Page 88 of The Quiet After The Fall

So when he leans in, giving me every chance to pull back, I don't.

I kiss him instead.

It’s not desperate or frantic or grief-soaked like so many times before. It’s slow and careful, mindful of his injuries, and filled with gratitude for the lengths he’ll go. His hand slides into my hair, tugging gently to angle my face where he wants it. My hands splay over his bare chest, feeling his lean muscles and warm skin.

He groans into my mouth and I feel it all the way in my core. I’m filled with want. With need. But something’s keeping me from scrambling into his lap. Some invisible barrier, stopping me from giving him everything again.

So I deepen the kiss, keeping my distance, but letting time suspend. There’s nothing chasing us in this moment. No Moretti. No Richard. No wedding. It’s just us.

When we finally break apart, he rests his forehead against mine. We stay like that for a few breaths before reality creeps back in at the edges. The guesthouse, Miriam’s estate, the drive to Otisville waiting for us. Knox must feel it too, as he sits up straighter.

“We should get ready,” I say. “Before Gia finds you and has an aneurysm about her spy operation getting compromised.”

He huffs a laugh against my forehead. “Fair.”

We get ready quickly and quietly. I’m in my head about this whole thing. After everything I’ve gone through this summer, seeing my father feels like the last nail in the coffin. I have no idea how I’ll react. How Knox will react. Just because he found some paperwork, will that erase years of animosity toward the man he believed destroyed his family. I doubt their encounter will be all butterflies and rainbows, and I’ll be the one to keep the peace.

By the time we’re back in his Jeep winding down the backroads toward the highway, that warm feeling of waking up to Knox in my bed is gone and replaced by something colder and more complicated.

I kissed him.

I actually let myself do that, after weeks of telling myself not again. Not while he was engaged. Even knowing it wasn’t entirely his fault, he still had no problem lying to my face.

It’s all too soon. Too tangled up in Owen’s betrayal and grief and guilt to ever be simple. It’ll never be simple with Knox and I don’t even know if I want him like that—not with all these complications weighing us down.

But I know one thing clearly as I watch the trees blur past the window. Richard needs to pay for whatever he did. And Knox doesn’t deserve to be handed off like property to a man his father made a deal with. Neither does Ella, honestly, no matter the complicated feelings I have about her.

I press my forehead against the window, grounding myself on the feel of the cool glass.

“You okay?” Knox glances over, reading me the way he always does.

“Nervous about seeing him.” It’s the easiest true thing I can say.

“You’re sure you want to come? I can go on my own if it’s too much.”

I straighten in my seat, watching the highway signs come into view. “I’m sure. Let’s get this over with.”

The visiting room is exactly like I imagined. Clinical and cold, smelling like industrial cleaner and stale coffee. Fluorescent lights flicker above the tables and the chairs are bolted to the floor.

Knox and I get through the check-in process in near silence—IDs verified, metal detector unflagged, a guard’s instructions about what we can and can’t do once we’re seated. None of that fully prepares me for the moment the door on the far side opens.

My father walks in wearing a khaki jumpsuit, thinner and more hollow than I remember, his hair more gray than brown. All the air leaves my lungs in a whoosh and every rehearsed thing I planned to say goes with it.

He stops mid-step when he sees me and his mouth drops open. “Sawyer?”

Tears spring to my eyes before I can stop them, and I hate it. I hate how my stupid body betrays every careful wall I built over the last two years. It’s a flood of relief and grief and anger all tangled together so tightly I can’t separate one from the other, but none of it matters the second he crosses the room and pulls me into his arms.

He still smells like himself. A faint trace of the cologne he used to wear, buried under soap and years of distance, and it undoes something in me I didn’t know was still holding on.

“I’m sorry,” he says into my hair, his voice cracking. “I’m so sorry, baby girl.”

I stay quiet, letting myself be held, remembering what it feels like to be his daughter, to be safe in his arms. For months, I’ve felt like nothing more than a problem to be solved or a threat to be managed. But not here, not now.

A guard steps closer, clearing his throat, and Dad pulls away. His eyes are damp too. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen him cry since before. He never shed a tear the entire sentencing, not even when Mom told him she was done right there in the courtroom.

His gaze slides past me and lands on Knox.

Whatever softness was in his face a second ago sharpens in an instant. He straightens, jaw tightening, taking in Knox’s presence beside me like he’s readying for a fight.