Alyssa lay against his chest, her breathing slow and even, not quite asleep but close.
His left hand traced a path up and down her spine, an absent pattern he’d fallen into without deciding to. His right arm rested on an extra pillow. She’d insisted he elevate it. He’d let her fuss.
He should be running scenarios, calculating variables. Planning the next few hours—the move to SPS headquarters if the road was clear, the Eric Edwards threat, Blake’s next move. The part of his brain that never fully shut down was trying to engage, nudging him with priorities like an alarm he kept hitting snooze on.
Not yet. Give me ten more minutes.
He wasn’t sure who he was negotiating with. God, maybe. Himself. But right now, he was in a bed with the woman he still loved, and a heartbeat against his ribs that had synced once more with hers.
“What are you thinking about?” she murmured.
“The day I proposed.”
She lifted her head. In the faint glow from the monitor, he could see the curve of her smile. “We were in San Diego.”
“The sunset.” He paused. The whole day had echoed Flathead Lake. “You fell asleep on me on that dock. Charcoal on your fingers, your nose sunburned. I sat there for an hour.”
“While your legs fell asleep.”
“From the knee down. I didn’t care.”
She shifted so she could see his face. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because you were peaceful. You’d been wound tight for weeks, building your freelance portfolio, worried whether the caricature gigs were going to cover rent. Your dad was retiring and your mom was driving you crazy with constant calls about his party. And then you fell asleep, and your face did this thing.” He traced the line of her cheekbone with his thumb. “All the worry just... smoothed out. And I could see you. The real you, under all of it.”
She stared at him. “You never told me that.”
He grimaced. “I didn’t know how to say it without sounding like a Hallmark card.”
“It doesn’t sound like a Hallmark card.”
“It sounds like something a guy says when he’s lying in bed with a woman he’s been in love with for years, and he’s too tired to edit himself.”
The words came out the way his truths always did—plain, undecorated, stripped of anything that might blunt the impact. He felt her go still against him.
He let it sit there. Didn’t qualify it, didn’t soften it, didn’t attach a caveat about timing or circumstances or the fact that loving her had been the most painful thing he’d ever done.
Loving her was just a fact. Like gravity. Like ballistics. Like the way a bullet traveled in a straight line until something bent its path.
She’d bent his path, and she was still bending it. He was done pretending that bothered him.
“Mack.”
“Yeah.”
She cupped his cheek and brushed a soft kiss over his lips. “I love you.”
No stumble. No catch. She said it with her eyes open, her voice steady, her hand against his cheek. She slid it down to the spot right over his heart, as if she wanted to feel the impact of her words landing.
“I’ve loved you since the day we met,” she said. “And I spent two years pretending I stopped. I didn’t. Not for one day.”
The feeling that moved through him was too large for language. It was a wave that started somewhere behind his ribs and radiated outward until his whole body felt like it was ringing.
He cradled her face in his hand. Kissed her forehead. The kind of kiss that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with the weight of what they’d survived to get back to this bed, this room, this moment.
They were still here. That was a miracle he hadn’t expected.
He brushed the hair from her face. “Thank God.”