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Maybe, finally, believed.

“The Saint Claires will not make this easy,” he says.

“No.”

“They will try to make you regret me.”

“They can try.”

“They will try to make Liv feel small.”

I smile then, not because it is funny.

Because it is Liv.

“Good luck to them.”

That gets a real laugh out of him.

Small.

Broken at the edges.

Mine.

I hold his face between my hands.

“They don’t get to decide what we can survive,” I say.

He looks at me for a long time.

Then he nods once.

A verdict.

A vow without the word.

A beginning of the harder life he thinks he has to warn us away from, and the only life I want if he and Liv are in it.

“Okay,” he says.

I kiss him again.

And this time, when he leans into me, he doesn't apologize for needing somewhere to land.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Creed

Then . . .

Liv answers on the first ring.

Her beautiful, sleepy face fills the screen, hair loose around her cheeks, one eye half-closed like she answered before her body fully agreed to consciousness. For one second, she glares at me.

Then she frowns.

“Are you okay?”