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The ring catches the light as I curl my fingers into my palm.

Not saying yes to Fionn was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Telling my family is going to be worse.

Chapter 36

Sera

The diamond catches the morning light each time I turn my hand, and my breath comes faster as I picture walking into the yard wearing it.

Ma will blow a fuse. Dane and Rafe will see a Harrington making moves on their sister, and Saint will want to know why he was the last to know.

Fionn’s on his knees in front of me, his hands resting on his thighs as he watches me.

“Engaged or not, I want you to live here with me,” he says. “For this to be our home.”

My thumb rubs the gold band. I go home already engaged and tell my family I’ve moved out too.

“Give me a few days to work it out.”

“Does it take you that long to pack?” He smirks, making light of the bomb I’m about to drop on my brothers.

“If Fury was still around, I’d have to knock ya back,” I say. “He was my everything.”

“Then I have to try harder to steal his title.”

Kneeling before him, this close, with the truth surrounding us, is something I’ve never had with him before.

I’ve never had the right to study every inch of him as a man I could keep.

His eyelashes are darker than I realized. There’s a faint shadow beneath one eye that wasn’t there the night we officially met.

I wonder if I put it there. If wanting me has stolen as much sleep from him as wanting him stole from me.

My fingertips skate over his cheek, skimming his jaw.

I’ve touched him in darkness. Gripped his shoulders while we fought against the heat raging between us. And dragged my nails over his muscles to leave marks that only I knew were under his shirt when I saw him in public.

But stroking him now is different.

The stubble along his jaw is rough against the pads of my roaming fingers. His eyes stay fixed on mine, while the rest of him becomes so rigid that I know the control is restraint.

“Do you know how many nights I lay awake thinking about us?” I ask.

“Tell me.”

I exhale a sigh. “Every night since the barn.”

“Then that makes two of us,” he admits.

My thumb drags across his lower lip. “Did ya ever think we’d end up like this?”

He inhales through his nose. “I made sure we did.”

His gaze moves from my eyes to my mouth with the same concentration he gives everything, before he leans in, his lips brushing my mine.

“I’m a man who knows what he wants and will do anything to make it happen.”