“I know,” I say, softer. “You weren’t trying to hurt me. You were trying to protect yourself.”
She nods, tears slipping free now. “Every time something feels good, I start waiting for the part where it’s taken away. Or where I find out I wasn’t enough.”
My chest aches.
I reach up slowly and wipe a tear from her cheek with my thumb. “Mila. Look at me.”
She does.
Her eyes are wet and bright and terrified.
I cup her jaw, gentle but unyielding. “You are enough. You’re not a consolation prize. You’re not a temporary fix. You’re not a ‘good time’ I’ll regret in daylight.”
Mila’s breath shakes. “How do you know?”
“Because my body knows,” I growl. “Because my heart knows. Because I’ve been dead inside for years and you walked into my cabin and made me feel alive in one night.”
Her lips part.
I lower my voice, the possessive edge sliding in—not as threat, but as truth. “And because when you left, I felt it like you ripped something out of me. So don’t tell me I don’t know what I want.”
Mila whispers, “Beau…”
I take a breath and force the next words out, even though they scare the hell out of me.
“I want you,” I say. “Not just in my bed. Not just in my arms. In my life.”
She lets out a broken little sound.
“I don’t care if you’re scared,” I continue. “We can be scared together. But you don’t get to decide for me that I can’t handle loving you.”
Mila’s chin trembles. “What if I leave again?”
My jaw tightens. “Then I’ll come get you again.”
She gives a watery laugh. “That’s not?—”
“It’s exactly what it is,” I cut in, voice going low and growly. “I’m not a man who lets go of what’s his, Mila.”
Her breath catches hard.
I soften it immediately, because I’m not here to cage her.
I slide my hand down to her waist and hold her there—steady, warm. “But I’m not asking you to be trapped. I’m asking you to choose.”
Mila’s lashes flutter. “Choose what?”
“Choose me,” I say. “Choose this. Choose the cabin and the mountain and the mess of it. Choose letting me try. Letting us try.”
She stares at me like she’s standing at the edge of a cliff.
Then she whispers, “I don’t know how to do love right.”
I lean in until my forehead touches hers. “Neither do I.”
My voice turns rough with honesty. “But I know how to stay. I know how to protect. I know how to show up. And I know how to hold you like you’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Mila’s breath shudders.
