Evan Arden 03 Otherwise Unharmed (36 page)

Lia giggled.

“I’m surprised,” she remarked.

“By what?”

“How good it felt.  I thought it would hurt.”

I rolled off of her and pulled her against my chest.

“Did it?”

“Maybe just a little at first, but not really.”  She looked up to my face and stroked my cheek.  “Stop looking like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you did something wrong.”

“I didn’t want it to hurt at all,” I said.

“It was wonderful,” she said.

I relaxed as she continued to run her hand over my jaw.

“You’d do it again?” I asked.

“Definitely.”

I smiled and began making plans in my head.  She smiled at me, and my heart felt like it could rupture under nothing more than her gaze.

I rolled to my back and held Lia against my chest.  For a long time, I just felt her skin against mine in the warmth of the room and wondered how
, after everything I’d done, I still managed to end up with the girl.  In some ways, it didn’t seem to be universally fair, but I wasn’t going to point that out to God or anything.

Maybe He finally decided He owed me a little peace.

I was still pissed at Him, though.

So we both had scars, but I didn’t have nightmares when she was with me, and she felt safe as long as she was in my arms.  If that was what life was going to give us, we were going to take it.  In my head, I couldn’t think of a better way to exist than with her, out in the middle of nowhere, exactly the same as we had started.

So here I would stay.

Lia at my side.

God willing, we’d remain otherwise unharmed.