Page 72 of Vow to Claim You

Instead, I turn to him, and I ask the thing I hate myself for having to ask.

“Can I trust that you didn’t kill him?”

Something in his eyes closes off, as though the question has wounded him.

“I’m a man of my word.” His voice doesn’t waver. “I thought you’d have learned that by now.” He never breaks eye contact. “If I had killed him, you wouldn’t be sitting there guessing, Ayanna. You’d know. I don’t hide what I do. I never have.”

I know he’s right.

Aric Vold is many things. Cold. Ruthless. But he is not a liar.

I’ve seen him keep promises that cost him. Seen him bend rules he built his entire identity around. Seen him take a bullet meant for me without hesitation.

He doesn’t dress his cruelty up as mercy or bury his sins where I’ll never dig them out. When this man ends a life, he owns it—to your face, without flinching. If he had done this, he wouldn’t let me wonder. He’d tell me, and dare me to hate him for it.

The knot in my chest loosens a fraction. I hate that it does. I hate that his honesty is the thing steadying me—that some stubborn, traitorous part of me trusts the monster I married over the recording, over the crowd, over my own grief.

But I do.

Deep down, I knew before I asked. I only needed to hear him say it.

I watch Aric zip the bags. We’re supposed to leave tonight. Back to Norway. Back to the cold and the dark and the polar night that never ends. Back to Vidar counting down the days until I produce an heir. The role I have to keep performing.

“Can we stay?” Something in me… caves.

Aric stops and looks up.

“Tonight,” I add, and I hate how thin it comes out. “Just tonight. I’m not—” I press my lips together and gather the pieces. “I’m not ready to go back yet. To Norway. To your father. To all of it. The obligations. The reality of any of it.” I let out a breath that shakes more than I want it to. “I’m just… tired, Aric. I’m so tired.”

I brace for the no. For the reminder that we have a schedule, that men like him don’t rearrange the world around a woman’s exhaustion, that⁠—

He nods and walks across the room and stops close enough that I have to tip my head to hold his gaze.

“We can stay,” he almost whispers. “As long as you need.”

A tear slips free before I can stop it, hot against my skin as it traces my cheek. Because watching Aric Vold bend his rigid world around one tired word from me says more than the words do.

I don’t even get the chance to be ashamed of it, because Aric’s arms wrap around me. Carefully. So carefully. Like I’m something that might shatter if he holds too hard, like he’s a man handling glass he was never taught how to touch. He’s stiff at first, as if the gesture itself is foreign to him. And maybe it is. Maybe no one ever held this man either.

But I don’t pull away. Instead, I lean in.

I press my face to the warm wall of his chest, and his arms settle around me with that same painstaking gentleness, one hand rising to cradle the back of my head like he’s terrified of getting it wrong.

And for the first time since a priest pressed play over Luca’s coffin, I stop holding the broken pieces of myself in place.

“You don’t have to pretend,” he murmurs, the words low against the top of my head. “Not with me. You’re allowed to grieve him, Ayanna.”

The sob I’ve been swallowing all day finally escapes.

He doesn’t tell me to stop. Doesn’t remind me that the man I’m crying over once tried to kill him, or that I’m soaking the front of his shirt, or that none of this was ever part of our arrangement. He just holds me and lets me fall apart against the one chest in this world I never imagined could feel safe.

That’s the part that wrecks me most. The understanding. I never thought he was capable of it. The cold husband I married is giving me permission to break, then standing in the wreckage beside me so I don’t have to face it alone.

I always thought we were two strangers chained together by other people’s ambitions. Two enemies pretending to be a marriage.

But strangers don’t hold you like this.

Enemies don’t tell you it’s okay to cry.