Chapter 57 What It Means to Be Real
AMANDA
I splash cold water on my face, watching eight hours of makeup swirl down the drain in rivulets of mascara and foundation. My reflection looks tired but happy, bone-deep contentment I haven’t felt in ages.
I change into my favorite silk pajamas and pad barefoot back toward the bedroom. Kade is standing by the window, but his posture seems different. Nervous, maybe. Like he’s working up the courage for something.
“Everything okay?” I ask, settling onto the edge of the bed.
He turns around, and that’s when I see it. My Versace shoebox sits open on the floor, and in his hand, catching the lamplight, is the ring.
My wedding ring.
The one I wrapped carefully in tissue paper eight years ago and tucked into a corner of that box. The one I’ve taken out on bad nights, running my thumb over the simple band, telling myself I needed to get rid of it. The one I could never quite bring myself to throw away.
My heart stops.
“Amanda,” he starts, then stops, running his free hand through his hair. “This is… God, this is weird. How do you propose to someone you’re already married to? Is that even legal? Can you remarry the same person? Do we need a lawyer?”
I start laughing, which clearly wasn’t the reaction he was expecting.
“You’re overthinking this,” I say gently.
“I am overthinking this.” He drops to one knee beside the bed, looking up at me with those dark eyes that have haunted my dreams for eight years. “But here’s what I know. I love you. I’ve loved you every day for eight years, and I want to love you for eight decades more.”
He holds the ring up. His ring. The one I thought I’d hidden so well, the one I’ve been too proud and too scared to wear.
“Amanda Bennett Steele,” he says, his voice getting steadier, “will you marry me? Again? Properly this time, with family and flowers according to the Pinterest board you’ve been secretly maintaining?”
“I don’t have a Pinterest board,” I lie, because I do have a Pinterest board titled “Maybe Someday” that’s full of white dresses and fairy lights.
“Will you?”
I look down at him, this man who disappeared from my life and then broke every law of privacy and ethics to claw his way back in. Who thought the best way to rekindle our relationship was by planting thirty-five cameras in my apartment and impersonating a goddamn AI boyfriend.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, I’ll marry you. Again.”
The ring slides onto my thumb, just like it did that first time, all those years ago when we were too drunk, too young, and too in love to know better.
Only this time, I’m sober.
I’m sure.
And it’s real.
I look down at the ring, at all the scratches and dents from the accident that I used to see as damage, as proof of how broken everything became.
But now they look different. Like a record of survival.
Like evidence that some things are strong enough to endure even when they get scraped up along the way.
The ring still fits.
Like it never stopped belonging there.
And then he’s kissing me, soft and desperate and full of eight years of longing, and I’m pulling him down onto the bed with me because I need him closer, need to feel that this is real.
He settles over me, caging me in with his arms.
“I’ve been trying to make everything work without you,” I whisper against his lips. “Building a life and a career and friendships. But I was never really real without you. I was functional, beautiful even, but not real. Not the way I was when you loved me.”
He frames my face with his hands, thumbs brushing across my cheekbones. “I know exactly what you mean. I’ve been trying to make a life without you since I met you. Every mission, every job, every day, but I was just going through the motions. Playing at being alive instead of actually living.”
I feel tears starting to blur my vision, but they’re good tears. Happy tears.
“Becoming real hurts sometimes,” I whisper. “Love makes you real, but it also makes you vulnerable. Breakable.”
“Yeah,” he says softly. “But it also makes you alive.”
“So what now?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Now,” he says, his forehead resting against mine, “we stop pretending we can be real without each other.”
“Well.” I sniff, smiling through it. “That’s very practical of you.”
“I’m a practical man.” He leans down to kiss me. “I love you, Mrs. Steele.”
“I love you, too, Mr. Steele.” I grin up at him. “Now, can you please show me exactly how much you missed me?”
His smile turns wicked. “Is that a request or a demand?”
“Both. And just so we’re clear, I have eight years of pent-up sexual frustration to work through, so I hope you’ve been doing your cardio.”
He throws his head back and laughs, and the sound, God, the sound, fills every hollow place that’s been echoing inside me for the last eight years.
And then he’s kissing me again, deep and dirty and mine. And honestly? Finally, finally, everything feels real again.