Page 168 of His Surrender

I take another step toward him. “That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.”

“It means there’s something I cannot control.” The sharpness in his voice fades as quickly as it appeared.

He looks devastated by his own admission. “I’ve spent my entire life making sure I can control what happens next.”

“That isn’t possible.”

“I know.” He laughs once, broken and exhausted. “I know that.”

I reach him and place both hands on his chest. His heart pounds beneath my palms. He looks down at them as though he cannot understand why I am still touching him.

“You were scared,” I say.

“I was out of my mind.”

“You thought something terrible had happened because something terrible had happened before.”

“That does not excuse it.”

“I’m not trying to excuse anything.” I wait until his gaze lifts to mine. “I’m trying to understand you.”

The anger leaves his face. The fear that replaces it is worse.

“I didn’t know,” he says.

“What?”

His eyes move over my face slowly, taking in every feature as though he is trying to memorize me.

“I didn’t know I could feel this way about someone. Before you and Liana, it was different.”

My breath catches. He looks almost ashamed of the words.

“I’ve cared about people. My father. My friends. But this is different.”

I am afraid to move. Afraid even breathing too loudly will make him stop.

“You and Liana are so much more to me. I didn’t realize loving so hard would make me like this.” He steps closer, until barely any space remains between us. “I was afraid of losing you.”

Tears run down my face. One slides over my cheek, followed by another. Dean watches them fall but does not lift his hand to wipe them away.

His own hands remain at his sides, clenched, as though he does not trust them.

“I love you.”

The words are quiet, so quiet that for half a second, I wonder whether I imagined them.

Then his face changes, and I know I did not.

“I love you,” he says again. “More than I ever planned to love anyone.”

Every dream I have carried since I was fifteen seems to burst open inside me.

Dean loves me.

The man I used to watch at summer barbecues. The man whose name I wrote in the margins of notebooks and immediately scribbled over so no one would see. The man I thought would never look at me as anything more than the kid who grew up next door.

He loves me.