Page 155 of Sinner & Saint

“I fucking love you,” he whispers into my hair.

“I love you too,” I say simply. Because what else is there? What else matters when the world has just exploded around us and we’re still standing?

He kisses the top of my head. “I can’t believe I get to call you mine. My brave, foolish, perfect wife.”

I simply stand in my husband’s arms and breathe. And feel grateful that we get to keep breathing at all. The preacher’s daughter who used to bake cookies for church functions. The girl who used to have a future stretching before her like an open road. She’s gone now. Died somewhere between the cabin and the branding and tonight.

In her place is someone new. Someone harder. Someone who can watch a man die and feel nothing but relief. Someone who can destroy evidence and lie to federal agents without hesitation.

Someone who chose love over innocence. Some might call that survival. Others might call it becoming a monster.

I call it loving Calder Bishop enough to follow him into hell and burn it down from the inside.

Every choice. Every sacrifice. Every moment that led me here.

Because this is where I belong.

Not in my father’s church. Not in my old life. But here, with this man, in the ashes of everything we burned to stay together.

And if that makes me a monster too, then so be it.

At least we’re monsters together.