The words hung between us, heavy and unyielding, like they’d been waiting years to be spoken. I tilted my head back and stared at him, at the self-loathing in his eyes, and somethinginside me snapped under the unbearable pain of watching him harbor a guilt that should’ve never been his to hold.
“You have to stop punishing yourself.”
He blinked, disoriented, like I’d yanked him out of a thought he’d been drowning in. “For what?”
“For Keenan’s death,” I said. “You’ve spent years carrying that guilt around like it’s a penance. You married someone you didn’t love because your mother asked you to, because you thought it would make up for losing him. You let your father talk to you like you’re twelve, let him tear you down and still, you drop everything to fix his problems from across the world.”
His jaw tensed, eyes hardening, but said nothing.
I pressed on. “He says you’re not a man, that you don’t do enough for your family, but you’ve been holding that family together from another continent. You’ve done more for them than they ever did for you. And still, he acts like you owe him something. Like you owe himKeenan.”
He swallowed, his throat working as if the words had lodged there.
“It was an accident,” I said softly. “You know that, right? You can’t keep letting him make you believe you killed your brother just because he can’t face losing him himself. You can’t live your whole life trying to atone for a tragedy that wasn’t your fault.”
His eyes shimmered faintly in the dark, the confession pressing against his lips but refusing to surface. I pulled him closer until his head rested on my chest, his body heavy with exhaustion, his breath warm on my skin. My fingers slid into his hair, combing through the velvet curls that always refused to behave.
“What are you doing?”
“Comforting you,” I said. “You never let me do that when your mom died. So stubborn.”
A small laugh rumbled through him, the sound vibrating between my ribs. “You did comfort me,” he murmured. “Without even trying. Just being there—helping with everything, getting along with my family, asking me ridiculous questions, making fun of all my answers...”
I smiled, my hand still moving through his hair, each strand like silk between my fingers.
“It comforted me more than you can ever know.”
My throat tightened. I looked down at him, this man who carried everyone’s pain like it was his own and still thought he didn’t deserve kindness. My heart burned with how much I loved him, how much I wanted to keep being the place he rested when he forgot how to breathe.
“Good,” I whispered, planting a kiss into his hair. “Because I’m not planning on stopping anytime soon. I’ll never stop loving you. I’ll never stop proving to you that you deserve love.”
He went still against me, his breath catching just enough for me to feel it. I smiled faintly and kept going, because stopping now would’ve broken the spell.
“And when our daughter comes with my beauty and brains, and your...nothing, hopefully.”
He lifted his head, eyes glinting, nipping lightly at my ear. “Nothing?”
I grinned. “Yes,nothing. God forbid she inherits your inability to eat meat or your tragic fashion sense.”
He chuckled again, his forehead dropping against mine.
“She’s going to love you,” I said fiercely. “We’ll have a family that reflectsreallove, not whatever toxic crap we were raised in. The kind that heals instead of breaks.”
His hand slid up to cradle my face, his thumb tracing the corner of my mouth. “Then she’s already lucky.”
I kissed his finger. “No.Weare.”
He leaned in, his lips finding mine. It felt like the culmination of every almost, every ache, every word we hadn’t been brave enough to say until now.
“Do you have a name in mind?” he asked.
I blinked, dazed, everything beyond him fading out of frame. “Noor,” I said.
He smiled. “Light,” he murmured, testing its weight on his tongue. “It’s the perfect name.”
“You think so?”
“You’re my light,” he said simply. “And now you’re creating more of it. There’s going to be another piece of you in the world, and somehow, it feels like the darkness never stood a chance.”
