She looked up sharply.
“You were the one who insisted on distance,” he said quietly. “On practicality, on no expectations beyond duty.” He stepped closer now, cautiously, as though approaching something wounded. “But things have changed.”
Her breath stilled. “How?”
His answer came without hesitation, stripped of rank and pride and fear alike. “I love you.”
The words fell into the room with quiet force.
Hazel stared at him, her carefully ordered world tilting beneath her feet. “You cannot,” she whispered. “If you did, you would have noticed. You would have known I was hurting.”
“I noticed,” he said hoarsely. “I simply did not understand. Loving you is new to me, Hazel. I have been many things in my life—dutiful, controlled, deliberate—but I have never been practiced at this.”
Her eyes burned.
“I came tonight because the thought of losing you without ever telling you the truth was unbearable,” he continued. “Not as my duchess, but as my wife.”
Her defenses trembled, cracks forming where certainty had once lived.
“And if I am wrong?” she asked, with fear bleeding through her composure. “If this is merely?—”
“Then I will bear it,” he said, echoing her own words back to her with devastating gentleness. “But I will not let you walk away believing you were ever a mere convenience to me.”
Hazel’s breath shook as she looked at him, and for the first time since the terrace, she allowed herself to believe that she might not have been foolish after all, only afraid, just like him.
“I love you, too, Greyson,” she admitted.
The words left her heart softly and without drama, without the weight of any expectation she had once feared. It was simply the truth, spoken at least. Her voice trembled with the enormity of having held it back for so long.
Greyson went very still. For a heartbeat, he looked as though the world had finally, mercifully stopped demanding anything of him. Then his breath shuddered, and she could see everything in his eyes: relief, wonder, disbelief all at once.
“Say it again,” he murmured, as though he feared it might vanish if left unanchored.
“I love you,” she repeated, more firmly now. “I have for some time. And it frightened me enough to run.”
He lifted a hand, hesitating just a moment before cupping her cheek. When she leaned into it, his thumb brushed beneath her eye, catching a tear she had not realized had fallen.
“I should have fought harder to understand,” he said quietly. “I am sorry.”
“So am I,” she replied. “For not giving you the chance.”
There was nothing left to say after that. He bent his head slowly, giving her time to pull away if she wished. She did not. Their lips met in a kiss that was gentle, almost tentative at first. It was an exploration rather than a claiming. It carried none of the urgency of their earlier moments, none of the confusion, only certainty.
His hand slid to her waist, steady and warm. Hers rose to rest against his chest, feeling the solid, undeniable beat of his heart beneath her palm. The kiss deepened slightly, still tender and still careful, as though both of them understood that this quiet choosing of one another was the thing that mattered most.
When they parted, they rested their foreheads together, breathing the same air.
“I will never again let you doubt where you stand,” Greyson said.
Hazel closed her eyes, allowing a small, relieved smile to curve her lips. “And I will not run from being loved.”
He drew back just enough to look at her.
“I will make you the happiest woman in the world,” he promised.
Hazel’s heart swelled so suddenly it almost hurt. She smiled, unable to stop herself, the truth rising easily now that she no longer feared it. “You already have.”
She saw the love in his eyes, and then she hesitated.
