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He doesn't react. In truth, he looks like he’s not even inhaling oxygen. Then he says, very carefully, "You've had the worst kind of night. You're not⁠—"

"Don't," I interrupt. "Don't you dare talk me out of it. I've spent a year proving I was strong enough to leave you, and the only thing I've proved is that I can go a whole year without sleeping."

He takes a step back instead of toward me, and his hands close at his sides, like he has to physically stop himself from reaching for me.

"I wish I could just pick you up and drive you home before you've finished the thought. I've wished for exactly that every day for a year, and no one can stop me when I want something." His voice goes down to a murmur. "But I can't repeat the past. I can't just own you again. You don't get taken, not by me, not ever again. I've done enough taking for both of us to last a lifetime."

He stands there with his hands at his sides, a foot of cold air between us, a man at his own graveside.

And there it is, the thing I drove across the city for and couldn't have named until he handed it to me. He always held back before, made me come to him, but that was a game he was winning. This is different. He's standing a foot away wanting me exactly as much as he ever has, keeping his hands at his sides, and this time there's no ulterior motive, nothing he gets out of it, no version where holding still works in his favor. He'd rather lose me than take me. That's the thing he never gave me before.

Laszlo won't say it, so I say do.

"I know what you are. You bury people. You've killed people. You stalked me, know everything about me down to my coffee order." I shake my head. "And you didn't just watch. You wanted a way in, so you made one. You set my brother up. You arranged the whole thing at the club, made sure he crossed a line and the only way to save him was to marry you."

He doesn't look away.

"I haven't forgotten any of it. I'm not going to stand here and tell you it was okay. It wasn't. It never will be."

My eyes are burning.

"But I tried living without you. I went to work. I saw my friends, made new ones. I let a good man take me to dinner. And I wasn't there for any of it. I sat across from him and thought about you."

My voice is about to give up on me.

"I spoke to my mother tonight, and she told me she'd made a terrible mistake. She warned me not to follow her example because being sensible cost her everything. I don't want to wake up in forty years and realize I should have chosen differently." I pause to gather myself. "I'd rather have you and everything that's wrong with you than a nice quiet life without you in it. I know what you are. I'm choosing you anyway."

He starts to move and I lift a hand because I'm not finished, and if I don't get the rest out now I never will.

"I told you I loved you the night I left. I said it to wreck you, and I meant it, then I told you it was dead, and I meant that too." I don't care anymore what I sound like. "It wasn't dead. I was lying to myself. To you."

He stands there, still as a statue..

"So I'm saying it again, and this time not to hurt you. I love you. Knowing all of it. Not the man I thought you were, but the one you actually are. I burned your house down and I'd do it again, yet here I am, saying it to your face." I'm out of breath now. "Do something with that."

He closes the space between us, and this time I let him—my choice. He takes my face in both hands. Gently. He's holding me like he's afraid of hurting me, or afraid I'll disappear if he grips too hard. He doesn't kiss me. He just holds my face and looks at me, close, for a long time.

"You're here," he finally says.

It’s as if he needs to hear it out loud to believe it.

"You're here," he says again.

"I am."

"I never changed the locks," he says. "I told myself I kept forgetting to." His thumb moves slowly along my cheek. "I didn't forget. I left every door I own open all this time, in case you walked back through one of them. The house we shared is gone, but no home is home without you. Bricks and walls mean nothing without you…"

His forehead comes down against mine.

"So finish this. Take me apart and don’t stop while there’s a single piece of me that doesn’t belong to you. Ruin me until I'm yours. I'm asking you."

He made me his for a year and never once had to ask. Now he's the one asking, this man who never, ever asks. "Ruin me until I'm yours" was never only about what he did to me. It's what he's begging me to do to him now.

My whole body lets go. I didn't know I'd been holding on that hard.

A year of lying awake asking myself if he ever loved me, if I'd thrown away the only real thing I had. Standing here, it stops. His arms don't loosen. The most dangerous man in the city has a hold of me, and I've never felt safer.

CHAPTER 37