Page 86 of You, Only You

"No." He caught my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm. "No other plans."

"Good. Because I saw a place in the listings yesterday that has a kitchen you'd actually enjoy cooking in. And a second bedroom we could use as an office." I smiled. "Or whatever."

"Or whatever?"

"We have time to figure it out."

He pulled me closer, his forehead resting against mine. "I like the sound of that."

"The apartment?"

"The time." His voice was soft. "Having time. With you."

Outside the penthouse windows, the city was going about its business; traffic and noise and a million ordinary lives being lived. We'd face challenges, I knew. Will would fall back into control patterns. I'd retreat behind my walls. We'd fight and make up and figure it out, day by day.

But that was tomorrow's problem.

Tonight, we had this: a quiet apartment, a man I loved who was finally free of the ghosts that had driven him, and the vast, terrifying, beautiful question of what came next.

"Nicole mentioned something on the phone last week," Will said, breaking the comfortable silence. "Before the trial."

"What?"

"She's getting married. Next spring. In Portland." He pulled back to look at me, something tentative in his expression. "She wants us both there."

Both. Not just him. Us.

"I'd like that," I said.

"Yeah?" An honest and unguarded smile spread across his face. "So would I."

It wasn't an ending. It wasn't even a conclusion. It was something better, a door opening onto a future neither of us could quite see yet, but both of us wanted to walk toward.

Together.

20.Will

Six months since the verdict. Six months of learning how to be a person instead of a weapon. It wasn't magic, it was work. Daily, conscious, sometimes exhausting work. And somehow, against every instinct I'd spent a decade honing, it was working.

The loft we'd found together was nothing like my penthouse. No floor-to-ceiling windows designed to intimidate. No security system that could rival a government facility. Just a sunlit space with bookshelves we'd filled haphazardly, a kitchen where we'd both cooked meals, and a bed that held the echoes of our arguments and reconciliations in equal measure.

"You're brooding," Lindsey said one morning, three months in, catching me staring out the window.

"I'm thinking."

"About?"

"Whether the new building manager has been properly vetted."

She'd set down her coffee cup with a deliberate clink. "Will."

"I know. I know." I'd turned to face her. "Old habits."

"Did you run a background check?"

"No." A pause. "I thought about it."

"But you didn't."