Page 122 of Vow to Claim You

Of me?

“For what’s happening between us.” His voice drops, scraping over something raw. “You’re rewriting every rule I’ve ever had. Every wall I’ve built. Every truth I treated as sacred.”

My heart pounds so hard I can feel the pulse in my fingertips.

“Is that…?” I hesitate.

This isn’t the conversation I expected. I expected deflection. Coldness. The Aric I know—the one who holds everyone at arm’s length and calls it strategy.

“Are you trying to tell me you have feelings for me?”

His eyes bore into mine, restless, searching, shifting like the sky before a lightning strike.

“I’m not sure I’m capable of feelings.”

My heart stumbles.

I’m not sure I’m capable of feelings.

Not I don’t have feelings for you. Not this was a mistake.

Not any of the things I braced to hear.

I’m not sure I’m capable of feelings.

Like it’s a deficiency. A flaw in the wiring. Something broken so long ago he’s not sure it can be fixed.

“I know you are,” I say softly. “You’ve proven it.”

“Have I?”

I inch closer, tilting my head back. “Why won’t you just open up to me? What are you so afraid of?”

I watch the tension move through him—the shoulders tightening, the hands flexing at his sides, the way he looks at me like I’ve asked him to hand over a loaded weapon.

“Is it about your mother?”

He goes rigid. Every muscle locks, the stillness shifting from controlled to frozen, from guarded to trapped, like I’ve pressed a blade to a wound he thought was hidden under years of scar tissue.

“Ingrid told me,” I continue, quiet and careful. “Not everything. But enough.”

His gaze moves between my eyes, as though he’s only just realized he’s standing in a minefield, and every step might be his last.

“What did she tell you?”

“That her name was Angelique,” I whisper. “That she was beautiful. That when she walked into a room, people noticed.”

I breathe out, slow.

“And that Vidar forced her to be with him. That she escaped after she gave birth to you. And that you don’t speak of her. Ever.”

He’s quiet so long I think he’ll turn away. Shut down. Become the ice sculpture I married instead of the man who burned inside me hours ago.

But he doesn’t turn away.

He exhales like he’s setting down something he’s carried for decades, and when he speaks, his voice is stripped of everything. Empty.

“Ingrid told you he forced her. Did she tell you what that means?”