My voice comes out small. “I didn’t.”
“You did,” he repeats, firmer. “You stood your ground.”
A lump rises in my throat. “I hate that I still feel guilty.”
Tex’s hand strokes my back slowly. “Guilt is a habit. We can break it.”
We.
The word lands with comforting clarity.
I pull back enough to look up at him. “You really chose me. Claimed me. All of me,” I say, half-disbelieving.
He shakes his head. “Not claimed. Loved.”
Heat crawls up my spine for reasons that have nothing to do with the cold.
Loved.
My eyes sting with the sheer reality of it. Of having the man I love tell me he loves me too. Choosing me.
Because yes. I love him.
The realization doesn’t arrive gently. It crashes in all at once, like my brain finally connected dots it’s been circling for days. My stomach flutters, and my breath catches because this feeling isbig.
Tex tilts his head slightly. “You okay?”
I swallow. “I’m… overwhelmed.”
“Talk to me.”
“I love you,” I blurt.
“Jane, you don’t need to?—”
I place my hand over his mouth to stop him. “No, let me explain.”
Taking a deep breath, I dive in. “What I feel for you is a full-body thing. And it’s the part of my brain that notices patterns and feels truth before logic catches up. Which is how I know this isn’t infatuation. It isn’t novelty or adrenaline or the rush of being wanted. It’s recognition. The way my nervous systemquiets when you’re near. How my thoughts line up instead of ricocheting. The way you don’t try to fix me or fence me in, you just hold the space steady so I can exist inside it.”
I pause, still holding my hand over his mouth. “Loving you doesn’t feel like losing myself. It feels like finding the place where I don’t have to keep bracing for impact. Loving you feels inevitable, like my heart recognized you long before my brain had the chance to argue. It’s this enormous, impossible thing, and for once, I don’t have to make myself smaller to hold it.”
I finish, breath shaking, my hand still plastered over his mouth like if I let go, the whole moment might make a break for it.
Tex’s green eyes soften in a way that should come with a warning label. “Jane?—”
“I love you, Jackson ‘Tex’ Briggs.”
His breath hitches against my hand. His eyes flutter closed, as if hearing his full name did something deeply unfair to his nervous system.
Then he tries to talk again. “Mmmph.”
I blink. “What?”
One eye opens, humor threading through the green as he mumbles, “Can’t breathe...”
“Oh, fuck!” A laugh bursts out of me, loud, sudden, and uncontainable. “Oh, shit. Right. Sorry.”
I yank my hand back, mortified and grinning like an idiot.
