Page 66

M orning light carved golden paths across worn concrete as Dad and I moved through downtown. My fingers curled around his elbow, footsteps falling into the rhythm we'd perfected over two decades of Sunday walks. The familiar weight of his presence anchored me to memories of smaller hands and scraped knees, when the world fit neatly between crosswalk lines.

The air held the crisp promise of winter, carrying the scent of coffee from the corner shop and exhaust from early morning traffic. My heels clicked against sidewalk cracks, each step echoing memories of all the walks we'd taken together.

"Do you remember when you were seven and refused to walk anywhere but between Mom and me?" His voice was warm with fondness. "You said the sidewalk cracks were lava and we were your bridges."

Laughter bubbled up. "I remember Mom carrying extra bandaids because I kept falling into the lava anyway." I squeezed his arm gently, feeling the solid comfort of his presence.

"Claudia always came prepared." His eyes crinkled with the memory, decades of shared moments threading through his expression. The love he held for my mother, I always hoped would find me one day.

It didn’t, but the one that did was better.

It was mine.

We walked in comfortable silence, our footsteps creating a steady rhythm against the concrete. The morning hustle moved around us—joggers with earbuds, dog walkers navigating the sidewalk, the familiar choreography of a city waking up. Dad adjusted his pace to match mine, the way he'd done since I was small enough to struggle keeping up with his longer strides.

The scent of fresh bread from the cafe three blocks over mingled with exhaust fumes and the distant smell of rain threatening in the gray clouds overhead. My dress brushed against my knees with each step, the fabric catching occasional gusts of wind that carried the earthy smell of fallen leaves.

We'd reached Sweet Summers without me realizing it. Through the large front windows, I could see something was different inside—chairs overturned, scattered debris across the floor like the aftermath of a storm that had blown through our dreams.

Dad's steps slowed, his hand finding the small of my back as we approached the entrance. The building looked wounded in the morning light, its broken windows catching sunlight and throwing fractured rainbows across the sidewalk.

"I hated him." The words came out broken, like they'd been scraped from somewhere deep inside his chest. Dad's voice was quiet as he stared at the building, his fingers tightening against my spine. "God, Oak, I hated that man with everything in me. But watching the way he is with you..."

His eyes filled with moisture he didn't bother to hide, twenty years of protecting me written in every weathered line of his face. "Maybe he never did it the way he should’ve. But he did it the only way he knew how."

Hellbound. Our first wedding. V genuinely thought he was protecting me, that he was making me happy in his deranged mind. V would never be perfect, far from it, but he never expected anything from me besides just staying by him and being patient while he tried to navigate the emotions he was trying to come to terms with.

Dad's weathered hands cupped my face, thumbs brushing across my cheekbones with the same gentle touch he'd used to chase away childhood nightmares.

"I approve, sweetheart." He pressed his lips to my temple, the kiss lingering with twenty years of bedtime stories and scraped knee band-aids and Sunday morning walks. The warmth of his blessing settled into my bones like sunlight after a long winter.

Dad's hand found the small of my back again, pressing gently as he guided me toward the entrance. His other hand reached for the door handle, pausing for just a moment as if giving me one last chance to change my mind.

The door opened under his touch, hinges groaning like they were reluctant to reveal what waited inside.

I stepped across the threshold on unsteady legs, my heels clicking against the broken floorboards. The world narrowed to a single point of focus, everything else falling away until only he remained.

V stood motionless in the center of the destruction, positioned exactly where he'd chosen to wait. His black suit absorbed the dim light filtering through dust-covered windows—charcoal wool that hadn't been touched by the chaos surrounding him. The fabric stretched across his broad shoulders, emphasizing the deadly grace he carried even in stillness. The surgical mask stretched across the lower half of his face, but above it, his eyes held mine with the unwavering focus of a man who'd orchestrated every detail of this moment.

White lilies carpeted the floor around his feet and covered every surface—draped across the broken counter where we'd planned to display wedding cakes, scattered across the table where I'd dreamed of rolling out pie crusts. The blooms created a deliberate path from the door to where he waited, each petal placed with the same methodical precision he used for everything else. Their sweet scent hung heavily in the air, masking the dust and destruction beneath.

Behind me, Dad's footsteps retreated out the door leaving me alone with my husband.

V's head tilted a fraction to the right with that familiar assessment. His hands hung loose at his sides. The lilies stirred slightly in the draft from the closing door, white petals shifting like snow around his feet. He didn't move toward me. Didn't speak. He simply existed in that space between dream and nightmare, surrounded by beauty and ruin, waiting for me to walk the path he'd laid out.

