33. Alexandra
A week can be a long time when it’s built out of quiet things.
Coffee cooling on the counter while Cole searches for his keys. The scrape of my boots against the porch steps. The ordinary rhythm of breathing next to someone at night and not waking up afraid.
Justin is gone.
Not vanished in the convenient way problems disappear in movies—no neat cut to black, no tidy sense of justice with a ribbon on it. Just the knowledge that he will never walk through a door again.
I thought that knowledge would feel heavier.
Instead it feels like a door finally closing after months of standing open, letting the cold in.
I was scared of how I’d see Cole after. I kept waiting for my brain to turn him into something sharp?edged and unfamiliar—the man who ended a life instead of the man who brings me tea when I can’t sleep.
It never happened.
If anything, the opposite did.
I love him more.
That’s the part I’m still learning how to admit without flinching.
It’s twisted, maybe. I’m not na?ve enough to dress it up as anything noble. But there’s something unbreakable in knowing how far he would go to keep me safe—and still choosing to stay gentle with me anyway.
Outside, the town is pretending everything is simple.
Christmas lights are going up on Main Street, strings of red and gold crisscrossed between lampposts. The bakery has started selling those ridiculous gingerbread men with crooked smiles. Even the club looks almost respectable with a wreath on the front door, like the building itself is trying on good behavior for the season.
I never imagined spending Christmas anywhere but Romania.
Not because it was perfect—just because it was always the plan. The default setting of my life.
In my head it was the same picture every year: my mother arguing with the oven like it had personally offended her, my father pretending he wasn’t sneaking sarmale before dinner, the house too warm and too loud, full of people who loved each other in that practical, unspoken way that never quite reached me.
We aren’t the kind of family that says I miss you. We’re the kind that asks if you’ve been eating enough.
When I called to tell them I wouldn’t be coming this year, I rehearsed the conversation for hours.
Short sentences. Safe topics. A careful dance around the word boyfriend that somehow still feels childish on my tongue.
My mom listened without interrupting, the way she does when she’s already decided something.
Finally she said, “Are you happy?”
The question caught me off guard.
“Yes,” I answered before I could think.
A pause. The clink of a dish in the background. “Then stay where your heart is.”
Not warm exactly. Not emotional. Just practical permission, like she was confirming a train schedule.
I thanked her. She reminded me to check the heating bills. We said goodbye the way we always do—careful, contained.
I cried after we hung up. Not because I was sad—because I realized I wasn’t. For the first time, Christmas didn’t feel like a place I had to return to out of duty. Home has started to mean something new.
Cole finds me in the bedroom with my phone still warm in my hand.
I didn’t mean to cry. It just… happened. Quietly. The kind of tears that arrive without drama, like a leak you don’t notice until the floor is already wet.
He stops in the doorway, jacket half?zipped, expression shifting in an instant.
“Hey.” He crosses the room too fast, already scanning for wounds that don’t exist. “What happened? Are you okay?”
I wipe my cheeks, embarrassed. “Yeah. I’m fine. I just— I called my parents.”
That makes him pause.
His thumb brushes under my eye, careful. “And?”
“And I told them I’m staying here for Christmas.” I let out a breath that almost sounds like a laugh. “There wasn’t much reaction.”
His brows knit together. “That bad?”
“Not bad exactly.” I search for the right words. “Just… small. Polite. Like I told them I changed dentists.”
The corner of his mouth tightens. He doesn’t understand that kind of distance—he grew up wrapped in something loud and loyal and impossible to escape.
“It surprised me,” I admit. “And also didn’t. I don’t know which part hurts more.”
Cole studies me like I’m something delicate he doesn’t want to hold wrong.
“They don’t see what I see,” he says quietly.
My throat tightens again.
“I told her I was happy,” I whisper, searching his dark eyes. “And it was the truest thing I’ve ever said. You’re the reason it’s true.”
His hand stills against my face, his fingers curling slightly into my hair as if he’s trying to anchor himself to the moment.
“I keep thinking about the girl I was before,” I say, my voice dropping to a silver of a sound. “The one who was always running. I didn’t even know you existed back then. Now...”
I pause, the weight of the realization pressing against my ribs.
“Now, I don’t know where I end and you begin. You’re my whole world, Cole. It’s terrifying how much you’re my whole world.”
For a second, the mask he wears for the club slips entirely. Something sharp and painful cracks across his expression, and he looks at me like I’m the only light he’s ever seen. Emotion—raw and sudden enough that he actually looks away for a second, jaw working like he’s trying to hold himself together by force.
“Jesus, Lex.”
I expect him to pull me closer.
Instead he takes my hand.
“Come with me.”
He doesn’t explain. Just grabs helmets, his keys, that look on his face like he’s made a decision faster than he can translate it into language.
