“Yes.”
His mouth moves. Not a full smile. Kilian doesn’t do full smiles. But the corner lifts, and his eyes warm by a fraction, and on him that fraction is a standing ovation.
He turns back to the view. The sun is bleeding orange into the sky.
“I thought about what you said,” he says. “About Simon. About the guilt, and you were right.” The words come out measured. He’s been sitting with this. “Simon and I, we grew up together. His family took me in when I couldn’t deal with mine. But we both wanted it. The army wasn’t just my idea. It was the plan we made together, since we were kids.” He pauses. “But after he died, I absorbed all of it. I made it mine because it was easier to carry the blame than to sit with the fact that I couldn’t save him.”
His thumb presses into the compass tattoo on his forearm. I’ve seen him do it before. The gesture is automatic.
“I know Simon would’ve hated this version of me. He would’ve kick me off my ass and told me to stop being an idiot and go play with Sara. So now I’m trying. To let go. To give Sara more of me instead of giving everything to the guilt.” He breathes out and looks at me. “You showed me that. I wouldn’t have realized that without you.”
My throat aches. I clamp my lips tight and swallow heavy to compose myself before I smile.
“So thank you, Thea.” He says it the way he says everything, but his eyes are different.
“There’s another thing, and I don’t know how to do this,” he says. “I haven’t…” He exhales hard through his mouth. “I don’t have the words for it.”
My heart is beating wrong, hanging in the balance. I blink many three times to stop the sting.Please please.
“I feel different when you’re not here.” His voice is rough now, stripped of its usual control. “And I know what I feel when you are.”
He’s looking at me, full on. And the mask, the wall, all of that is absent. What’s left is a face I’ve only caught in glimpses. When he told me about Simon. When he pulled back from kissing me and looked wrecked by his own restraint.
“I’m in love with you, Thea. From the first time I saw you. I tried to stop it. I don’t deserve you. I know that. But I’m asking anyway. Please stay with me.”
All my nerves evaporate. My eyes are burning. I press my lips together and swallow hard.
“I d-don’t believe you. You were t-terrible to me.”
“I know.”
“Y-you cornered me in my-desk,” I say. My voice is shaking.
“I did.”
“You said things to me in the hallway. With children. Walking. Right past us.”
“I did that too.”
“You told me you’d drag me behind the building and—”
“I remember every single word I said, Thea.”
“Well… I have thought about all the things you’ve done every single night since, and I need you to know that. I need you to know that I went home and replayed every word and I wasfuriousand I wasmortifiedand I—” I stop, because the next part of that sentence is not something I planned to say out loud, but it’s sitting right there on my tongue, and he’s watching me with those blue-gray eyes. “And I wanted you to do those things,” Iwhispered, “because I wanted you… Even when I thought you were a bad guy, I wanted you so badly it scared me.”
He reaches over in an instant.
His hands to my face, and he pulls the strand of hair that the wind keeps blowing loose. He tucks it back, slow, his rough fingers careful. His thumb traces down my cheek and stops at my jaw.
I’m looking at Kilian Rutherford, and he’s standing here with his heart in his hands. The man I judged so very wrongly. This man who’d jump straight into fire for the people he cares about without a second thought.
“I love you, Thea. With all of my heart.”
“I love you, too.”
And when he kisses me, my whole body catches fire.
13
