Oh.Oh my God.
I know what I need to do.
“Ready?” His hand finds mine in the dark. He stares down at me completely oblivious to the final piece of the puzzle locking into place.
Tomorrow, everything changes. Only he doesn’t know it.
Tomorrow, I stop hiding.
But tonight—tonight I let him walk me to my door. I let him tell me to wait. Let him kiss me soft and slow in the shadows. Let him whisper "I love you" against my lips one more time before he pulls away.
"See you tomorrow," he says.
"Tomorrow," I promise.
And for the first time since we began, the word doesn't feel like a death sentence.
It feels like a beginning.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Everett
I wake up smiling.
That’s my first confirmation.
My body’s sore in a good way, my sheets smell faintly like darkroom chemicals and Sierra’s shampoo, and for a solid three seconds I don’t remember there are cameras on my mountain, my father hates my guts, the internet thinks I’m exploiting my family legacy, and I almost blew up the best thing that ever happened to me in a single, spectacularly stupid sentence.
All I remember is her.
The feel of her thighs locked around my hips.
The way she saidyeslike she was throwing herself off a cliff and trusting me to catch her.
The way she stopped me—right when we were finally connected, fully, completely—and turned the moment from lust into truth… that wrecked me.
God.
She hadn’t even come yet, and she still let go of the physical so she could give me something bigger.
She told me she loved me.
Not breathless. Not desperate. Just honest.
Like it was the only thing that mattered.
She took my face in her hands—the same hands that have been hiding behind cameras for eleven years, documenting everything except what she really felt—and she looked me in the eye.
And she said it.
I love you.
Three words I’d imagined coming from her a thousand times. In the quiet hours behind bars I tended across the country. In the moments before sleep when her face was the last thing I saw before consciousness slipped away. In every version of a future I wasn't sure I'd ever get to have.
None of those imagined versions came close.
Because in my imagination, she said ittome.
