Page 228 of Twins for Three Bad Boys

But it goes through me sharp as a live wire anyway.

I look at her then, properly.

Not the version of her from this morning, all braced nerves and held breath. Not even the one from the hallway, furious and shaking and too stunned to do anything but laugh at the size of the insanity.

This version.

Coffee in hand. Hair a little windblown. Green eyes softer now that the worst of it is behind her. A woman standing in the middle of a gas station parking lot after one of the strangest days of her life and somehow still finding room to be kind.

I am in so much trouble.

Probably have been for a while.

June notices me looking and lifts a brow. “What?”

A smart man would say nothing.

I have never once accused myself of being smart in the ways that matter. “Just thinking.”

“That’s always suspicious with you.”

“Fair.”

She takes another sip, then grimaces. “This coffee’s awful.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Why are roadside places morally opposed to decent coffee?”

“Because suffering builds character.”

“That sounds fake.”

“It is fake. But it sounds wise.”

I know the exact second the words in my chest stop being optional.

I set the cup on the hood of the truck before I spill it.

June notices that too. “Rex?”

I scrub a hand over my beard and laugh once at myself. “I had a whole smoother version of this in my head earlier.”

Her expression shifts, softening, turning careful. “Of what?”

“Of this part.”

Now she’s really looking at me.

I can feel my pulse in my throat, which is ridiculous. I’m a grown man. “June,” I say.

She waits with that intense gaze of hers that somehow manages to be sweet and direct at the same time.

And because she deserves better than me circling it for an hour, I don’t.

“I love you.”

The words land between us, clean and simple and impossible to take back.