Page 223 of What We Become

I’m half on my stomach, half twisted onto my side, one leg tangled with Micah’s, my cheek pillowed on Knox’s chest while Eli’s arm lies heavy across my waist like even boneless and spent he needs to keep me pinned to the earth.

Milo is sprawled behind my back in a dramatic, overheated tangle with Holden, who looks like he’d rather die than admit this counts as cuddling even while he very much does not move away.

The sand is everywhere.

In my hair. Between my thighs. On my cheek. Stuck to sweat and blood and saltwater and cum.

The tide crawls close, then slips back, close enough that the foam kisses the edge of Knox’s boot.

In the distance, the jetty groans softly.

I release a contented sigh.

Micah’s fingers drift over my spine in lazy lines, no urgency left in them now. Just touch for the sake of touch. I feel his mouth brush my shoulder, then my neck, not really a kiss so much as a breath with feeling in it.

“Still with us?” he murmurs.

I make a noise that could mean yes, no, maybe, or never again.

That gets a tired laugh out of him.

Knox’s chest rumbles beneath my ear with something that might be a chuckle. His big hand moves up and down my side, slow enough to soothe the vibration under my skin.

Eli shifts beside me with a pained hiss, then immediately settles again like the effort wasn’t worth it. “If anybody says the phrase group therapy,” he mutters into the night, “I’m walking into the ocean.”

“You’ll have to go alone. I don’t think I can walk,” Holden says from somewhere behind me.

Milo groans like he’s dying. “I think my soul left my body.”

“You still had one?” Holden asks.

I laugh, the sound weak and cracked and real. It shakes all through me. Then everyone else is laughing too.

Stephen is dead.

Finally.

I lift my head enough to look around at them.

My men.

The corpse is gone. The ghost is gone. There’s still one name on a list in my nightstand drawer, but he’s kept this long. He can keep a little longer.

And here, in the aftermath, with all of us wrecked and filthy and breathing hard into the same salt-heavy dark, I feel something so simple it almost hurts.

Peace.

I thread my fingers through Knox’s and stare up at the slice of moon above us. “We’re insane,” I say softly.

“Yes,” Micah says.

“Undeniably,” Holden adds.

“Hot, though,” Eli says.

“Critically so,” Milo agrees.

Knox just squeezes my hand once.