"I hear you," he says.
"Do you?" I press, stepping closer. I need him to understand that this isn't the practical version of this conversation. It isn't the strategic discussion about risk and reward or the best way to move on Dusty and Colt before the season ends.
"I have spent the last four days watching you prepare for something that puts you directly in the path of two men who have already shown they are willing to hurt people to protect themselves. I have been holding this in because you needed the space to do what you needed to do, but I can't hold it anymore."
He is very still across the kitchen.
And I am done being quiet about this.
The thing about loving someone who does dangerous things is that the fear doesn't stay in one place.
"I know what happened to the last man who tried to come forward," I say. Jace told me what Dusty said behind the stock pens. I have not been able to unhear it since. "I know what these people are capable of.
I have watched them sabotage equipment, plant evidence, and send someone to stand outside this house in the dark. And now you want to walk into an arena with both of them? For what, draw them out? Force their hand in a public place and trust that public means safe?"
"Riley—"
"It didn't feel safe at the last rodeo," I continue. My voice cracks slightly on the last word in a way I didn't plan for and can't take back.
"It didn't feel safe when Hadley was standing in the dark with Colt crouched down in front of her and I didn't know what I was running toward. That was before we knew everything we know now. Before the evidence disappeared and before we understood what Dusty has been building. What he's willing to do to protect it."
Jace moves toward me and I take a step back. Not because I don't want him close but because if he touches me right now I will lose the thread of this completely and I need to finish it first.
"I need you to hear all of it," I say, holding up a hand that isn't quite steady.
"I need you to understand that this isn't me not trusting you or not believing in what you can do. I'm not trying to control something that isn't mine to control." I tell him while almost holding back tears.
"This is me standing in front of you telling you that I have let you in. That you and Hadley are the two people on this earth I would burn everything else down to keep safe, and the thought of something happening to you in that arena is not something I know how to be rational about."
The kitchen is very quiet.
Jace has stopped moving. He is standing a few feet away with his hands loose at his sides and his eyes on mine. There is something in his expression that I have not seen there before. Not the steadiness of the focus or the careful controlled calm he carries like a second skin. Something underneath all of that. Something open and almost undone, like what I just said reached somewhere the rest of it hasn't.
I let out a breath that shakes slightly at the edges.
"I love you," I say, and the words arrive without warning or ceremony, true and terrifying in equal measure.
"And I need you to know that before you walk into that arena, because if something happens and I never said it then I will never forgive myself for being too careful with it."
The silence after that is the loudest thing I have ever heard.
He crosses the kitchen in three strides. His hands find my face before I can decide what to do with what I just said. He tilts it up so I have nowhere to look but at him. The expression on his face is the most unguarded I have ever seen it. Stripped of every layerof control, deflection and careful management he usually keeps between himself and anything that could reach him.
"Say it again," he says, quiet and certain.
"Jace—"
"Riley." His thumbs brush along my jaw, gentle and deliberate.
I hold his gaze and I say it again. Steadier this time, because it was true the first time and it's true now.
The only thing that changes when you stop being afraid of something is that it gets to be what it actually is instead of what fear makes it. "I love you."
Something moves through him. The kind of shift that doesn't show on the surface so much as change the whole underlying structure of a thing.
He presses his forehead against mine and stays there for a moment. Both of us breathing in the same space. I feel the weight of everything we've been carrying these past weeks settle differently.
Not lighter exactly but more evenly distributed, like it belongs to both of us now instead of sitting on separate sets of shoulders.
