Page 95 of Falling For My Ex's Older Brother

"I've been afraid of myself. Of being the man I was before — the absent one, the one who didn't show up. But I'm not that man anymore.Youdid that." I take a step toward her.

"And I almost punished you for it."

Her jaw tightens slightly. Her eyes are bright.

"I love you," I say.

"I've said it before and I mean it more now than I did then because I almost let it go. I almost chose the wall over you and I need you to know that I understand what that would have cost me. What it would have cost us."

I stop in front of her. I close the distance.

"I'm not choosing the wall. I'm choosing you. Fully. In every room. Without the management and the distance and the armor." I look at her directly.

"You are not a risk I'm taking. You are the thing I'm fighting for."

Sutton looks at me for a long moment. Her eyes move over my face with the thoroughness of a woman who has been lied to before and knows the difference between someone performing honesty and someone arriving at it.

"You scared me," she says quietly.

"Not because you pulled back. Because I saw how fast you did it. Like muscle memory."

"I know," I say.

"I need you to understand something." She takes a breath.

"I'm not going to keep catching you when you fall back into that. I love you. But I will walk away. I proved that."

"You did," I say. "And you were right to."

"So this has to be the last time," she says.

"Not that we don't fight. Not that things don't get complicated. But this — the walls, the managed distance, the disappearing act—" She shakes her head.

"I won't survive another version of that. And I won't ask myself to."

"It's the last time," I say.

"I mean that."

She looks at me for a long moment. Something in her expression settles — not all the way,not without the weight of the past two weeks still present in it. But enough. She uncrosses her arms.

"Okay," she says quietly.

The word lands between us and the room shifts with it. Everything that needed to be said has been said. Everything that needed to be heard has been heard. What's left is not words.

I reach for her face. My hand finds her jaw. My thumb traces her cheekbone once — slowly, with the specific attention of a man who understands he almost forfeited the right to touch this person and has no intention of taking it for granted again.

"I love you," I say again.

"Madly. Deeply. I need you, Sutton."

Her eyes fill. She doesn't let the tears fall. That's so completely her that something in my chest breaks open.

"I know," she whispers.

"Say it back," I say. Low. Just for us.

"I love you," she says. "I never stopped."