“I still think it’s unfair,” I maintain. “You did the best you could.”

“You’ve been in politics long enough to know that sometimes our best isn’t good enough.”

I turn so that I’m straddling the stump as well, scooting forward so that I can slide my legs over Ash’s legs and wrap them around his waist. I put my arms around him and press my face against his neck. “It’s good enough for me,” I say against his skin. “You are good enough for me. Always, always, always.”

He pulls back to look at me, brow furrowed. “I’m telling you that I fucked my sister and almost killed her, and you’re comforting me? I thought you’d want to run away. I told you this so that you could…escape.”

I press my hand against his jaw, my thumb touching his lower lip. It’s so soft and firm all at once, just like Ash. Strength and beauty and determination combined into one heady mix. “Is this why you were so unhappy earlier? Because you thought telling me about Morgan would make me leave you?”

He nods miserably. “I’d deserve it, Greer. And I couldn’t let us move forward without you knowing the worst of me. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“Even if it wasn’t fair, I’d still stay. I’d endure anything to stay. But I don’t see this as the worst of you. These sins are the sins of a good man, not the sins of a cursed one.”

“I feel cursed sometimes.” His lips move against my thumb, his breath tickling my skin. “Only when I’m with you and Embry do I feel some sort of sanity. Like there can be good things in life for me, even after all the evil I’ve done.”

“Oh, Ash.” I look up into his eyes. “War may be evil, but you’re not, and if it took killing all those people to bring you here to me, then I won’t allow you to torment yourself with these things any longer. I don’t care what you’ve done, I care what you do, and that you’re here with me now.”

He sucks in a breath and searches my face. I see the faint sheen of unshed tears in his eyes, hear the swallow of his throat. “Do you really mean that?” he whispers.

“Yes.” It comes out clear, honest.

The truth of my answer hits him like a bullet to a Kevlar vest. Blunt force, ragged exhale, fractured man. He collapses into me, his arms pulling me so close that I can feel him even through the heavy wool of our coats, and he buries his face into my hair. “What did I do to deserve you?” he mumbles.

I’ll always love the other versions of Ash—the cool-headed politician, the beloved hero-President, the fierce Dominant—but this version? This broken-down, vulnerable man? There isn’t a word strong enough. There’s this vibrating in my bones, in my blood, somewhere on the cellular level, a vibration like every single one of my atoms wants to fly away and fuse to his atoms. This is more than wanting to bleed or bruise or kneel, this is more than listening to the same speech over and over, sacrificing sleep and time to go over policies and strategies. This is wanting to come apart for him, literally. This is wanting to burrow so deeply inside of him that he has to carry me with him forever. This is being flayed open, bleeding, whipped, scourged, just wounds on top of wounds on top of wounds, each wound a whisper of promise.

you can own me

because now I know I own you

give me more

and I’ll give you everything

And that’s when I find the courage to finally say it. “I love you.”

“God, those words from your mouth,” he says with feeling, moving his mouth from my hair to my lips. “I don’t deserve it, but fuck, I’ll take it.”

He kisses me, that trembling honesty heating into a molten urgency. “I love you,” he breathes into my mouth. “Surely you already know that. You must know.”

“I do now,” I pant in between kisses, cursing all the leather and wool that keeps our bodies from pressing together the way I need. But the moment I start rocking my hips against his, he straightens up and smiles.

“I have something for you,” he says, biting his lip like a shy child.

“A Christmas present?”

“Yes. I wanted to wait until after I told you about Morgan to give it to you…I didn’t want you to think I was trying to manipulate your reaction.”

I roll my eyes at his incessant chivalry. “You are so circumspect for a man who spends his nights spanking me until I can’t breathe.”

“That’s precisely why I’m circumspect,” he says and slides off the stump, and I immediately miss his warmth. Then I realize what he’s doing, and my entire body flushes with hot, happy disbelief.

He’s kneeling.

In two feet of snow, he’s kneeling.

Behind him, the stream is a twisted silver wire, the trees are leafless sentinels, the snow is a never-ending cloak of glittering fleece. There’s color high in his cheeks—from the cold or emotion, I don’t know—and he’s still boyishly chewing on his lip, nervous and excited. Between his leather-clad fingers is a ring, platinum and diamond, glittering in the fading light.

“I wanted to do this later tonight, but I can’t wait,” he says. “Greer Galloway, will you marry me?”

My heart thuds painfully against my chest, like it’s trying to punch its way out, and I feel my molecules leaving my body, blowing away like leaves before a storm to seek out Ash. Our breath, our life, it’s already tangled, and finally, finally, finally I understand what people mean when they talk about destiny. What they mean when they talk about meant to be. Why the fairy tales didn’t waste time explaining how the prince and the princess fell in love, because all along it was as natural and inevitable as breathing.