Page 166 of Romeo

“Enough.” His mouth tightened. “Not enough to matter.”

“Romeo—”

“I’m standing, Cher. I’m talking to you.”

“You’re covered in blood.”

“I’ve been covered in worse.”

Something in the casual answer snapped the last of my control. “Don’t do that.”

His expression changed immediately. “Do what?”

“Act like this is nothing just because you’ve seen worse.” My voice trembled despite how hard I tried to steady it. “I thought you were dead.”

He went still.

“I sat in there all night with everyone telling me you knew what you were doing, like that meant you couldn’t die.” I wiped angrily at the tears on my face. “I couldn’t breathe every time the door opened because I thought someone was going to come tell me⁠—”

The rest lodged in my throat.

“Fiona.”

“I can’t lose you.” There, I’d said it.

Romeo’s face softened. “You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No.” He let out a slow breath. “I know I’ll fight like hell to make sure you don’t.”

My eyes closed. That was somehow worse. Not the impossible promise that nothing would ever happen to him. A real one. Something he could actually try to keep.

When I opened my eyes again, he was still watching me.

“You can’t say things like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it makes this real.”

His brow furrowed slightly.

“If I let myself believe you’re always going to fight your way back to me, then I have to admit there’s something for you to come back to.”

The words came out before I could censor them. Romeo didn’t smile. For once, there was no trace of triumph or flirtation in his face.

“There is.”

My chest hurt. “You don’t know what I was going to say.”

“I know enough.”

I shook my head and looked down. The words were there. Three of them. I’d come dangerously close before, hidden behind you make it very hard not to love you because that was easier than simply saying what I thought might be true.

Tonight, terror had stripped away most of the places I usually hid.

I could tell him.