Zane watches me carefully. The way you watch a door you have knocked on with bloody knuckles, terrified of what comes next. When you have finally run out of everything except the truth, you have put it down in front of someone, and now it belongs to them, and there is nothing left to do but wait and see what they do with it.
He’s giving me the choice. He isn’t storming across the room because the moment is too big for him to remain still. He has finally learnt to stay exactly where he is and let me come to him.
My eyes burn. A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it.
I wipe it away quickly, furious that this man can still do this to me after everything. Which is probably the most honest thing I have felt all night.
Zane’s hand twitches at his side, yet he doesn’t reach for me.
God. That man.
That stupid, reckless, beautiful man.
I have spent years surviving him. Missing him. Hating him. Wanting him. Loving him in the dark, where nobody could see it and call it weakness. Tonight, standing in this kitchen with his love confession still warm in the air and a tear I wiped away before it could embarrass me, I realize I no longer want to survive him.
I want to have him without first turning it into punishment.
“You’re standing too far away,” I say.
His eyes darken. “Am I?”
“Yes.”
“I was trying not to be a dick.”
“That’s new.”
His mouth curves—that slow, devastating thing that starts at one corner and takes its time. God, it hurts in the best possible way. The way only things you have waited too long for can hurt when they finally arrive.
Zane takes one step toward me—slow and careful—as if I were something worth being careful with.
I do not move back.
He takes another.
Then another.
The kitchen is not large, yet it still seems like it takes forever. By the time he reaches me, I can feel the heat radiating off him—that specific warmth I have never been able to talk myself out of no matter how hard I tried.
He raises his hand before he pauses, giving me a choice. He has been giving me a choice since he entered the room.
I almost roll my eyes.
Almost.
Instead, I catch his wrist and press his palm flat against my cheek.
The second he touches me, he exhales. His thumb strokes beneath my eye, catching the dampness there.
“I love you,” he says.
My heart stutters, even though he has said it before. Even though that is the whole reason I am coming apart at the seams.
It still hits. Maybe it always will.
“Say it again.”
His eyes soften in a way I have never seen before. “I love you, Sky.”
