“Oh,” Abbie said, very, very softly. And then she was silent. She waited while Gravy’s second kitten was born, grateful beyond belief that it was done quickly. She wrapped the little snuffling thing up next to its mother and its sibling. And then, very quickly, with her filthy, gloved hands held safely out to the sides, she turned to face Will and kissed him.

He must’ve been surprised, because he made this baffled noise in the back of his throat, and it took him a split second to kiss her back. But he did. He couldn’t touch her either, was still holding the brambles aside, and so they spent a long, hungry moment pressed together, mouth to mouth and body to body, holding each other with nothing but every emotion they poured into that kiss.

I love you, she thought, fucking wild with it, dizzy with it, breathless with it, and hoped he could taste it on her tongue, hoped he picked it up when he bit her lower lip, hoped he could feel it in the aching rock of her hips against his. Because she tasted it on him, felt it from him, heard it in those searingly honest words that ran around and around her head. “I’m tried and tested, Abbie. I literally cannot stop.” She didn’t want to need that; she wanted to simply, blithely trust him, or rather, to trust that things could be good, that nightmares weren’t always waiting around the corner. But she wasn’t quite there yet, and he knew it, and he didn’t mind. He was willing to give her those words instead, a lifeline when she needed it, and surely he had no idea—he could have no fucking idea—how much that meant to her.

Pulling away from him might be the hardest thing she’d ever done, but they had newborn kittens out in a blizzard here, so they didn’t have much of a choice. He groaned when she broke the kiss, and it was so fucking surreal how obvious this man was about wanting her. She didn’t think she’d ever had that. She hadn’t known she needed it.

“Kittens,” she breathed. “We should … move them.”

“Yeah,” he said, “yeah.” Then he smiled. “Hey.”

“What?”

“You’re mine as fuck.”

She laughed as she picked up the cats, feeling younger than she had in years, feeling the way she used to, when they were just them and nothing was complicated. “That doesn’t make any sense, William.”

“It doesn’t need to, Abigail.” He released the brambles and took the cats from her arms, ignoring his allergies as always. “Mine as fuck. Remember it.”

“I still need to—I have things I need to do,” she told him, trying not to get ahead of herself, feeling like a helium balloon. “I think I should maybe go back to therapy.”

“Probably,” he agreed as they stood up.

“Hey!”