“I’m yours,” he said simply, his voice steady. His green eyes lightened to spring grass, the intensity there shifting to something solemn. He slid one step back, then another, lifting his hands empty and open in front of him. “This has never been a game, Reyla. Never been a way to manipulate you. I’ll work with you every day, right up until…” He shook his head, his thick, tousled hair fluttering across his shoulders. “No more fighting today.”
I sensed a double meaning in his words. Suspicious, I blinked at him. “No slick moves intending to force me to capitulate to whatever your latest whim might be?”
“No.” His arms dropped to his sides, leaving the path to his chest frighteningly, maddeningly clear. “I tease…too much.”
“You do.” Most of the time, I liked it, even when it sparked things inside me I wasn’t ready to feel.
“I’m yours to do with as you wish,” he said. “Lift your blades, wife, and come at me if that’s what you need. Hit me. Slice me. I can take anything but you hating me.”
“Merrick—”
“When you’re finished being angry, if you still care…” He stepped forward, into my space. “I’ll be here, waiting. Always. For you.”
I stumbled backward.
His jaw muscles tightened, and I expected him to follow. For him to challenge me, physically if not verbally.
Instead, his shoulders lowered, and his gaze dropped before returning to meet mine. So much desolation there. Vulnerability, too. His voice cratered, and he gestured to my blades. “If you feel you deserve justice, then take it from my body. I’ll stand in place and let you take vengeance for the pain I’ve caused.”
“Stop it.” A band wrapped around my throat, choking off my wind. “I’m not looking for a grand gesture of sacrifice, Merrick.”
His head tilted, and he kept watching. Waiting for me to do something that I suspected would rip me apart. “What do you want, then?”
“I don’t know.” My voice came out small, as equally vulnerable as his. “I have a right to be mad at both of you.”
“You do.”
“And I also have a right to feel sad.” I’d allowed myself to start dreaming again, and now I was mourning the loss of something I might’ve never had.
“Sadness is a strength.”
I lifted my eyebrows, but didn’t speak, waiting for him to explain.
“I’ve been gouged wide open and sadness has only deepened the wound. For too long, I let it shape me, define everything I couldn't be. But then I realized that it wasn't the sadness itself that held power, it was what I did with it. I had to use it to sharpen my resolve, to remind me of what I was fighting for. That sadness is still there; it's not something you can truly ever shove away. But I learned to let it walk with me, not take the lead. Otherwise, it might've devoured me whole.”
How could I hold on to anything but the sweet start of love when he said something like that?
“I’m here,” he said, tapping the center of his chest. “I always will be.” His hands splayed apart farther. “If this is what it takes, if this is how you need to work through what I’ve done, I’m not going to stop you.”
“But… You had no control over what happened.” It wasn’t hard to see that now.
He blinked but remained stationary, wide open to wherevermy anger might take me. “I need your trust. Ache for it, actually. But all I have to offer in exchange is me.”
My arms felt heavier with each pulse of my heart. I almost hated him for standing there. For waiting. For putting the next move in my hands.
I stepped over to him and placed the tip of one blade against the smooth plane of his chest.
He did not move.
“What are you doing?” I hissed, my hand shaking badly enough I almost sliced through the leather protecting his skin.
“What I should’ve done from the start. You deserve better than me. There’s no denying that. If you want it, my life is yours. End it now and you can walk away.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” I barked out, tears I didn’t have the right to shed tightening in my throat. “After all this, why do you still make me care?”
“I don’t want to twist your emotions or make you do anything that doesn’t come from your heart.” His voice trembled, and hearing that shake was enough to break something inside me when nothing else ever could.
I wanted to throw my blades to the floor and storm from the room. Stop looking at his empty hands, his chest vulnerable and exposed. Stop thinking about how close I came to slicing through whatever we’d started to build together.
