His breath caught. “Ashamed?” He shook his head, disbelief tightening every muscle. His thumb swept along her cheek. “You think I’d ever be ashamed of the strongest, kindest, most extraordinary woman I’ve ever met?” he murmured. “Never. Not in this lifetime.”
He cupped her face fully, thumbs brushing the warm skin damp with moisture. “Sweetheart,” he whispered, “look at me.”
The uncertainty in her gaze hurt. But he understood it. “I love you. Every moment with you deepens that love. Nothing, absolutely nothing, would ever change that.”
He leaned in, and her breath feathered across his lips, soft and shaky, his own exhalation stuttered in response.
Then she closed the last inch.
The kiss wasn’t tentative. It was deep and thorough. Her hands slid up his chest, around the back of his neck, tugging him closer, as if she needed him as desperately as he needed her. She tasted like summer and love and something that felt like forever.
He groaned against her mouth, angling his head, pouring everything he couldn’t put into words into the aching slide of lips against lips.
*
Suzette melted into him, her fingers curling into his hair as the world tilted — no,righted— around her. His kiss held a promise of unconditional love. And it undid her in the gentlest, most devastating way.
Her last secret … her hidden shame … the thing she’d carried like a stone in her chest for years … he knew it now. And instead of recoiling, instead of seeing her as less, he’d held her with such tenderness she could barely breathe.
For the first time in forever, she didn’t feel broken. Or worthless.
She felt chosen.
The future — that impossible, fragile thing she never allowed herself to imagine with him — brightened, unfolding before her like a path lit with possibility. Wherever in the world they ended up, they would be okay.
Hope flickered to life inside her.
Soft at first, then warmer. Brighter. Steadier.
And beneath it, unmistakable and terrifying and beautiful—
Love.
Her heart bloomed in a way she’d never dared before, and for a breathless, shimmering moment, it felt like the beginning of everything.
And she leapt from the precipice.
“Maybe,” she whispered, finally emerging from his drugging kiss, “you can help me become part of your world. Help me find a place there … the way you’ve found one in mine. I think— No” — her thumb brushed his cheekbone — “Iknowthat with you by my side, I can overcome a few pesky emotional hurts.”
His throat bobbed, the smallest shiver running through him. “I am fully prepared to walk away from that life.”
“I know. But what I said earlier … what you do is important. I will not allow you to give it up. At the same time, I cannot give you up. Because see, Justin Knox McKenzie, I have very inconveniently fallen in love with you. And I cannot imagine a future anywhere but by your side. Even if it means leaving Paternoster.”
For a heartbeat, he didn’t move.
She could feel the tension beneath her hands — the rapid, uneven breaths, the way his jaw worked as if he were trying to speak but couldn’t form a single word.
Then his eyes changed.
They shone. Not with lust or heat — though that simmered there too — but with something rawer, deeper. Something he’d been holding tight for far too long. A single tear slid down his cheek.
His breath hitched. “Suzette …”
She brushed the tear with her thumb, but he caught her hand, pressed it to his cheek, and closed his eyes as if her touch was the only thing tethering him to the moment.
“Say something,” she whispered.
He surged forward — one hand sliding into her hair, the other splaying between her shoulder blades — and kissed her. Hard at first, like he’d been drowning and she was air. Then slower … deeper … reverent, as if memorizing her mouth.
