My gaze drops to her mouth for a fraction of a second. Returns. “I persist in many things.”
Her hand comes up to my face. I go still. Not because I don’t want it. Because I do.
“I hated you,” she says quietly.
“I know.”
“I still do, sometimes.”
I smirk. “I know.”
“You earned that.”
“Yes.”
Her thumb moves along my jaw. Measured. Thoughtful. “And I love you.”
Everything in me stills. Not visibly. Not in a way anyone else would ever see. But internally, something shifts that does not shift back.
“Evie.”
“No,” she says immediately. “Don’t make it clean.”
I don’t.
“I love you, and the debt doesn’t clear,” she says. “I love you, and my father is still dead. I love you, and I will never pretend you didn’t choose silence when truth mattered.”
My hand lifts toward her. Stops.
“And I’m staying.”
“Yes.”
“Not because you own me.”
“No.”
“Not because I forgive you.”
“No.”
“Because I choose this. You. Them. The life after.”
My hand closes at her waist. Careful. Firm. Real.
“I love you,” I say.
There’s no adjustment to the words. No attempt to make them easier. They aren’t.
“I loved you before I had the right,” I continue. “Before I understood what I was choosing. Before I gave you the truth. Before I deserved any part of what you stayed to build.”
Her expression shifts, subtle, controlled, but not untouched. “That sounds dangerously close to self-awareness.”
“Yes.”
“Unsettling.”
“Yes.”
