And the wildest part? I don’t mind losing.
Not when it means this. Not when it means him.
Ezra watches me, his gaze dark and endless, like he already knows everything racing through my mind. Maybe he does. Maybe he always has.
“Say it,” he murmurs, his fingers brushing over my jaw, tilting my face up toward his. The firelight flickers in his eyes, dancing with something fierce, something consuming.
“I love you.”
The words fall from my lips without hesitation, raw and honest. A confession, a surrender—one I never thought I’d make. But with him, there’s no fear, no second-guessing. Just inevitability.
A slow exhale shudders through him, and Ezra looks unsteady in a way I’ve never seen before. Not in battle, not in chaos, but here. With me.
He swallows hard, his hand sliding down my throat, over my collarbone, until it presses against my chest, feeling the rapid beat of my heart. “Again.”
I smile, and it feels like the first real one in weeks. Maybe in years. “I love you.”
His mouth crashes against mine, the kiss deep and consuming. He tastes like salt and warmth, like home. His grip tightens, like he thinks I might disappear if he lets go, like he needs to prove that I’m here, that I’m his.
But I already am. I always have been.
His lips move against my skin, along my jaw, down my neck, as if he’s trying to map every inch of me, memorize me all over again. I thread my fingers through his hair, pulling him closer, needing him closer.
It lingers in the air—what we’ve been through, what we’ve lost, what we’ve gained. But none of it matters right now. Not when we’re here, tangled together in the remnants of the storm we barely survived.
“I meant it,” he says against my skin. “Every damn word. You’re it for me, Kruz. You always have been.”
I pull back just enough to meet his gaze, to see the truth written there. No more masks, no more defenses. Just Ezra. Just us.
I cup his face, my thumbs brushing over the angles of his jaw. “Then don’t let go.”
“Never.”
His lips crash against mine again, and this time, there’s nothing left between us. No more walls, no more running, no more fear.
Just the certainty that whatever comes next, we’ll face it together.
24
HOUSEHUSBAND
KRUZ
It’s almost unsettlinghow normal this feels—how everything has shifted back into place after the chaos of the last few weeks.
Quinn sits cross-legged on the couch beside me, her face lit up as she waves her hands, recounting some ridiculous story about Jack. Her laughter fills the room, bright and unrestrained, and it stirs a lightness in me I haven’t felt in what seems like forever.
It’s like we’ve rewound the clock, back to when things were simple. When it was just the two of us, teasing each other over coffee and bad decisions, when our lives were still mostly untouched by the Assembly. Except now, everything feels clearer and more vivid.
Likely because we now both know how easily everything can be flipped on its head or ripped away entirely.
She still has no idea about the real reason Ezra and I went away together, nor does she know he was the one who orchestrated the downfall of the Assembly—or that he was even a part of it. And I think that’s for the best.
She knows I fell off the pier, but not how or why, and she never questioned the rest. Ezra is disturbingly good at covering up the fact that he was shot, probably because it wasn’t the first time.
The version of Ezra that he shared so much of with me doesn’t entitle anyone else to the most broken parts of him, and I kind of like that I’m the only person who will ever see every facet of him.
If Quinn noticed anything off, she must have chalked it up to exhaustion, and I never gave her a reason to think otherwise. I was sick when we made it back—really sick—but I let her believe it was just from the cold. It was easier that way. Some things are better left buried.
