But she kept going.
“I know there’s something between you and Destiny. I knew before this. I knew when you disappeared in the middle of kissing me. I knew when you started taking jobs near Malibu. I knew when you pretended not to listen every time someone said her name.”
I swallowed.
My throat burned.
“I should have told you.”
“Yes,” she said.
No softness there.
Just truth.
“You should have.”
I closed my eyes.
“But I also should have asked harder,” Georgia continued. “I should have made you tell me the truth before I said yes. I wanted to believe love could grow over whatever was left behind.”
I opened my eyes.
She looked down at the ring.
“I still want to believe that.”
The words went through me slowly.
A mercy and a sentence.
“Georgia.”
“No.” Her grip tightened. “Not yet. Don’t say my name like you’re about to confess yourself out of my life while you’re lying there half-dead and drugged and guilty. I have waited. I have loved you. I have taken the parts of you that were quiet and difficult and half-locked. I knew you weren’t simple when I put this ring on.”
I stared at her.
“You deserve better than half-locked.”
“Maybe,” she said, tears sliding down her cheeks. “But I get to decide what I’m willing to fight for.”
That should have made me feel relieved.
It didn’t.
It made guilt open under my ribs wider than the bullet wound.
Because Georgia was fighting for a man who still heard another woman asking him to stay.
She reached up and brushed the hair back from my forehead.
Her touch was gentle.
Possessive in the quietest way.
Not because she was trying to own me.
Because she had been promised the right to love me there.
