“It means you go home,” he said. “And I come with you.”
My pulse hammered.
“And if my life doesn’t make room for you?” I asked.
His eyes darkened, voice low. “Then we make room.”
It should have sounded controlling.
It did sound controlling.
And yet—beneath it—there was something else.
A promise that he wasn’t going to vanish at the first sign of inconvenience.
That he wasn’t going to treat me like a weekend fantasy and then disappear back into the woods.
I swallowed, throat tight.
“You’re going to be seen,” I said. “With me.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t care.”
His gaze stayed steady. “I care.”
That stopped me.
He didn’t look away.
“I care what it costs you,” he said. “I care what it feels like for you. I care if you regret it.”
My chest tightened painfully.
“But you’re still coming,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“Why?” I asked, voice almost gone.
Cassian’s thumb brushed my knuckles one more time.
“Because you’re not an idea anymore,” he said. “You’re real.”
My breath shuddered out of me.
Outside the window, the clouds broke, and far below, the coastline began to appear in pale winter light—water and marsh and land that looked like home.
Charleston.
My world.
The place where I was composed and known and safe in the ways I’d built.
And now?—
Now I was bringing him into it.
