Chapter 28 #3
And just like that, every hard edge in me gives.
“Hey.” Her voice is soft and easy and mine.
I shut the door behind me and lean against it for one second, just looking at her. Really looking. Because it’s one thing to have fought my way into the truth of this.It’s another to stand here in the quiet aftermath and realize she actually stayed.
After all of it. After all of me.
She stayed.
And I do not deserve that kind of grace. But I sure as hell know what to do with it now.
Her smile fades a little when she clocks whatever’s on my face. “What?”
I shake my head once and push off the door. “Nothing.”
“That’s not a nothing face.”
I cross the room slowly, eyes still on her. “No?”
“No.” She sets the book aside and studies me with that too-perceptive look she’s always had where I’m concerned. “That’s a ‘you either had a breakthrough or committed a felony’ face.”
That gets a laugh out of me. A real one.
Christ, I love her.
“I told Landon.”
Her brows lift immediately. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
She winces. “And?”
I climb onto the bed with her and settle close enough that my hand lands naturally on her thigh like it’s been waiting there all day.
“He punched me but didn’t kill me.”
“That’s encouraging.”
“Threatened me a little.”
“That’s actually better than I expected.”
I grin despite myself. “Yeah?”
“Landon’s pretty emotionally efficient.”
That one makes me laugh again.
Then her expression shifts, softening. “You okay?”
The fact that she asks me that after everything I’ve put her through should probably humble me for the rest of my natural life. “Yeah,” I say honestly. “I told Logan too.”
That gets her full attention. Her hand lands on my chest without her seeming to think about it first, like touching me has already started becoming instinct too. “What’d he say?”
I brush my thumb over the bare skin of her thigh and say, “That it’s about damn time.”
Her mouth twitches. “Sounds like Logan.”
“Pretty much.”
“And Ana?”
That one surprises me enough to make my brows lift. “How’d you know?”
She gives me a look. “Because she’s my best friend and your sister, and if she didn’t corner you somewhere private to threaten your life, I’d assume she was sick.”
I huff a quiet laugh. “She cornered me.”
“And?”
I look at her. Really look at her. At the woman who sat in my room waiting for me while I spent the last hour getting exactly the kind of reality check I should’ve earned years ago.
And because she deserves the truth now, all of it, I say, “She told me what I put you through.”
Allison goes still. Not afraid. Not guarded.
Just quiet.
I keep my hand on her leg and say, “And she was right.”
Something shifts in her face then. Not pain exactly. Not relief. Just this soft, sad understanding that maybe only comes when somebody finally looks at the damage they did and doesn’t try to make it smaller so they can live with themselves easier.
I take her hand from my chest and bring it to my mouth, kissing her knuckles once.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “For all of it.”
Her throat works once. Then she nods. And somehow that simple, silent acceptance feels bigger than if she’d given me some long speech about forgiveness and closure and healing. Because she doesn’t owe me any of that.
The fact that she’s here at all is already more than I earned.
I shift closer and cup the back of her neck, letting my thumb brush lightly along her jaw. “I want to make it public tonight.”
Her eyes flick to mine immediately. “At dinner?”
“Yeah.”
There’s a beat where she just looks at me. Reading. Measuring. Trying to decide if I mean it.
I do.
I think she sees that. Her voice comes out softer than I expect. “You sure?”
I almost laugh. Not because the answer is funny. Because of how impossible the question feels now. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”
Her lips part just slightly.
And because I know she still needs more than intensity, more than declarations and rough hands and too-late confessions, I give her the rest of it too.
“I want everybody to know where we stand,” I tell her. “I want them to know you’re mine and I’m not hiding that for one more damn day.”
Her eyes go glassy for one dangerous second, and that alone nearly wrecks me.
So I keep going. “I want you beside me tonight,” I say, voice lower now, rougher around the edges because this part matters too much to dress up. “Not because I need to prove something to anybody else. Because I’m done acting like having you is something I should be scared to show.”
That does it.
I see it happen in real time.
The way her face softens. The way her shoulders loosen. The way something warm and hopeful flickers across her expression like maybe, finally, she believes me.
“Okay,” she whispers.
That one word nearly drops me to my knees.
I lean in and kiss her slowly. No rush. No panic. No desperate edge. Just enough to make sure she feels exactly what I’m saying without me needing another sentence to carry it.
When I pull back, I rest my forehead against hers and let myself stay there for a second. “You have any idea how lucky I am you gave me another shot?”
She huffs the tiniest laugh. “You should probably tell me every day for a while.”
That one gets a grin out of me. “Done.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Her fingers slide into my hair, tugging lightly, and her eyes search mine like she’s still looking for the cracks, still making sure this version of me is going to hold when the room gets loud and the eyes get heavy and the reality of this stops being private and starts being real.
I’m not afraid of that anymore.
“I wasted too much time,” I tell her quietly.
Her expression changes at that. Softens in a way that almost hurts to look at. “Yeah,” she says.
No sugarcoating. No fake comfort. Just truth. And somehow, that makes me love her even harder.
I smile against her mouth when I kiss her again, slower this time, savoring it like I’m finally learning how to have something good without immediately trying to ruin it.
Because that’s the thing, isn’t it?
I did waste too much time. Too many years. Too many chances. Too many moments where I could’ve stepped up and didn’t.
But I’m here now.
And I’m not wasting one more damn second of it.