“That is us, Zane. That has always been us. We were never loved the way we needed to be, so we do it to protect ourselves.”
My jaw is so tight that it fucking aches.
“Rainer didn’t pay that debt because you’re a burden,” she says. “He paid it because of what you mean to him.”
She places her hand flat on my chest, right over the place that has been locked up and defended since I was old enough to know nobody was coming. “And I’m sitting on this half-collapsed roof, telling you that I love you. I love you because of who you are beneath it all.”
I peer down at her hand resting on my chest before glancing up at her face.
“We’ve always been the kids who never believed we deserved anything good,” she says softly. “But you have to stop letting that kid make every decision for the man you’ve become.”
Something in me that has been braced for impact since I was old enough to know what impact felt like finally sets down what it has been carrying.
“You thought I wouldn’t want you after you told me that?”
“Yeah.” I swallow hard. “I thought that once I told you everything—the money, Ricky, Rainer, and the fact that I still wanted to run—you would look at me and finally see that I’m not worth this much trouble.”
She cups my face with both hands, compelling me to look at her.
“Listen to me,” she says. “I love you.”
I close my eyes because I need just one second before I let that land fully.
“No.” Her grip tightens around my face. “Open your eyes, Zane.”
I obey.
She is crying now and the tears flow freely down her face.
“I love you,” she says again, steadier this time, as if she wants to make sure every syllable reaches the part of me that has never believed it. “Not because you are easy. Not because your past is clean. Not because loving you makes me want to throw something at your head sometimes.”
A broken laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
“I love you because you are the boy who climbed this roof with me when the world beneath us felt too ugly to endure.” Her thumbs brush my cheekbones. “I love you because you told me the truth even though it scared the shit out of you.”
Her eyes hold mine.
“And I love you because you stayed.”
My throat closes around everything I want to say yet cannot find the words for.
The roof blurs around her. “Sky.”
“No. You don’t get to decide you’re too much trouble for me.” Her voice hardens. “That’s my decision, Zane. And I choose you.”
Every part of me goes still and the world narrows to her hands on my face, and the sunset burning behind her. Finally, after all this time, I understand something I have been fighting for my entire life. She is not staying despite who I am. She is staying because of it.
“I choose you,” she whispers. “So stop standing in front of me, acting as if you’re incapable of love.”
Something breaks open in my chest.
Every wall I built.
Every version of the lie that told me I was too damaged, too costly, and too much of everything wrong to be worth choosing.
All of it. Gone.
Now there are only her hands on my face and the truth of what she just said settling in me like something that, after everything, has finally found the place it was always meant to land.
