly. He buries his face against the back of my neck like he’s anchoring himself there. “I love you,” he murmurs against my skin. “You’ve changed me.”
“Say it again.” I reach back and run my fingers through his hair, guiding him closer.
“I love you,” he repeats. “Not just in an I-want-you way. Not just in bed. I love your mind. Your fire. Your mouth, even when it terrifies people in the courtroom.”
He shifts, pressing himself inside me in one smooth, reverent stroke. I gasp, and clutch his forearm, holding him against me as he begins to move. Slow. Deep. Each thrust an unspoken vow.
“I didn’t know I could ever feel like this,” he says against my shoulder. “I thought I understood desire, pleasure, connection. I didn’t know a damn thing. Not until you.”
His rhythm doesn’t change—it’s steady, like he’s savoring the feel of me around him. Letting it burn through every layer of fear and doubt still clinging to him. “I want to give you everything. Not just orgasms. Or weekends and weeknights and whatever’s left after the hospital grinds me down.”
He wraps his arm tighter around me, his hand slipping between my legs, finding my clit with the ease of a man who’s mapped my every nerve ending. “I want to build a life with you. Marry you. Have babies with you, if you want them. I want to fall asleep with my cock buried inside of you every fucking night. I want holidays and bad reality TV and your hair in my sink. I want it all.”
“Seamus…” I arch against him, trembling, undone from the inside out.
His hand moves in tandem with his body and my whole world sharpens into white heat. I come with a breathless cry, his name on my lips. He follows, pulsing deep inside me.
Afterward, he holds me so tight I can feel his heartbeat in every part of me.
We don’t speak again for a long time. We don’t need to.
No words. No doubts.
This is what it feels like to belong to someone—completely and irrevocably.
He’s mine. I’m his.
Whatever comes, we face it as one.
thirty-four
Seamus
Ten Days Later
I’verehearsedthismomenta dozen different ways.
Crisis PR says stay calm. Legal says stay neutral.
My gut says don’t let him see you bleed.
None of those voices matter when I’m standing outside Caldwell’s office, palms slick against my jeans. My heart punching slow, heavy beats into my ribs.
I knock twice. Sharp. Controlled. Like it’s any other day.
His voice is muffled. “Come in.”
The door creaks open and there he is—behind the same desk where I sat across from him for my interview years ago. When I was still wide-eyed and determined. When I thought the rules were fixed and fairness was something you could count on in medicine.
Now?
I know better.
Caldwell doesn’t stand. He looks up from a chart like I’m one more resident interrupting his day. Undeterred, I step inside, close the door, and take the seat across from him without waiting to be told.
Silence.
