Page 175 of Offside Angle

“Okay,” I start, much louder than necessary. “So, I had a whole speech.”

A few people laugh already.

“It was good. It had structure. There were metaphors. I think there was a sports reference somewhere in there.” I look at Viktor, who is watching me with that soft little curve to his mouth that does absolutely nothing useful for my ability to think. “And then I saw you standing here looking like that, and my brain filed for unemployment.”

The laughter around us gets warmer, but Viktor doesn’t look away.

I squeeze his hands and try again, quieter this time.

“I didn’t think I got to have this. Not the big love, not the person who looks at me and somehow doesn’t see too much.” My throat tightens, but I keep going because if I stop now I’m finished. “You took all the chaos and stayed. You stayed when I was loud, when I was scared, when I didn’t know how to stop moving long enough to let somebody hold me, and I kept waiting for the part where you got tired of it.”

Viktor’s thumbs move slowly over my knuckles.

“You never did.”

I blink hard and laugh once under my breath, because apparently crying in front of everyone is happening whether I approved it or not.

“I’m not very good at being still,” I admit. “But I want to be still with you. For the rest of it. Whatever the rest looks like, wherever we end up, even if we somehow find ourselves in another country again because of… circumstances.”

Viktor’s eyes shift with quiet amusement, and I sniff before I completely lose whatever dignity I have left.

“I love you. Stupid amounts. Embarrassing amounts. And I’m going to keep choosing you every day, even when you’re being all quiet and Russian and deeply unimpressed with my nonsense.”

His mouth curves a little more.

“Especially then.”

I have to stop and breathe after that, and Viktor’s hands stay wrapped around mine while Damian gives me exactly long enough to pull myself together before turning toward him.

“Viktor.”

Viktor looks at me like there isn’t another person on the terrace.

When he speaks, his voice is low and steady, which somehow makes everything worse.

“You talk enough for both of us.”

A few people laugh, and I make a watery little sound that might be an objection, but Viktor’s expression softens before I can use it.

“So I will keep this simple.” His grip tightens around my hands. “You are the loudest, brightest thing that ever walked into my life. I did not plan for you, and I did not know I needed you until you were already there.”

Oh, fuck him.

“And now I do not know how to be without you.”

My vision goes blurry.

Viktor keeps looking directly at me while my composure quietly dies in front of everyone we know.

“I will take care of you. I will listen when you cannot stop talking, and I will hold you when you cannot stop moving. I will choose you back every day, in every country, through every impossible thing you decide we need to survive together.”

A tiny, broken sound escapes me.

His thumbs brush over my hands again.

“Even when you are impossible.”

That does it. I laugh and cry at the same time, which is humiliating but apparently acceptable because half the front row looks dangerously close to doing the same thing.