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CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

SASHA

Our reunion isn’t filled with passionate kisses and lingering embraces. Ours is clouded with the painful weight of the secrets I kept from Liam. Secrets that have cost him half of what he and his family have spent decades building.

Standing beside Liam in the elevator, my heart races, and my hands wring at the front of my floral midi dress. I can barely bring myself to lift my face to look him in the eye.

He stands across from me—hands tucked into the pockets of his pants—with a steady gaze, waiting. Waiting for me to speak. Giving me the opportunity, he knows I need to make this right.

The guilt has gnawed at me since I fell for him. This past week has been crushing. I hadn’t told him the truth, even with hundreds of opportunities to do so.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, barely above a breath. “I should’ve told you. I should’ve told you from the start.”

Liam doesn’t move from where he stands a few feet before me. The distance and his silence are almost unbearable. But he deserves to know. I need to get it out. It’s been eating me alive for far too long, and it nearly destroyed us. I need him to understand.

“I wasn’t honest with you,” I continue, my words tumbling out. Needing to say them before I lose my nerve and desperate for him to hear me. “I… I lied to you. About everything. About who I was. About my name. About where I came from. All of it. I didn’t tell you because?—”

“Because you were ashamed?” he finishes for me, his voice low but steady. His eyes flicker, like he is trying to piece together the fragments of an incomplete puzzle. “Sasha…”

The way he says my name makes my chest ache.

I’ve missed it so much.

I nod, not trusting myself to speak without collapsing with anguished tears. Every word I just spoke was already falling short of explaining the real truth—the shame, the fear, the desperation to escape the very arrangement he just made with my brother.

His expression softens. For a moment, I swear I see a moment of understanding. It’s fleeting and gone as quickly as it came, replaced by something else. Something I can’t quite read.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he whispers. “None of that matters to me. None of it.”

“I thought if you knew…”—my voice shakes as I struggle to control my emotions—“if you knew who I was… Who I really was. That my brother would come for you… That you would have sent me away. And then, when I realized I had fallen in love with you… I was terrified you wouldn’t love me anymore.”

“No, mo mhuirnín .” Liam slowly shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered.”

I open my mouth, but the look in his eyes silences me. There is no judgment. No fear. No resentment. Just something raw and unfettered.

“Don’t you get it?” His voice is deep but gentle. The intensity of it shakes me to my core. “It doesn’t matter. I love you. Even when I didn’t want to… When I tried to keep my distance… When you broke my heart and I tried to hate you. I couldn’t. I’m so fucking consumed with love for you that I don’t fucking care.”

Tears well in my eyes, and I flutter my lids, trying to keep them at bay. “Li…”

“I don’t care who you were. I don’t care what your name used to be. Or where you came from. I fell in love with you. Not the woman you were supposed to be or the one you think you need to be. I love the one you were when you were with me. The one standing before me fighting back tears. That’s the only one that matters to me. You, Sasha…”

I step backward, the cold metal of the elevator cab pressing against my back. My knees are trembling, and I grip the metal rail behind me to steady myself. “You still love me?” I choke.

He stares back at me—his lips slightly parted—with his gaze softening. “I demanded your hand in marriage with a gun in my face.” He chuckles. “Of course I still love you. That hasn’t changed. Not now. Not ever, mo mhuirnín.”

I close my eyes, the weight of his words settling over me. His hands—gentle but firm—pull me into him. I crash into his hard body with a thud, and his lips are immediately pressed against mine. “I love you,” he says through our kiss.

He claims my mouth until I’m breathless. I pull back to take a breath. “I love you.”

“I know.” He smirks, crashing his lips back into mine. His hands slide down my body and over the curve of my ass. He gives it a firm squeeze and pulls me from the ground. My legs wrap instinctually around him as the doors of the elevator open.

My chest heaving, I stare at him and bite my lower lip, “Sir?”

Liam’s eyes dart between me and the parking garage on the other side of the doors as his hand slides through my hair. He lets out a pained sigh. “I’m trying to decide if I can make it to the car before I need to be inside you.”

The elevator doors begin to slide shut, and I giggle. “Nope.”