“Sorry about that. My mom can get rather protective,” Levi says.
Wow. Did he actually just apologize to Grey?
Levi sucks in a breath. “Thank you. For saving me.”
“Of course, we had to. I couldn’t just leave you there and let Silas hurt you.”
God, the guilt is eating me alive.
If I’d told everyone the truth, maybe I could’ve stopped Silas before he tried to kill Levi.
“I … I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
Levi frowns. “For what?”
“It’s my fault he attacked you,” I say.
He squeezes my hand. “Don’t. Don’t ever say that again. None of this is your fault, and I won’t allow you to feel guilty over it. Do you understand?” He’s so stern that it surprises me. “It was my choice not to go through with the jump. It was my choice to make you hate me, it was my choice to tell him the truth, and it was my choice to fall in love with you all over again.”
His words puncture my heart like a needle, threading deeply into my soul.
“And I will never, ever take that back. No matter how much it costs me, how much hate I’ll have to take, or how much they will make me bleed. I do not regret fighting for you, not for one single second. I fucking love you in every sense of the word, for every minute of my life I’ve spent on this earth I have neverstopped loving you, and I want to keep loving you until we grow old and gray together, until you’re so sick of me that you’ll beg me to die first so you don’t have to hear me say the words again. I love you.”
Tears roll down my cheeks as I bring his hand to my face, and he brushes them away so sweetly that it melts me into a puddle.
“I’m right here with you, and I’m not going anywhere.” He slides his hand down my neck all the way to my chest, tapping my rib cage. “Because this heart is where I belong.”
The genuine, longing smile on his face breaks me, and I lean in for a desperate kiss.
Apollo sniffles behind me, and when I look up, he’s actually pushing away a single tear with his pinky. “What are you looking at?”
Grey laughs as he puts his hands against his side. “Are you crying?”
“These are manly tears,” Apollo retorts.
Everyone laughs, even Levi, and I hold out my arms for a big hug. “Come here.”
We hug in unison, albeit on Levi’s bed, and he begrudgingly throws an arm over Grey too, even though it still makes him roll his eyes. “Ugh, fine, I’ll share,” Levi says.
“There’s enough room for all of you in this heart,” I muse.
“There’d better be because I want my own whole damn room in there,” Grey says.
“We buying real estate in her body now?” Apollo says with a devious smirk. “Because if so, I call dibs on that delicious pussy.”
“I think the fuck not,” Levi retorts.
A sudden knock on the door has us all looking up. Silas grips the doorjamb and clears his throat, and you could almost hear a pin drop after—that’s how quiet everyone becomes from his mere presence.
“So he’s here too,” Levi mutters as we pull away from the hug.
“The whole family is,” Apollo says. “You think you were the only one who got wounded? Felix had his hand sliced open, both moms have abrasions from bullets, Heath got a cut in his leg, Max was shot, her dad got knifed, and I had a few broken fingers.”
Silas’s nostrils flare. “Aspen, I wanna talk.”
I frown. “Do you still intend to murder my boyfriends?”
He rolls his eyes, but still shows his empty hands. “I have nothing on me.”
