I freeze.
“I love you.” She says it again, like she knows I need to hear it twice. “You. Not the name. Not the money. Not any of it. Just you.”
The words sound too good to be real. I expected her to end us. Was bracing for the blow, rehearsing how I'd let her go with dignity even as it destroyed me.
Now she's standing here, saying the one thing I never let myself hope for.
My hands are shaking. When did that start?
“Emma...” She starts pacing. Nervous energy. “Please, let me explain.” She glances at me, eyes bright with unshed tears. “Your mother came to see me today.”
I clench my fists. “What?”
“She offered me five hundred thousand dollars to disappear from your life. Threatened my career when I refused.” Her eyes flash with something fierce.
I take a step toward her. “You refused.”
She flips her hair away from her flushed cheeks. “I told her to get out. That I love her son and she can't buy that or control it.”
My heart feels too big for my chest. “You love me.”
Her lips tremble into a shy smile. “You keep repeating my words. Are you okay? Did you hit your head earlier?”
I close the distance between us in two steps, cup her face in my hands. She's so beautiful it hurts. This woman stood up to Helena Hammond and walked out with her spine intact. Ran across my lobby like I was something worth running toward.
“Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you, Kai.” Her voice catches. “I love you, and I'm terrified, and I don't know how this is going to work with your family trying to destroy us, but I don't care. I'd rather have you and the chaos than be safe and without you.”
I rest my forehead against hers. Breathe her in. Chest so full it aches.
“I don't deserve you.”
“But you got me.” She laughs, watery and soft. “You're stuck with me now.”
“Emma.” I pull back enough to look into her eyes. “I need you to understand something. I am not my family. I've spent years trying to prove that, but it's never been more true than it is right now. Whatever they've done, whatever blood is on the Hammond name, that's not me. That's not who I choose to be.”
“I know.”
“I can't change where I came from. I can't undo the damage they've caused. But I can promise you this.” I take her hands, press them against my chest so she can feel my heart pounding. “I will spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret choosing me. Every single day, I will prove that you made the right call. I will love you so completely that everything else becomes a footnote. Something I used to be, before I became yours.”
Tears spill down her cheeks. She doesn't wipe them away.
“That's a big promise.”
“I don't make small ones.” I brush a tear from her cheek with my thumb. “You're it for me, baby. The beginning and the end. I didn't know what I was looking for until I stumbled into that museum and you offered me a ticket.”
She chokes out a laugh. “You were so suspicious.”
“It was the beginning of you giving me things I didn't know I wanted.”
“I should thank Zoe for not showing up that evening.”
I kiss her. Tentative at first. Soft. Slow. Licking the corner of her lips until she opens for me. The kind of kiss that isn't about heat or hunger but about something deeper. A seal on a promise. A beginning.
