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I chuckled and kicked my feet, and was met with a playful smack on the ass while he carried me to his bedroom. He threw me on the impossibly soft bed, where he sat me up, dried my hair and then brushed it, all in comfortable silence.

Ashe may have been a man of few words, but his actions had always spoken loud enough for me.

I was yawning by the time he drew the blinds shut, darkening the room to the outside world so we might be able to pretend we were the only people to exist for a little while.

“Do you think your brother will be able to accept me eventually?” he asked quietly once it was dark and I was tucked against him.

I turned to look up at him, only the silhouette of his face was visible, but I could see that it was tense.

“You guys saved us all today. I think we can safely say that the Redliner-Santino feud is officially over.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I leaned over to the bedside table to flick on the small warm light, and Ashe cringed away from it, eyebrows drawing together.

“Hey,” I frowned up at him, tapping him on the chin until he looked at me. “What did you mean?”

He let out a long sigh, shaking his head.

“I mean will he accept me as a man dating his sister? Not just as a Redliner.”

A smile played at my lips.

“Are you saying you wanna be my boyfriend, Ashe?” I bit my lip, fluttering my eyelashes at him.

He rolled his eyes, throwing one of the decorative pillows at my head and turning away from me.

“Do you wanna kiss me?” I made kissy faces at him, and he chuckled, pushing me away.

“Do you wanna looove me?” I nuzzled my face against his.

With a growl, he rolled then, taking me with him until he had my hands pinned above my head. He considered me for a moment, eyes tracing each detail of my face as I arched a brow at him.

“Yeah,” he admitted after a beat, and my mouth fell open a little at the admission. “Yeah, I think I do.”

I rolled my lips inwards, blinking away thetotally-unrelatedway that my eyes seemed to sting. My chest tightened, and my throat stung with the warning of emotion.

He lowered himself onto his elbows, hovering just above me and taking my face into his big hands.

“I want to be yours, Zarina. And I want you to be mine. Is that so hard to believe?”

I closed my eyes and shook my head.

“Hey,” he urged. When I opened my eyes again, he was frowning down at me. “You’re something special, girl. I see you. I see every fucking bit of you. And I like all of it. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, but it came out tense.

“Come here,” he sighed, rolling again and taking me with him so that my head rested on his chest. I soaked him in for a little while in silence, soaked in his words and his admission and the honesty that I felt when he said them.

It didn’t feel like a trick, it didn’t feel like an exaggeration. It felt like this man did truly see me, and that he had from the start.

“I think Toni will love you,” I said into the dark much later. “Just like I do.”

His arms tightened around me and he let out a heavy breath. And I realised then that maybe I wasn’t the only one who felt like I hadn’t ever been seen quite correctly.

And so I held onto him.

“I love you too, Zar,” he whispered against my hair. I closed my eyes when he said it, trying to commit the sound of his wobbly voice to memory.