Page 174 of Distress Signal
For a long while, we sat there, luxuriating in the bath and each other’s company.
Then Finn asked, “Can I wash your hair?”
I nodded, shifting away from him so I could dunk my head underwater. He reached for the bottle of shampoo resting on a nearby ledge and poured a healthy amount into his palm, rubbing it around and lathering it up. I tilted my head back, and his fingers threaded into my wet hair, lightly massaging with the pads and scratching with his nails.
“Damn, that feels good,” I murmured.
“I’m just grateful I can touch you,” he replied. “That you’re here and safe.”
I looked at him over my shoulder. “I promised you I’m staying, and I meant it.”
He nodded but said, “There was a while there, for several hours last night, where I didn’t think it was a promise you’d be able to keep. That you’d be taken from me forever.”
He removed his touch from my head and stilled, though I noted his fingers shook. I twisted to face him, careful to hold my cast aloft.
“You came for me,” I reminded him. “You found me, saved me like you’ve been doing since the day we met.”
“I’llalwayscome for you,” he reminded me. “I would tear this world apart to find you, shred myself in the process if necessary. There is nowhere you could go where I wouldn’t come for you, Reagan.” He ran a palm over his face, water catching on his eyelashes, bubbles sticking to his stubble. “It’s terrifying, you know? To love someone this much.”
I’d had the same thought more than once recently, but especially last night. The thought of never seeing him again—of disappearing without him ever knowing what happened to me was an alternate reality I’d refused to accept.
Lainey—she was my wombmate, my twin flame. My equal, my exact match in every way.
But Finn was mysoulmate. The other half of my very essence, an intrinsic component of my genetic makeup. I could live without him no more than I could live without air.
“I get it,” I promised him. “I feel it too. But there isn’t a version of this life that exists where youdon’tlove me, where we didn’t find ourselves right here. Together.”
“You think?”
Grinning, the soapy mess of my hair and cast be damned, I curled against his chest and wrapped my arms around his neck. The steadythumpof his heart beat a rhythm against my cheek, marching along in time with my own.
“Iknow.”
epilogue
. . .
FINN
TWO MONTHS LATER
“You finally goingto tell me where you’re taking me?” Reagan asked from the passenger seat.
I made an exaggerated show of looking out the window, at the Smoky Mountains rising up around us, their peaks wreathed in wispy clouds. The sky above was a clear, Carolina blue.
“I’d have thought that was obvious,” I said, raising a brow at her.
“You’re not taking me home, are you? Like…you’re not sick of me and decided to drop me off and wash your hands of me?”
My eyes rolled far enough back into my head that it hurt. “If that was my plan, I would’ve sent you on that plane to France with Lainey.” I reached over the center console of our rented truck and squeezed her thigh. “You’re stuck with me for life, baby.”
“Then put a fucking ring on it already,” she pouted, lifting and wriggling her bare ring finger.
I chuckled. “Patience, belle.”
The truth was, there was nothing more in this world I wantedthan to be Reagan’s husband, to make her my wife. To give her my last name.Reagan Lawlesshad a nice ring to it, didn’t it? Thinking about it made my dick hard.
But after the ordeal we’d suffered this summer, I figured we could both use some normalcy and mundanity.
