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“Everyone hurts me, Ezra. They leave me. They abandon me. They fail me.” They fail me.
I’d known from the beginning that she was a survivor. A fighter. The kind of survivor who’d clawed her way through the muck to find herself on the other side. Someone who wore her fear like a shield so no one could get too close to inflict wounds again.
Because I finally understood. Understood the shields and the walls. The steel barricade she tried to keep around her tender, beautiful heart. A heart that had been battered and torn.
“Come’re, Little Trespasser.”
“You don’t need to get shy on me now, Little Trespasser.”
I had never witnessed anything so beautiful. The devotion that’s here. The safety that rings within these walls. It both broke my heart seeing it and healed it at the same time because it’s the first time I’d seen anything like it firsthand.” Savannah’s hands tightened on my cheeks. “You made me believe in something I didn’t know existed, Ezra. You made me believe in possibility. You made me hope again. And I promise you, you’ve given all of that to your children.” Devotion clotted my chest. “I won’t fail them.” “You won’t. You couldn’t. Not with the way you love them.”
“And when you get tired of me?” “I think that’s the whole problem, Savannah. I’m pretty sure there will be no getting tired of you. The problem is, I might want to claim you forever.”
“I hate that you’ve never had that, Savannah. That no one took the time to see the treasure that you are. To cherish everything you are. Adore you the way you deserve to be.”
“No, Little Trespasser. How could I be mad at you? I know why you couldn’t help but tell her.” He didn’t have to say it. I was pretty sure it was written on me in broad stripes and bold colors. I cared about them. And I cared about him. There was no longer any denying
My knees wobbled because this wasn’t stolen or secret. It wasn’t him sneaking through my door so no one else would know. This was him making a stand. A statement.
“I forgot what being truly happy was, Savannah, until you came here, and suddenly things don’t feel so bleak. So yeah, standing right here, next to you? I am happy, and I have a feeling this day is just going to get better.” “Are you trying to wreck me, Ezra Patterson?” “I guess I’m hoping you’ll meet me there, Savannah, because that’s what I’ve been since the moment I met you.”
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” His mouth was at my ear when he mumbled, “And I only share it with the most beautiful things in my life.”
“You might be my favorite person in the world, Ezra Patterson, and that terrifies me.”
“Love this,” I murmured. “Being up here with you. It feels like I’m being elevated above every worry. Like up here, it can’t touch us.”
“I might not have taken you up that mountain with the intention of getting you naked, but you should know that’s exactly what I intend right now.” “I might stage a revolt if you didn’t.”
“You’re different than any man I’ve ever met, Ezra. I’m not supposed to feel safe with anyone, but I feel safe with you.”
“You’re everything I couldn’t believe existed and everything I’ve come to need.”
“And you, Little Trespasser, stole into every place I wasn’t supposed to let you go.”
“You can take it, Savannah. You were made for me.”
I wondered how many moments in a person’s life could be given the title of monumental. One single instance that changed everything. One single encounter when you knew you would never be the same.
“I never thought I’d feel like this. I wasn’t supposed to.” I eased back, my hand still holding her at the back of the neck. “Sometimes what we think will hurt us most is the very thing we need.”
The fighter. The survivor. The one who’d been failed by every person in her life, so she’d come to rely wholly on herself. “You can trust me,” I murmured. “You don’t have to go everything alone, Savannah. Not anymore.”
“You are no burden, Savannah. You’re a treasure, and I’m going to prove to you what that means.”
It would take time to eradicate it. I knew that. But I would do everything I could to bring her to the place where she understood her life was worth more than bare survival. “I want you to stay.” I meant it for tonight. I meant it for tomorrow. I meant it for forever.
“What I’m going to do to you, Little Trespasser. And I don’t intend to ever stop.” “Don’t you dare stop,”
Possession in every stroke. But the truth was it was my little trespasser who possessed me. The one I’d give it all for. The one I’d live it out for. The one who had me on my knees.
need you to know I’ve never felt like this.” I needed her to know it was different. A thousand different emotions fluttered through her expression. Hope. Worry. Reservations. Love.
Such a foolish girl who was dreaming about waking up like this each morning. The one who believed in his care last night. One who held it like an oath that he would help me find my sister.
“I love you, Savannah. I’m fucking in love with you. So far gone that I can’t think straight. So far gone that I close my eyes and it’s you I see. In so deep that I’m stuck. I’m stuck on you, Savannah, and that’s exactly where I want to be.”
“So yeah, Savannah, you can stay forever. With me. With my kids. You just have to decide if I’m worth believing in.” The fingers of both my hands curled into the fabric of his shirt, and I sagged against him. “You are the first person I’ve believed in for so long, Ezra, and I’m so scared of it. So scared of how much I ache for you. So scared of how much I need you. So scared of how much I love you.”
“Say it again.” “I love you. I’m in love with you.” It whispered free, so quietly, but I swore that it carried through the room. An echo. A promise. And it fell away. The last, mangled piece that had guarded my heart. I was his.
“Little Trespasser, sneaking right into my heart and claiming it.” It was a murmur. “I didn’t think I had mine left to give.” His head shook against the top of mine. “No, Savannah. I felt it from the beginning. Alive and beautiful. It was just hidden. I hope here, this will be a safe place where you can let it shine.”
am a kowawa!” I hugged him to me. “That’s right…you’re my little koala.”
“You tell them whatever you want, Little Trespasser. The only thing that matters is that you know the cock in question is going to be claiming every inch of this sweet, little body. Over and over. Forever.”
I liked this. Loved it really. This…feeling. The support. The belief. The belonging. And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid.
“Sometimes you need to stand back to appreciate the things you’ve been given. Memorize them.” So they could still be a part of you once they were ripped away.
Ezra pulled me tighter, and his breath wisped around me. “And sometimes you have to stand right in the middle of it to know that you truly belong.”
“No need to hide any longer, Little Trespasser. I already found you.”
His heart pounded steady and hard, and I rested my ear on the strength of it, listening to the unwavering beat of the man who held me like I was a treasure. A gift rather than a burden. One to be upheld rather than trampled.
“See, Dad, I told you she might be lonely and needed us.” And maybe it was the first moment when I recognized it, what this little girl had seen in me. I’d been lonely. Lost. My battered heart missing so many pieces that it had never quite beat right. Ezra looked at me. “And I think we needed her, too.”
“Don’t say it, Savannah. Don’t say you’re not worth it when you are worth everything. Don’t listen to the lies you’ve been fed. Listen to this truth.”
“You’re mine, Little Trespasser.”
together we were shattering the stars. Rising above the heavens. Floating somewhere that shouldn’t exist. I was probably gripping her too fucking tight. But I couldn’t let go. I wanted to hold her. The claim of my soul. Forever.
“Do you think I really would have waited one second, Savannah, knowing you were in that basement? Do you think I could have turned a blind eye? Pretended my heart wasn’t already in there with you? I would never abandon you. Would never leave you.”
“Don’t you get it yet, Little Trespasser? You are my forever. For as long as you’ll have me.”
I would have gladly stood in the line of fire for her.
“Sorry to break it to you, Little Trespasser, but you’re mine, and I claim you forever.”
