of adoption, anything.”
Marcus glances at the goosebumps prickling down my arm. He steps back and opens the shower door, ushering me out. Stepping out behind me, he grabs a towel from the rack and wraps it around me. I lift my arms to let him secure it around my torso, loving the feeling of being utterly cared for by him.
“It was luck.” He shrugs. “And persistence. I’ve actually had a detective looking into it ever since the day we went to Victoria’s house. He did a comprehensive search for the surname Fairchild, and it led him to Caleb’s name. It wasn’t in a case file or a letter of adoption. He hasn’t found anything that concrete yet.”
My brows pull together. “Then where did the name show up?”
“It was actually in another kid’s file. A reference to a minor altercation between the two of them. Not much info beyond that, and no guarantee that it’s not another Fairchild entirely. But the timing lines up, and now that we have a first name, we can start tracking that down.”
“Thank you,” I whisper. It’s nowhere near enough to capture the emotions crashing around in my chest, but it's the best I can come up with at the moment. “Really. Thank you.”
Marcus’s face softens. He hasn’t grabbed a towel for himself yet, and he seems completely unabashed by his nakedness as he stands in front of me. He cups one side of my face in his large palm, his thumb sliding over my jawline. “I would do so much more than that for you, angel. I’d do fucking anything. And I’ll keep pursuing this, I promise.”
I lean into his touch, letting my eyes fall shut for a second.
I’m not used to this. To being protected and cared for. It’s a foreign feeling, and the part of me that was alone for so many years and expected to spend my whole life that way still sometimes has a hard time believing it.
But Marcus and his two best friends have left no room for doubt.
Over and over and over, I’ve seen undeniable evidence of how much they care about me—the lengths they’re willing to go to in order to keep me safe.
I’m not sure I deserve it, but I’m not going to fight it either.
Reaching up, I rest my hand over his, running my fingers over the ink of his knuckle tattoos. I can’t see the dark shapes, but I know they’re there. The month, date, and year of the night I was shot.
Maybe I do deserve these men. Maybe we deserve each other.
After all the shit each of us has gone through in our lives, maybe this is the universe’s way of showing us that things can be better. That hope exists, even in the shadows.
My eyes open again, and I gaze up at the hard lines of Marcus’s features. The words he said earlier slip past my lips, even more true now than they were the first time I said them.
“I love you.”
Marcus reacts immediately. He draws in a breath, his eyes sparking as his hand slides around to palm the back of my head. Dragging me toward him, he presses a hard kiss to my lips.
“Say that again, angel,” he mutters, his mouth barely leaving mine as he speaks.
“I love you.” A smile curves my lips, but I keep kissing him through it. “I love you. I love you. I fucking love you.”
“Goddammit.” His other hand snakes around my waist, plastering me against his wet body as he plunges his tongue into my mouth. When we finally break apart for air, he growls softly. “I just had you, angel, and now I want to fuck you all over again. I want to hear you scream those words while I’m inside you.”
“I think I can manage that,” I shoot back, a grin tugging at my lips again.
“You fuckin’ better. I’m already hard as hell just thinking about it.”
He’s not lying. I can feel the evidence of his arousal digging into my lower belly. I half expect Marcus to hoist me up onto the edge of the sink and make me fulfill my promise right now, but after another long, deep kiss, he draws back with a pained groan.
“As much as I hate to stop this, we should get downstairs. Theo and Ryland are going over what we’ve got on the Viper so far, and we should be there for it.” Then he gives me a half smile, one corner of his lips quirking up.