Johnathan turned sharply. “He will not.”
Her gaze caught his. “But if he does.”
He knelt in front of her, eyes fierce. “I would set the world afire to reclaim you.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Do not say things like that.”
“Why?” he asked. “Because they are true?”
“No,” she whispered. “Because they make me want to believe in forever.”
He cupped her cheek, voice low, his tone edged with something raw and unguarded. Johnathan’s voice dropped lower, heavy with a truth he had never voiced aloud before. “Then believe it, Frances. Believe that I am here, not because I must be, but because I choose you—with every breath, with every step forward.””
“I do,” she said.
And she kissed him—hard and fast and desperate.
The kiss was not about tenderness this time. It was about war. About fear. About the helpless, staggering weight of knowing that their love—so fragile, so fiercely won—could be taken at any moment.
Her lips trembled against his, fierce with unspoken fear. He held her tightly, anchoring her to this world with everything he had left to give.
Because William’s betrayal had opened a door he did not know he had been keeping shut. It was not just about old wounds or mistrust. It was about the realization that the world they had been trying to outrun was still behind them.
And no matter how far they traveled, it would not stop unless they faced it. Unless they married.
They sat close, her head tucked against his shoulder, his arm around her. The heat between them was not the desperate kind anymore. It was steadier now. Fierce in a different way.
Johnathan stared into the distance and thought of William.
They had known each other since Cambridge. Fought side by side in duels—over honor, over debts, over women neither of them could remember now. William had been the one to drag Johnathan from a gaming hell one night when he was too drunk to stand. The one who had once confessed he feared becoming his father’s cold, legacy-obsessed shadow. The one who had toasted him on the day he inherited Hargate.
And now?
He had handed Frances over with a single careless sentence.
Johnathan did not feel hatred.
He felt grief.
“You are quiet,” Frances murmured, her voice soft.
He glanced down. “Thinking.”
“About William?”
He nodded.
“I am sorry,” she said. “It is always worse when it is someone you trusted.”
“It is not just the betrayal,” he replied. “It is realizing he never truly saw me at all.”
She shifted to face him. “Then maybe he was never your friend. Not really.”
“No,” he said. “Maybe not. But he was my last tie to the man I used to be. The one who ran from everything.”
Frances studied him for a moment. “And now?”
“Now…” He let out a slow breath. “I think it is time I stop running.”
