Page 68 of Vow to Claim You

“I didn’t.”

“You absolutely did.” He grabs his phone from the center console and lifts it between us. “Hold still. This is a historic moment.”

“Don’t you dare.”

The flash goes off anyway.

“Too late. New lock screen.” He studies it like a man admiring his own war trophy. “Caption reads: Aric Vold, caught experiencing a human emotion. Posterity will weep.”

“Put the phone away, or it goes out the window.”

He pockets it, grinning, and I don’t have the heart to ruin it. He’s the one thing in my life I’ve never once wanted to control.

My attention returns to the tablet. My thoughts don’t. They drift back to her, only to be interrupted when the dashboard lights up.

Hyun-seok.

For half a second, I hesitate. There was a time his name on a screen meant nothing more than a drink, a fight, a deal. Before he became the man marrying the woman I once meant to build a life with.

I answer through the car. “Hyun-seok.”

“I wanted to invite you myself,” he says, clipped. “To the wedding.”

Eero’s eyes cut to me. I keep mine on the road.

“Everything’s arranged,” he says. “I know the circumstances are… unconventional. But you’re still my closest friend. It wouldn’t sit right without you there.”

“We’ll be there,” I state without hesitation. None he’ll hear, anyway.

“Thank you.”

The line dies, and the engine fills the space it leaves behind.

Eero gives it five seconds. “You good, bror?”

“Fine.”

“You can drop it with me, you know.” He pauses as though waiting for me to fill the silence, but when I don’t, of course, he does. “You don’t have to act like a tough Viking all the time. I see what it’s costing you. The heir thing. Chiara. Carrying all of it like it weighs nothing.”

I say nothing. He doesn’t take the hint. He never takes the hint.

“You ever think about it? Just walking. Taking her and disappearing.”

That drags a scoff out of me. “I don’t run, Eero.”

I’m not the type to run because things aren’t going the way you planned.

“My focus stays where it belongs,” I add. “On my marriage.”

Ayanna.

The name means something different now. Not resentment. Something far more complicated.

“You blame her?” Eero asks. “For Chiara.”

“No.” I mean it. “We both lost something. Neither of us got a say.”

Maybe that’s what binds us. Two people stripped of what they wanted and told to build something from the wreckage. Neither of us was asked what we were willing to sacrifice. We were simply handed the bill for choices made by someone else.