Chapter 21 #4
“Yeah.” I swallow hard. “I thought that once I told you everything—the money, Ricky, Rainer, and the fact that I still wanted to run—you would look at me and finally see that I’m not worth this much trouble.”
She cups my face with both hands, compelling me to look at her.
“Listen to me,” she says. “I love you.”
I close my eyes because I need just one second before I let that land fully.
“No.” Her grip tightens around my face. “Open your eyes, Zane.”
I obey.
She is crying now and the tears flow freely down her face.
“I love you,” she says again, steadier this time, as if she wants to make sure every syllable reaches the part of me that has never believed it. “Not because you are easy. Not because your past is clean. Not because loving you makes me want to throw something at your head sometimes.”
A broken laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
“I love you because you are the boy who climbed this roof with me when the world beneath us felt too ugly to endure.” Her thumbs brush my cheekbones. “I love you because you told me the truth even though it scared the shit out of you.”
Her eyes hold mine.
“And I love you because you stayed.”
My throat closes around everything I want to say yet cannot find the words for.
The roof blurs around her. “Sky.”
“No. You don’t get to decide you’re too much trouble for me.” Her voice hardens. “That’s my decision, Zane. And I choose you.”
Every part of me goes still and the world narrows to her hands on my face, and the sunset burning behind her. Finally, after all this time, I understand something I have been fighting for my entire life. She is not staying despite who I am. She is staying because of it.
“I choose you,” she whispers. “So stop standing in front of me, acting as if you’re incapable of love.”
Something breaks open in my chest.
Every wall I built.
Every version of the lie that told me I was too damaged, too costly, and too much of everything wrong to be worth choosing.
All of it. Gone.
Now there are only her hands on my face and the truth of what she just said settling in me like something that, after everything, has finally found the place it was always meant to land.
I pull her into me and kiss her.
This kiss is every word I don’t know how to say without bleeding all over them. It is my hands in her hair and her mouth opening beneath mine. For the first fucking time in my life, I do not brace for what comes after.
I just let myself have it.
She kisses me back hard.
My Skylar.
Her hands slide down my chest and grip my shirt. Mine lock around her and pull her closer until every inch of her is pressed against me and my cock reacts because apparently my body has the emotional depth of a teenager and the timing of a complete asshole.
But fuck me, she feels so good. Warm, soft, real, and mine because she chooses to be, even when I am broken, difficult, and full of a past that keeps showing up uninvited. She still chooses me anyway.
I pull my mouth from hers and kiss along her jaw.
Her breath catches. “Zane.”
“I want you,” I mutter against her throat.
“We’re on a roof.”
“I know.”
“A questionable roof.”
“I know.”
She laughs and I kiss the sound straight from her mouth because I can. Because she is here and loves me.
My hand slides down to her hip and my fingers dig in.
“I want to fuck you right now,” I say against her mouth. “Right here. On this roof. With the whole shitty world under us and your pretty little pussy wrapped around my cock.”
Her eyes darken. Fuck. I love the way she looks at me when I talk dirty. It’s that specific shift in her expression she would never admit to and I am never going to stop chasing for the rest of my life.
“Real romantic,” she whispers.
“I’m serious.”
“Then take me home to your place and be serious there, because I am not having this roof collapse on us while you’re inside me.” Her mouth curves. “Cassie will enjoy telling that story at our funeral too much.”
A laugh tears out of me as I press my forehead to hers. “Fine. Not here.”
We look up at the sky the way we did when we were eighteen.
The last orange light slips behind the hills, the blue bleeding into the dark above us. The first stars appear, faint and stubborn, the same ones that were there the first time we lay on this tin and let the world feel far enough away to survive.
I kiss the side of her head. “I love you, Sky.”
“I love you too, Zane.”
The words settle in my chest. They just sit there, honest and uncomplicated, as the truest things always are.
I look at our joined hands.
Hers smaller than mine. Stronger than anyone who has not seen her fight for herself. Mine is scarred and rough and still learning. They fit anyway.
I lift her hand to my mouth and kiss her knuckles, one by one because I have time now and I intend to use it.
And for the first time in my life, I am not looking for the exit. I am not waiting for the floor to give way. I am not counting the ways this will end.
I am just here, on this roof, with this woman I love, her hand in mine, and whatever comes next stretched out in front of us. For once, for the first time, I am not afraid of it.