The silence stretches between us, filled with the steady beeping of the heart monitor, which is doing an excellent job of broadcasting exactly how not-calm I am right now.
“I need to tell you something,” Veil says.
His voice is quiet. Steady. The kind of steady that isn’t calm at all but is being held in place by sheer force of will.
“Okay,” I say, because what else do you say when a duke who’s been sitting by your hospital bed for six hours tells you he needs to say something?
“I spent five days telling myself I didn’t care that you were avoiding me.”
Oh.
He knew.
He knew I was avoiding him.
“I told myself it was irrelevant. That you were just another assistant, just another woman passing through, and that your professional distance was exactly what I wanted.” His jaw tightens. “I’m a very good liar, Evianne. I’ve had years of practice. But I couldn’t make myself believe a single word of it.”
My heart monitor is absolutely betraying me right now. The beeping is faster, noticeably faster, and if he looks at the screen he’ll see the exact moment his words started affecting me, and this is deeply, profoundly embarrassing.
“And then you ran across that ice.” His voice drops lower. “And dove into water that could have killed you. For a child you’d never met. Without a single moment of hesitation.”
He’s looking at me the way he looked at the first edition Pride and Prejudice in the study. Like he’s holding something rare. Something he didn’t expect to find.
“I watched you disappear under that ice, and I have never been more terrified in my life. Not since my father died.” He says this simply, factually, like it costs him nothing, but I can see his hands gripping his knees, knuckles white. “And in that moment, every wall I’ve spent fifteen years building came down. All of it. Gone.”
Don’t cry, Evianne. Don’t you dare cry.
“I’m in love with you.”
The words land in the quiet room like a stone dropped into still water.
I stare at him.
He stares back.
The heart monitor beeps wildly, and honestly, at this point, I wish someone would just unplug the stupid thing.
Did he just—
Did I hit my head?
Am I hallucinating from hypothermia?
“I—” I start, but nothing else comes out because my brain has completely short-circuited.
“I know the timing is insane,” he continues, and his voice is still that terrifying, unshakable steady. “I know you’ve been avoiding me for a reason. I know you’re dealing with things I don’t fully understand. And I know that sitting in a hospital room telling a woman who nearly drowned six hours ago that I’m in love with her is not my most strategic move.”
A sound escapes me. Half laugh, half something else.
“But I’m done being strategic.” He leans forward. “I’m done playing games. I’m done pretending I don’t feel what I feel because my pride won’t let me admit it.”
I can’t breathe.
Actually cannot breathe.
My lungs have forgotten how to function, and the heart monitor is making a spectacle of itself, and he’s sitting there saying these things like he has every right to say them, like he has any right to sit there calmly dismantling my entire carefully constructed avoidance strategy while I’m lying in a hospital bed in a gown that ties in the back.
“Veil, I—”
