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“Maksim—”
“I have had those dreams,” I admit. “More than once. You hold me and tell me you love me, and for a minute it feels real. Then I wake up alone and realize it isn’t. I don’t want to let go of this one.”
Tristan doesn’t speak right away. Instead, his arms tighten around me with a fierce, almost bruising possessiveness that forces every bit of doubt out of my lungs.
“Look at me, Maksim,” he commands softly.
I swallow the lump in my throat and lift my head, our eyes locking in the dim room.
The look on Tristan’s face knocks the breath clean out of me. It is completely unguarded. An overwhelming, suffocating ocean of devotion, raw and unshielded, stripped of all the cold stoicism he wears for the rest of the world. He doesn’t hold back a single drop of it; he lets me see every ounce of the fierce, consuming love that rules him.
My heart stumbles, aching at the terrifying beauty of it.
“I am here,” Tristan says. “This is not a dream.”
His thumb moves gently beneath my eye. “I am here tonight. I will be here when you wake up. I will be here tomorrow. And the day after that. And every day you will have me.”
“You cannot promise forever.”
“I can promise that I will spend every day I have proving I mean it.”
The words settle somewhere deep inside me. I lift my hand and trace the line of his cheek. The rough edge of stubble along his jaw. The familiar shape of his mouth. My thumb brushes slowly across his bottom lip.
He watches me without moving.
Without asking anything from me.
“I love you,” I say.
Tristan exhales.
“Maksim—”
“I love you, Tristan,” I repeat, my voice steady, clear, and ringing with absolute finality.
I know he wasn’t expecting it. Not tonight. Not after all the walls I threw up after that day I had confessed it through heartbreak and left for Italy, not after telling him in that damp basement that he had to grovel and earn every syllable.
Ever since Jake died—ever since Tristan stood in that room and proved he would burn his entire past to the ground just to keep me—the love inside my heart has metastasized, doubling a thousand times over until it feels too big for my ribcage to contain. Every single night, before he closes his eyes, Tristan whispers that he loves me. Every morning before he leaves for the firm, he says it against my skin.
I am done withholding it. I am done hiding behind my pride and not saying the words back.
“I love you, Tristan,” I continue, holding his gaze. “I love you so much it scares me. I love you even when I’m angry at you. Even when you make me want to throw something at your head. Even when you make me want to burn all your clothes or your car. Even when I think you are being impossible and not letting me have my way.”
His mouth twitches slightly.
“That is a very romantic declaration.”
“Shut up. I am having a moment.”
“I can see that.”
“And I mean it.” My thumb brushes his lip again. “I am tired of pretending I don’t. Every time you say it, I want to say it back. I just… didn’t know how to say it again.”
A slow, breathtaking smile breaks across Tristan’s face, making his dimples appear and transforming his features with an unvarnished joy I have never seen on him before.
Before I can take another breath, he shifts his weight with effortless grace, flipping us over in one smooth motion. The mattress dips as my back settles into the sheets, and Tristan looms above me, caging my head between his forearms, his gaze burning into mine.
“Say it again,” he breathes, his voice rough and starved.
