Devon pulls me onto his lap, his arms wrapping around me like he's afraid I'll disappear. I feel the tremor in his body, the relief breaking through, and then he's kissing me.
It's different from the desperate, grief-stricken intimacy of recent weeks. This kiss tastes like it’s real.
Like it’s a new us.
When we finally break apart, I rest my forehead against his.
"What happens now?" he asks.
"Now we try again. Properly this time." I trace my thumb along his cheekbone. "No more secrets or lies. No more letting someone else's poison into our home."
Devon's hands tighten on my waist. "I want—" He stops, starts again. "I want us to try for a baby. When you're ready. Not because we're trying to prove anything, but because Iwantthat life with you. I’m not waiting for success or anything else. Not anymore.”
I blink and tears stream down my cheeks. He really wants this, something I’ve always wanted.
"I'm ready," I whisper. "I've been ready for so long.”
He kisses me again, softer this time, and I sink into it.
I think about the mirror this morning. The woman I saw looking back at me. She wasn't the girl Mila shaped with whispered insults and school bully cruelty. She wasn't the wife who doubted her own worth.
She was someone new. Someone made of fire and still standing.
Devon's hand finds mine, our fingers interlocking.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
DEVON
I can't stop looking at Jade.
She's still on my lap, her fingers tracing idle patterns on my shoulder.
"You were a victim too," she tells me.
I bow my head. I don’t agree with that—I kissed her.
I did this to us.
I shake my head. “No. I kissed her. I made that choice."
"You made a mistake while drunk. She made a calculated decision to destroy your life." Jade's eyes hold mine without flinching. "There's a difference, Devon. A massive one."
I want to argue. But Jade reaches up and cups my face, her thumbs brushing along my jaw.
"You've carried this shame like it defines you. Like that one kiss in a hotel room erased fifteen years of loving me." Her voice cracks, and I feel it in my soul. "It didn't. It hurt me—God, it hurt—but it didn't erase us. Nothing could."
"I felt so stupid," I confess. “When Officer Gray told me how she targeted Grant first, then moved to me when he rejectedher."
"You were kind to someone who seemed upset. That's not weakness."
"Isn't it?"
Jade shifts on my lap, repositioning so she can look at me more directly.
