Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 109878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109878 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 549(@200wpm)___ 440(@250wpm)___ 366(@300wpm)
My chest tightens, but not in panic. “Blue . . .”
“But I want you to stay.” He gestures to the view, to Grimlock spread out below us. “I want to make this place ours together.”
I turn to face him fully, searching his eyes. “You really want that?”
“For so long, I thought I had to change to find redemption.” He swallows hard. “I thought I had to become someone different, someone better. Pretend the violence wasn’t part of me. Hide what I really am.” He pauses, looking out over Grimlock before meeting my eyes again. “But when I look at myself through your eyes . . . I like what I see reflected there. For the first time in my life, I like who I am.”
“I do too . . .”
“You don’t see a monster who needs fixing. You see someone worth staying for.” His hands find my face, thumbs brushing across my cheekbones. “You accept all of it—the darkness, the violence, the parts of me I thought made me irredeemable.”
I think about all the times he could have asked me to forgive him for what he’s done, what he is. But he never did. He never asked for forgiveness. Just a witness. And maybe that’s all redemption is—bleeding out beneath the gallows with someone willing to look you in the eye.
“Because those parts aren’t separate from the rest of you,” I whisper. “They’re not flaws to fix. They’re just . . . you. And I love you.”
His thumb traces my bottom lip, and I see the exact moment he can’t fight whatever is holding him back. When he leans down, I rise up to meet him halfway.
The kiss is soft, tender in a way that surprises me. It’s nothing like the desperate hunger from the greenhouse or the claiming fire from that first night in the jazz club. This is different, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my lips, the way I taste, the small sound I make when his hand caresses my lower back.
I can feel everything in this kiss—years of loneliness, the fear that he’d never be worth loving, the wonder of finding someone who sees his darkness and calls it beautiful. When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard, foreheads pressed together in the tower’s quiet.
I pull back slightly to look at him, something shifting in my chest. “Can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“What if I don’t want to be murder sober like you? Now that Brutus is dead?” I search his eyes in the moonlight. “You said more Crows will come eventually. What if I want to be there waiting when they do?”
The smile that spreads across his face is absolutely wicked, predatory in a way that should probably frighten me but instead sends heat racing through my veins. He cups my face in his hands and kisses me deeply, possessively, like I’ve just given him the most perfect gift.
When we break apart, his eyes are dark with something that looks like pride and hunger and pure satisfaction.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he murmurs against my lips. “Because I like being the teacher.”
“Good,” I whisper back, rising up on my toes to meet his gaze. “Because I like being the student.”
He turns me gently in his arms until my back is pressed against his chest, his hands settling at my waist as he pulls me close. The warmth of his body surrounds me completely, and when he leans down to press his lips to the curve of my neck, I can feel his smile against my skin.
“Look at it,” he murmurs near my ear. “All of it. This is ours now.”
I lean back into him, watching the lights of Grimlock spread out below us like fallen stars. His arms tighten around me, protective and possessive, and I can feel the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against my back.
We stand on the tower balcony. The party continues in the ballroom, but up here it’s just us and the night sky and the promise of time.
Tomorrow there will be plans and decisions and the ordinary magic of building a life together. But tonight, there’s this—two people who found home in each other’s darkness, promising not forever, but today, and today, and today.
It’s enough. More than enough.
It’s everything.
Once upon a time, I believed in fairy tale endings. White dresses and church bells and happily ever after that looked like everyone else’s version of perfect. But maybe the best stories are the ones where the monsters get to be happy too. Where the villain and the hero are the same person, just seen from different angles.
Maybe the real question was never who is the villain. Maybe the question was always this: What happens when the villain wins?