By the grace of God, he’s cut off as the call is disconnected.

Dom shuts the door behind him.

“I was coming home,” I tell him.

“I know,” he says. He takes a step toward me.

“I was going to keep my promise.”

“I know.” Another step.

“I found something. With you.”

“Did you?” Another step.

“Yes. I think….”

“What?” One more step. He towers above me. He’s all I can see. “What do you think?”

And for the first time, I say the words I’ve wanted to believe for so long. “I think I’m going to be okay.”

He smiles. “Finally.”

“Maybe not all the way,” I warn him.

“But close enough.” He reaches out and takes my hands in his. Pulls me up. Wraps his arms around me. I breathe him in.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” I say. “Some days might suck.”

“They might,” he agrees.

“And I’m still going to be slightly manic.”

“Probably,” he says. “Slightly.” He moves his hands up and down my back.

“And I come with a whole shitload of issues.”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he says, kissing my forehead.

“And I never stop talking.”

“Noted,” he says, lifting my shirt so he can touch bare skin.

“We need to make plans,” I tell him as he kisses my neck.

“We have been,” he says. “And we will.”

“Dom?”

“Ty?”

“We’re inevitable. Aren’t we?”

He stands up tall and cups my face in his hands. His gaze locks onto mine, and I tremble. “Yeah, Ty. We are. We always have been. And we always will be.”

There are other things that need to be said. Other things that need to be worked out. Other worries to focus on. And one very important thing he needs to hear from me. But those can wait. For now.

My shirt is up and over my head, and I’m fumbling with his buttons and zippers and buckles. I graze his flesh with my hands and I think back on what it’s taken for us to get to this point. All that we’ve sacrificed. All that we’ve done wrong. All the hurt and the pain and the sorrow. It’s worth it. I know that now. Life can suck. It can hurt. It has teeth and won’t hesitate to bite you. But if you pick yourself back up every time it knocks you down, it’ll start to hurt less, because you’ll be stronger. Greater. You’ll become who you’re supposed to be. At least, I think that’s how it works. I hope.

But that doesn’t matter now.

All that matters is him and me. Because that’s all there is.

He lifts me up and puts me back down on the bed. He stands over me, just watching.

“What?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “Just you,” he says. “Ty?”

“Mmm?”

“This.”

“This?”

“Us.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s good, huh?”

“Yeah. It’s good.”

“Solid.”

“As a rock.”

“Better.”

“Than what?”

“I thought it could be.”

“Took us a while.”

He chuckles. “You could say that.”