Page 105 of Riot Reunion

He falters. “I’m not gonna do that.”

“Say it, Pax.”

He stares at me, eyes hardening, his breath huffing out of him in a strange, labored way. “All right. Fine. I hate you for lying to me repeatedly.”

“Say that you hate me for not trusting you.”

“I hate you for not trusting me.”

“Finish the job, Pax.”

He stands very still, glaring at me, tension pouring off him, taut as a bowstring. I think he’s going to refuse, but at last he speaks. “I hate you for listening to your father and not me. I hate you for running away in New YorkandAlaska. I hate you for not including me in the pregnancy conversation until you absolutely had to. I hate you—” He falters. “I hate you for fuckingcrushingme, Chase. That really,reallyfucking sucked.”

His words tear me apart. I did all of those things. I fucked up. I hurt himfirst, just as badly as he hurt me, if not worse. I deserve his anger. “I amso, so sorry,” I whisper. “I wish I could go back and change it. All of it. I really do.”

Pax nods again, clenching his jaw. He looks so resigned, and that destroys me. All of this talk of hate has just confirmed what he’s suspected. That there’s no room for us to come back from this. But…

“I forgive you, Pax,” I say quietly. “Do you forgive me?”

The change in him is instant; a spark of hope kindles in him. His back straightens. “Yes. I forgive you.”

“Then tell me that you love me more than you could ever hate me. Tell me that both of us are going to grow and learn from this, and we’re gonna do everything in our power never to hurt each other again.”

He rushes forward, cupping my cheeks in his hands. “On my life, I swear to you—”

“Tell me that you still want to marry me,” I say forcefully. “That you still want to build together and work on a future with me.”

Pax studies me, searching my features, wonder, and surprise, and hope, and so much love warring for dominance on his own face. “More than anything I’ve ever wanted,” he says.

“Tell me...” The words don’t come easy now. They stick in my throat, afraid to come forth, but I push them out all the same. “Tell me that you want a family with me someday. That wecanstill have a baby of our own. When the time is right. Even though it’ll be hard—”

“I want it. I want it. I want it.” He rushes it out, kissing my cheeks, my forehead, my nose. When he presses his mouth against mine, the world ignites, adrenalin flooding my bloodstream. He crushes me to him, all of the pain that’s existed between us diminishing, blown away.

It hasn’t gone forever.

A pain that runs that deep doesn’t just vanish in the blink of an eye. We’ll have to work to heal and move forward, but for now, the two of us have earned this moment of peace. When Pax releases me at last, he looks down at me, grinning like an idiot, and I find myself grinning back.

“All right, then,” I tell him. “Let’s go climb a mountain.”

EPILOGUE

DASH

THREE DAYS LATER

“I’m calling the cops.”

“You arenotcalling the cops. She’s fucking fine.”

“Didn’t you hear that scream? He’s trying tomurderher.” Elodie looks stricken, face pale as ash.

Sitting opposite her at the dining table, Wren laughs, huffing down his nose, as he holds his beer to his lips. He pulls deep from the glass rim, and then says, “Hate to break it to you, Little E, but I makeyousound like that sometimes.”

“Gross.” Mercy Jacobi, who randomly turned up in the night, uninvited naturally, motions sticking her fingers down her throat, pretending to gag.

“I donotsound like that,” Elodie objects.

“My brother might be disgusting for talking about his sex life in front of his sister, but he’s right, I’m afraid,” Jacobi’s twin says. “I thought a cat was being slaughtered when I snuck in here at three a.m.”