Page 297 of Vexatious Queen

“We’re going to be fine. Have a little faith in yourself and in us. If there is one thing that I have learned, it is that love really can overcome anything,” I said, smiling.

Nash smiled back.

“That was the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard,” he teased, and my mouth fell open.

He laughed as he kissed me to keep me from telling him off.

“So, when do you want to start having kids,” Nash asked, with a shit eating grin.

“What?”

“Yeah, I was thinking at least one for each of us. But I actually want two or three of my own, and I need the first one. So eight or nine should be good. Think of a baseball team.”

“Have you lost your damn mind?”

I started to stand, but he burst out laughing and tugged me back down.

“I’m teasing…sort of, but right now I just wanted to see that look on your face,” Nash said.

“You really are an asshole,” I grumbled, not really angry. This was us. It always had been and always would be.

“And you love it.”

Nash wrapped his arms around me as I stretched out and cuddled into him, under the warm water. I laid my head on his chest and listened to his heart beat. Closing my eyes, my body relaxed and I took a deep breath.

“You know, I was thinking about when you first arrived, and I promised that I would fuck you. You said not even if there was an apocalypse.”

“Nash?”

“Yeah?”

“You should stop while you’re ahead,” I mumbled.

He burst out laughing and held me tight me as he kissed the top of my head.

I stayed there, wrapped in warmth and quiet, surrounded by the proof that I wasn’t alone. The hollow spaces that I’d carried for so long were filled. Every part of me felt claimed. It wasn’t ownership, but belonging. I was seen from every angle and loved anyway.

I tried to imagine my life before them and couldn’t. The thought slipped away, impossible to picture. They weren’t pieces of my world. They were the structure and the reason the ground no longer shook beneath my feet.

Each of them loved me differently, fiercely, imperfectly, in ways that stitched us together instead of pulling me apart. They challenged me and protected me. They allowed me to be hard and soft. Broken and whole all at once. I didn’t have to choose between strength and tenderness with them. I was allowed to be both. To be loud in my love, and greedy with my happiness. This was not the future I’d imagined when I first walked through the gates of Wayward, angry and adrift in equal measure. But it was better than anything I could’ve planned. Darker, but truer.

And then there was Nash.

He was the quiet gravity at the center of it all. The steady weight that kept us anchored when the turbulent waters tried to tear us apart.

Loving him wasn’t gentle, but it was honest. It was the kind of love forged in fire and sealed in blood, the kind you didn’t survive without scars. He looked at me like the world could burn and he’d still find a way to stand between me and the flames. He didn’t see something fragile to be hidden, but something precious worth going to war to protect.

As I rested my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow beneath my ear, I understood something with absolute clarity.

This life would never be safe.

But with him, with them, it would always be mine.

June 5 – One Year Later

Edmundo

Early June in Italy smelled like earth and sun and new growth.