Page 29 of The Agent’s Curvy Seduction

Willow

There’s no hesitation left in me. No careful distance. No more pretending this is temporary or that I’m still the girl who keeps one foot out the door. I choose the man who kissed every scar I tried to hide. I choose the future he keeps mapping out like it’s already real. I choose the way he says my name like it belongs to him.

I stop running from the guilt too.

For months I carried the weight of surviving when my parents and my little brother didn’t. Standing in the quiet cabin now, I let that weight finally slip. They would have wanted me to live. Really live. Not just exist in borrowed names and temporary apartments. They would have wanted me to stop hiding.

I walk upstairs barefoot. The bathroom door is cracked open. Steam drifts out into the hallway. I push it wider and step inside.

Hudson is under the spray, head bowed, both hands braced against the tiled wall. Water runs over the bruises on his ribs and the split skin across his knuckles. He looks up when he hears me, blue-gray eyes finding mine through the steam. He doesn’t speak. He just watches me like he’s waiting to see what I’ll do.

I pull his shirt over my head and let it fall to the floor. Then I step into the shower with him.

The water is hot. His body is solid and warm when I press against him. He makes a low sound and wraps both arms around me, holding on like he still can’t quite believe I’m real. I rest my cheek against his chest and listen to the steady beat of his heart.

“I choose you,” I say against his skin. “I’m done running. From the guilt. From the scars. From this. From you.”

His arms tighten. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He just holds me under the water while the last of the blood and the night rinse away.

When we finally get out, he wraps me in a towel and dries me off with a care that makes my throat tight. We end up in the big bed, clean sheets, his body curled around mine from behind. His hand rests at my hip, warm and steady. I cover it with my own.

"I want to stop treating my life like something I might have to abandon," I tell him quietly. "I want your name on the deed next to mine. I want to stay."

He presses a kiss to my shoulder. "You're staying. That's already decided."

I turn in his arms so I can see his face. The bruises on his cheekbone are already darkening. There's a cut near his eyebrow I hadn't noticed earlier. He looks exhausted and still somehow completely certain.

My heart is pounding so hard I'm sure he can feel it.

"I love you," I say, and my voice shakes on the words. "I think I've been falling since the night you walked into the bakery and said my real name like it already belonged to you. I'm in love with you, Hudson."

Something raw and open moves across his face. He doesn't answer with words. He just leans in and kisses the confession right off my mouth—slow and deep and so full of everything we've been building that I feel it all the way down to my bones. When he finally pulls back, his forehead rests against mine.

"I love you too," he says. "And I'm keeping you. Forever. You're not getting the chance to take it back."

I smile against his mouth. "I wasn't planning on it."

We stay like that for a long time, and the conflict is over. The running is over. And for the first time since the crash, the future doesn't feel like something I have to survive.

It feels like something I get to keep.

twelve

. . .

Rhys

Six months later, the cabin doesn’t feel like a safe house anymore. It feels like home.

Willow’s name is on the deed next to mine. The porch swing I promised her is up and gets used almost every evening. The kitchen has new counters and a bigger oven because she started baking again, and I wasn’t about to let her do it in a space that didn’t feel permanent. Her clothes hang next to mine in the closet. Her soft tees and jeans mixed in with my black ones. The scars on her hip and thigh are still there, but she doesn’t hide them. Not from me. Not from anyone.

I find her on the porch just before sunset, bare feet tucked under her on the swing, one of my old flannels hanging off her shoulders. She’s watching the light change over the trees the way she does most evenings. When she hears the door, she looks over and smiles, soft and easy, and the same thing happens in my chest that has happened every day since the night I told her she was mine.

I walk over and drop to one knee in front of her without ceremony.

Her eyes go wide. “Hudson⁠—”

I’ve already got the ring out. Simple. Solid. The kind of ring that doesn’t need to shout because it already means everything. I take her left hand and slide it onto her finger before she can finish whatever she was about to say.