Page 187 of Buried in Blood
And she’s here.
Still here.
My wife.
God, those two words used to feel like a trap.
Now?
They feel like the only truth I have left.
Evelyn made it through Hell—myHell—and still looked at me like I was worth staying for. She chose me when I didn’t deserve it. Forgave me, when I couldn’t speak the words out loud. And she never asked for anything I couldn’t give… only waited for the day I might finally offer it.
And now, she’s mine.
Not in the way men mean when they claim women.
She’s mine like a vow. Like oxygen.
Like every fucked-up part of me finally settled into place when she saidI do.
I take a sip of whiskey and let my eyes drift to the ceiling.
Lucien.
That bastard has surprised me more times than I can count. Thought he was weak once—too soft, too calculating. But watching him rip apart the wreckage at the wedding with the guests bleeding in his arms?
No. That man is fire dressed as frost.
And Astra—she’s steel under silk. The kind of woman who walks through her own trauma just to drag someone else out.
They belong together.
Always did.
And watching them now… content, married, rebuilding?
It doesn’t make me jealous.
It makes mehopeful.
Because if they can make it—after all that pain—then maybe there’s something left in this world worth holding onto.
Harmony and Reese…
That story still twists something in my gut.
Harmony was always half-silence, half-scream. Always trying to disappear in plain sight. And I watched her unravel under Damien’s thumb,thinking she’d never get back up.
But she did.
She stood.
And Reese—stoic, brutal Reese—was the first person to see her aswhole, not broken. Not bait. Not something to shape into obedience.
He protected her like it meant something.
Hell, maybe it did.
