“Holy fuck,” he whispers, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead to mine.
I just nod, enjoying the way the fine sheen of sweat on his forehead melts into my skin, one body to another, two people as one entity. I’m still not ready for it to be over as he begins to pull out of me; I press my hands to his lower back, holding him to me, and he stills.
We stay like that until the temperature drops and our bodies turn cold. Outside, the sun dips below the horizon.
And for these moments, it’s just us, just Jason and Juliette, two people who’ve fought through every shitty thing to get to this moment.
And it’s beautiful.
We spend several weeks alone at the house. Luis visits us every couple of days, but most of the time, it’s just us. I can tell Jase doesn’t want to take me anywhere—it’s still going to take a while to regain the strength and weight I lost under Dornan’s (lack of) care, and Jase insists on feeding me up, cooking me creamy pastas and juicy hunks of beef. We talk a lot about the future—kind of—but we don’t talk about Dornan. We both seem to know we need to focus on the baby before we do anything reckless. However, the thought of Dornan still out there, actively looking for us, makes me frightened beyond belief. I find it so hard to reconcile this new, meek and afraid girl with the tough-as-nails Julz that woke up in a nightmare three months ago, but that Julz didn’t know if she pushed Dornan too much, it could cost her her child.
Walks on the beach and dinners on the porch. Lazy afternoon sex and spooning at night. Everything is tinged with a film of fear, but most of the time, I think we do a pretty good job of blocking out the threat of the Gypsy Brothers and focusing on us. It’s the first time we’ve ever been able to just peacefully co-exist, and I find myself falling even deeper in love with this man who is my everything.
I lock the bathroom door once a day and retrieve my bottle of medicine from the depths of my makeup bag, measuring a slightly smaller dose as each week passes. My one dirty little secret amongst all the good stuff, but with each passing day, I’m more confident I can do this. I can beat this. When the bottle runs out, Luis seems to know, turning up with another.
He is truly a guardian angel, and I don’t even know why he’d do this for me. I want to talk to him about his mother, about my father, but he doesn’t seem ready to talk about that. When I question Jase about him, he’s just as vague, warning me away from pushing him too far. Seems The Prospect has a few scars of his own.
On the beach one afternoon, I am dressed in a cheap blue one-piece I picked up at a gas station during one of our rare ventures into town for supplies. Jase is wearing swimming trunks, his back bare, the GYPSY BROTHERS tattoo emblazoned on his skin like a homing beacon.
I touch my salty fingers to the thick black lettering on his back and he flinches slightly.
“Luis is getting his lasered off,” Jase says quietly, scanning the deserted beach from behind his aviators. “I think I’ll do the same.”
I think about that for a moment, as I trace each letter with my fingertip, the black ink an obvious burden to him.
“I think you should leave it,” I whisper, pressing my palm flat against his back.
He turns sharply to look at me. “What? Why?”
“Because you’ll be the only one left.” After we kill that motherfucker and his son, those bastards who refuse to die. “Imagine how afraid people will be of you, then.”
Jase laughs, taking my hand and dragging me around to the front of him. I end up face-up in his lap, smiling as he peppers kisses all over my face.
“I don’t want people to be afraid of me,” he says, tracing underneath my eye with his thumb. “I just want to be a regular guy, with a regular wife, and a regular kid.”
“I’d love to meet them,” I say lightly.
He rolls his eyes, kissing me again. “I’m talking about you,” he says, and my heart does a pleasant little skip.
“We should buy you a minivan,” I joke.
Jase raises his eyebrows, patting the side of my cheek. “That is a terrible idea,” he says, leaning down and pressing his lips to mine. I laugh as his salty lips crash into mine, a real, light-hearted laugh that fills me with hope.
I am really here. With the man I love. And our baby. A baby who by the odds, should never have survived being in that basement with Dornan. I shiver as Dornan’s face looms above me, just like it always has. I hope that once he’s dead, I can forget him, but I’m not so sure.
Jase breaks the kiss. “I’m hot,” he says. “We should swim. You coming?”
I nod, and he gets to his feet, giving me a hand up.