My thumbs catch the salt-streaked moisture on her cheeks, framing her face. “But you’re a pretty crier.”
“No, I’m not,” she counters with a watery glare. “I’m an ugly crier. My face gets all puffy.”
I shrug. “Meh.”
She slaps my chest again, but this time a small, broken laugh hitches through her sob. It’s the best sound I’ve heard in a week.
I shift my weight and pull her onto my lap, wrapping my legs around hers until she’s completely cocooned against me on the floor.
The silence settles back over the kitchen.
After a long minute, she tilts her head back. “Did you mean it?”
“Mean what?”
“That you love me?”
I hold her gaze. “No. Now that I’ve seen your real crying face? I take it back. Total dealbreaker.”
She nudges me hard in the ribs, a flicker ofmyMadi returning to her eyes.
I lace my fingers through hers and bring her knuckles to my lips.
“Loving you isn’t a choice anymore. And even if it was, I’d choose you anyway. You can try to run, but you’re never going to find a version of the world where I don’t want you exactly as you are.”
She reaches up with trembling hands and hooks them behind my neck, pulling me down. When our lips meet, it’s not the desperate, frantic heat of before. It’s a seal. It’s a promise made on a kitchen floor in the middle of the day.
When we finally break apart, she curls into a ball, tucking her head under my chin and molding her body to mine.
“How are you feeling?” I whisper into the quiet.
She sighs. “Safe.”
Within minutes, her grip on my shirt loosens and her breathing settles into the deep rhythm of sleep. I lean my head back against the cabinets, adjusting my hold so she doesn’t slip. My legs are already going numb against the tile, but I don’t care.
I kiss her forehead one last time. “Okay. We can stay on the floor. No problem.”
Fifty-Seven
Madison
I wake slowly, my senses returning in layers. Beckett’s arm is solid across my waist, pinning me to his chest. I’m cocooned in him, tucked so tightly against his heat that I can’t tell where my skin ends and his begins.
My stomach does a slow, dizzying flip.
I love you, damn it.
The words echo in the dark, clearer now than they were through the fog of my meltdown on the kitchen floor.
For years, I thought I was the broken variable in every equation. I’ve chased success, burned through relationships, and convinced myself the hollowness inmy chest was just the price of ambition. I thought I was simply unlovable—a storm no one wanted to weather. But lying here, feeling the steady, rhythmic thrum of his heart against my back, I feel… full.
I turn in his arms until I’m facing him. My eyes adjust to the shadows, tracing the rugged line of his jaw. I reach out, my fingers trembling as I press my palm to his cheek before burying my fingers in the thick darkness of his hair.
“Madi?” he whispers, his voice thick with sleep.
I don’t answer with words. I hook my leg over his waist and pull him flush against me. The friction of my skin against his sleep-warmed body makes me gasp as I feel him already hardening against my thigh.
“Show me again,” I breathe against his lips, my hands sliding down to grip his shoulders. “Don’t let me forget.”
