When she finally pulled back—barely—her lips were swollen, her eyes wide and dazed.
Dean’s chest rose and fell like he’d just sprinted a mile.
"I love you," he said, the words pulled from somewhere deep in his chest. "I love you so much it scares me."
"I love you too," she whispered back. "That's what makes this so hard."
Dean pressed another soft kiss to her lips, trying to pour everything he couldn't say into the touch.Thank you. I'm sorry. I'll do better. I'll be worthy of this.
She unlocked her door, slid inside, and pulled it shut. He stood there, motionless, as she started the engine and backed out of the driveway.
When her taillights disappeared around the corner, Dean let himself breathe again.
He touched his lips. Still tingling. Still hers.
She loved him.
CHAPTER 63
Fiona
Fiona satin the car outside her apartment for a long time, hands still on the steering wheel. The engine had been off for ten minutes, maybe longer. She didn’t know. Time had started slipping sideways again.
She could still taste him.
Her lips were sore in the best possible way. Her chest ached in the worst.
It had been easy to forget—when his mouth was on hers, when his hands cradled her like something precious—just how thoroughly he’d broken her. How precise his betrayal had been.
Because it hadn’t just been a thoughtless mistake.
It had been sustained. Strategic. Cruel.
The account had been a joke, he’d claimed. Just something light. Something harmless. But it hadn’t felt harmless when she’d seen her words—her sincere, hopeful, sometimes silly words—framed like they were beneath him.
It had been humiliating.
Worse, it had been clarifying.
Because the man she loved, the man she had married, had looked at her joy, her work, her soft optimism—and decided it was worth mocking.
He’d laughed with his friends. Let them call her stupid, unimportant, laughable. He’d played the part of the loving husband in private, but in public he’d rolled his eyes. Shrunk her down so he wouldn’t feel small himself.
But then—he’d changed.
He didn’t just apologize. He dismantled his whole life.
He contested the divorcejustto give her more—his apartment, his savings, money she hadn’t asked for and wouldn’t have taken if the gesture hadn’t been so clear:You are worth more than I ever let myself show.
He drove to Sweetwater. He handed her a foil-wrapped plate of homemade cookies and asked nothing in return.
He’d stood in front of his glittering, hollow crowd—the people who once laughed at her to her face and then harder behind her back—and told the truth. Not the clever version. Not the brand-safe version. The raw, unvarnished truth. That he’d been wrong. That she mattered.
The anonymous donation to her classroom fund. The volunteer strategy consultant who’d been helping the district apply for education grants. She hadn’t even known it was him at first.
Because that version of Dean—the one who didn’t need credit—was new.
And terrifying.