The bike rumbles to life beneath us, familiar now—the vibration, the smell of leather and cold air, the way my body fits behind his without thinking.
We ride out of town with the sky hanging low and silver, winter sitting on the edges of everything.
At first I don’t recognize the route.
Then the road curves the way a memory does, and my chest tightens.
Ocean to one side. Hills to the other.
By the time he pulls over, I already know.
“This is—” I slide off the bike, helmet in my hands. “This is where you took me the first time.”
The overlook is exactly the same—cliffs dropping into dark water, wind that tastes like salt, the world wide enough to make your problems feel smaller for a minute.
Cole watches me take it in, something nervous hidden under his calm.
“I wanted you to remember how this started,” he says.
I walk to the edge, stopping at the same safe distance I did back then, like my body kept the lesson.
“You told me you liked knowing my first ride was yours,” I remind him.
A low huff of laughter behind me. “Yeah. Still do.”
The ocean is louder than I remember. Or maybe I’m just quieter.
Arms slide around me from behind, warm and solid, his chin resting near my temple.
“I’m the luckiest man alive,” he murmurs.
My heart stumbles.
“Cole—”
He turns me before I can finish, one hand firm at my waist, the other at my jaw, and kisses me like he’s been holding it in for years instead of hours.
It’s not gentle.
It’s everything.
When he pulls back, we’re both breathing harder.
“Marry me.”
The world actually stops. Wind. Waves. My own pulse—everything freezes on those two impossible words.
“What?” The word is a tiny, fractured breath. I’m not asking for a repeat; I’m trying to see if the air in my lungs is still real.
He lets out a shaky laugh, like he knows how insane this sounds and doesn’t care. “I had a plan,” he admits, his eyes searching mine with a raw, terrifying honesty. “Christmas. A tree. Something that didn’t feel like I ripped it out of my chest and threw it at you.”
I stare at him, my heart hammering a rhythm so frantic it’s dizzying. I don’t move, my eyes tracing the hard lines of his face, looking for the tell—the slight pull of his jaw or the blink that says he’s caught up in the adrenaline of the day. But there’s nothing but a steady, burning focus.
“You’re looking at me like I’m a ghost, Lex,” he murmurs, his voice dropping an octave, turning rough and certain.
“I’m looking at you like you’re a miracle,” I whisper, my fingers trembling as they find the lapels of his jacket. I pull him just an inch closer, needing the friction of his clothes against my palms to ground me. “You... you know what you’re asking, right? You know it’s me. All the broken parts, too.”
He doesn’t flinch. If anything, he leans into my space, his thumbs brushing over my cheekbones with a reverence that makes my knees weak.
“I’m counting on the broken parts,” he says, his gaze burning into mine. “They’re the parts that fit against mine. You walked into my life bleeding and terrified and somehow turned into the best thing I’ve ever had. You chose me knowing exactly what I am. I’m not letting that go.”
Tears prick my eyes, warm and heavy. I search him one last time, looking for the exit strategy I’m so used to people having. All I find is a man who has already built a home for me in his chest.
The cliffs blur as the tears finally spill over. I look at him—really look at him—at the man who taught me that I wasn’t just a collection of my traumas. He looks at me like I’m the only future he’s ever wanted.
“You’re insane,” I whisper, my hands moving from his jacket to frame his face, mirroring him. My touch is just as desperate as his. “You’re completely out of your mind if you think I’d ever want to be anywhere else.”
His mouth twitches, a flash of that dark, beautiful arrogance returning to his eyes. “That a yes or a no, Alexandra?”
My laugh comes out wet and unsteady, a pure release of everything I’ve been holding onto.
“Yes,” I say, the word coming out stronger this time. “God, yes. Always yes, you terrifying, impulsive man.”
Something uncoils in his shoulders like he’d been bracing for impact.
He doesn’t drop to one knee. Doesn’t make a speech.
He just reaches into the pocket of his jacket, pulls out a small, worn box like it’s been living there a while, and flips it open with his thumb.
The ring isn’t huge or flashy. Gold, simple, a stone that catches the ocean light without screaming for attention.
It looks sturdy. Real. Like something meant to be lived in.
“I was going to do this slower,” he admits, voice rough. “Had a whole plan. But you wrecked it.”
“I’m good at that.”
“Yeah.” A half smile. “You are.”
He takes my left hand, his fingers warm and steady, and slides the ring on like it already knows where it belongs.
No fanfare. No audience.
Just the sound of waves below us and my heartbeat trying to outrun common sense.
I stare at my hand, at the proof of a future I didn’t see coming.
He lifts me clean off the ground, spinning once while the ocean roars its approval below us.
When he kisses me again, it tastes like salt and promises and a future I never planned but suddenly can’t imagine living without.