Page 179 of Pucked Around and Found Out

“The words.” My voice comes out harder than I intend. “I want the actual words, Xaden, not all of this. Not you showing up and expecting me to read between the lines for the rest of my life because that's the version of intimacy you're comfortable with. I need to hear it. Once. Just once, from your mouth.”

Something flickers in his eyes.

Then he reaches into the neckline of his hoodie and I go completely still because I know what lives there. I gave it back to him the night I told him about Em, placed it in his palm and watched his whole world tilt on its axis. He has worn it every day since I've seen it. The small flash of gold at his collar when he moves. I told myself it meant nothing. I lied to myself constantly about Xaden Devlin and this is just one more item on that long, exhausting list.

He pulls the pendant free.

The gold heart. Whorls of vines around the outside, a single rose in the center. Em's. The one he bought his sister on her birthday and that somehow found its way around my neck and kept me sane through the worst year of my life.

He sets it on the table. Then he reaches into his jacket, produces a small black box and sets that beside it. Two things. Side by side. Em's pendant that I carried for him and the box that I don't know the contents of yet, but already understand the weight of.

I stare at them both.

Then I stare at him.

“The box,” he says. His voice is rough. “Open it.”

“What's in it?”

“Open it, Toren.”

We stare at each other and the air between us has history in it, all the things we've said and done and survived and all the things that still sit unsaid between us, like furniture in a dark room that you keep walking into.

I open the box. My hands aren't entirely steady. I lift the lid and I just… I just stop.

Gold.

Whorls of vines around the outside, a single rose in the center.

The same.

Not the same. New. Clean. No history in it yet, no years of wear, no weight of borrowed grief. Made from scratch. Put in a box. Driven across state lines.

Made for me.

“Xaden.” His name comes out broken in the middle and I hate that, I hate that three weeks of distance and all of that careful reconstruction comes apart from just a box on a coffee shop table.

“You gave it back,” he says. His voice is stripped completely down. “You were right to. Em's is Em's.” He holds my gaze. “But you shouldn't be walking around without one.” A pause that costs him. “This one's yours. Only yours. Made to be.”

I press my lips together hard. I will not cry in this coffee shop.

I absolutely am going to cry in this coffee shop and I already hate myself for it and I hate him for knowing, for knowing that I would recognize it, that it would mean something, that the shape of that rose in the center would undo three weeks of distance in under thirty seconds.

“This isn't the words,” I manage. Barely. “You know this isn't⁠—"

“I just gave you my heart, Tink.”

The coffee shop goes quiet. Not actually quiet, cups and low music and strangers with uncomplicated lives are present, but between us there is a silence that is entirely different from every silence we've lived in before. He holds my gaze. Steady. Terrifyingly steady.

“Don't break it.”

The tear that falls I don't catch in time. I swipe it away immediately, almost angrily, and he watches me do it and says nothing and doesn't look away, just lets it be real. That undoes me more completely than anything else could.

“That's your declaration,” I say, when I can trust my voice. “That's it.”

“It's not a declaration.” His voice is dry but underneath it is something warm. “It's a warning.”

God help me.