Honesty.
After everything we’ve survived, this might be the one thing that fractures us.
This might be what undoes me.
“Are we close?” Raoul calls from the front, snapping me out of the spiral.
I blink, forcing myself back into the present.
Effa turns to me with that effervescent smile, the one that’s soft, open, and still knocks the air from my lungs.
I can’t tell her.
Not yet.
I need to keep this off the record, away from her, and do what I brought her here to do first. At least then, if everything explodes after I confess, I’ll know I tied myself to her in a way that means something permanent.
“We’re close,” I say evenly. “Store on the right up here.”
Raoul eases toward the curb.
Effa cranes her neck, scanning the storefronts, and then she gasps.
“Tattoos?” Her head snaps toward me, eyes wide, grin spreading across her face.
I can’t help but smile at her excitement before I pull up the design and hold the phone between us. “I was thinking this, for both of us. If you like it.”
She doesn’t even look at the screen at first. Just stares at me.
“Matching tattoos?” she asks softly.
I nod and tilt the phone toward her. Her eyes drop to the image.
A thin, minimalist soundwave stretches across the screen, clean and deliberate. At its highest crest sits a small four-point star, like it caught the light and refused to let go.
“One night, at Red Rocks,” I say quietly. “Us… under the stars. That’s when I knew I loved you.” Her breath catches. “And the soundwave, that’s the rhythm of our hearts, beating as one… corny, I know.”
She looks up at me, her eyes glossy, her bottom lip trembling just slightly. “Kaden…” she whispers. “I love you.”
My chest feels like it might split open as I surge forward, gripping the back of her neck and pulling her into me, crashing my mouth against hers.
The kiss isn’t gentle.
It’s desperate.
Possessive.
Because I do love her, with everything I’ve got left. She’s the only woman I’ve ever looked at and thought…that’s it, that’s my future, that’s my home.
Her fingers clutch at my shirt as she kisses me back just as fiercely. The taste of her, the heat of her, the way she fits against me, it all slams into me at once.
I pull back before this turns into something we can’t control again, and my hand slides to her cheek, my thumb brushing just beneath her eye. “Effa,” I say, voice low and steady. “I fucking love you too.”
She exhales shakily, leaning into my touch.
For a second, the world feels perfectly aligned.
Like I can see it all laid out in front of us—stages, Christmas in Ligonier, music, chaos, laughter. A life that feels bigger than anything I ever imagined for myself.