I took a tentative step forward, my heel crushing a lily beneath my weight. The flower released its perfume into the air, sweet and cloying. Another step brought me deeper into his territory, closer to the gravitational pull that had been drawing me to him since that first night in Hellbound.

The destroyed bakery stretched around us like a graveyard of dreams, but the flowers transformed it into something else—a wedding aisle built from wreckage and devotion. Each step toward him felt like a choice, like a small surrender, like coming home to a place I'd never admitted I belonged.

"I destroyed it." He confessed as my eyes scanned all of what we built was now ruined. "When you didn't come that night. I thought..." His head tilted, that familiar gesture that usually preceded mayhem. "I thought you left me."

The image of him here alone, surrounded by our shared dream, tearing it apart with his bare hands because he thought I'd abandoned him—it made something inside me bleed. I could see it: V standing in this very spot, destroying every chair, every table, every carefully planned detail of the future we'd built together.

My feet carried me closer, crushing more lilies with each step. The destroyed bakery looked like a battlefield, but one he'd tried to make beautiful again with flowers and desperate hope. Flour dust motes danced in the light, settling on my dress like benediction.

V's hand moved into his jacket pocket when I reached him, fingers brushing against the silk lining before withdrawing something small and delicate. The infinity bracelet caught the morning light streaming through the windows, its silver surface reflecting tiny rainbows across the walls as he turned it between his fingers.

My left hand instinctively curled against my chest, hiding the absence where my ring finger used to be. The phantom limb still ached sometimes, especially when storms were coming. Or when I was baking. He'd taken his too, after mine was gone. A matching sacrifice that still made no sense to me, but somehow felt like the most romantic gesture anyone had ever made. We were both marked now, both incomplete in the same way.

"I can't give you a ring." His voice was steady, controlled, but I caught the slight rasp at the edges that betrayed how much this moment cost him. The bracelet shifted in his palm as his thumb traced its smooth surface. "But I can give you forever."

V's shifted his weight, his right foot sliding back slightly against the floor. His left knee bent slowly, the pant leg of his suit pulling taut across his thigh as he lowered himself down. The movement was fluid, controlled—even in surrender, he commanded the space around him. His free hand found my hip, fingers curling against the fabric of my dress as he steadied himself, the bracelet resting in his other palm like a promise, like salvation, like everything I'd never dared to want. The sight of him kneeling sent heat racing through my veins, pooling low in my belly.

"Oakley." My name sounded different in his mouth today—softer, reverent, like he was speaking an oath. "You are the only good thing I've ever touched that didn't break."

Tears carved tracks down my cheeks as I stared down at this man who had broken and protected me in equal measure, who had made me his entire world without asking permission. His dark hair fell across his forehead, and I could see the sharp line of his jaw working as he fought for the words that would either save or damn us both.

I used to dream of walking out of this place and never looking back. Now I dreamed of him waiting at the end of an aisle with devotion in his eyes and my name in his mouth.

"Marry me again." The words were raw, stripped of everything but desperate truth. His free hand found my left hand, thumb tracing the scarred space where my finger used to be. The touch sent electricity up my arm, straight to my heart. "Not because I forced you. Not because you're scared." His grip tightened, anchoring me to this moment, to him. "Because you chose me. Because you want forever with a monster who loves you more than breathing."

My knees nearly buckled under the weight of his words. Through the window, dust motes danced in shafts of sunlight that painted everything golden, even the wreckage around us. The light caught in his hair, illuminated the sharp planes of his face, made him look like some fallen angel kneeling in a cathedral of broken dreams.

"V..." His name broke on my lips, carrying twenty different emotions I couldn't name.

"If you say no, I'll still wake up married to you in my head every day until I die." His voice dropped lower, carrying a dangerous edge that made my heart skip. "And you'll never belong to anyone else. Not while I'm fucking breathing."

The bracelet caught light in his palm—the only uncertainty he'd ever shown me existing in that small space between us. His thumb continued its gentle exploration of my scarred hand, mapping the geography of our shared sacrifice.

The silence stretched between us, filled with the weight of everything we'd been through. The kidnapping, the basement, the slow transformation from captive to something deeper, more complicated. More real. Every moment that had led us here felt suddenly sacred, necessary, like pieces of a puzzle finally clicking into place.

I could feel my pulse hammering beneath the bracelet's future home on my wrist, could taste the sweet scent of lilies and the bitter dust of destruction. This moment balanced on a knife's edge—one word could tip us toward salvation or damnation.

"Stand up," I whispered, my voice barely audible above the sound of my own heartbeat.

V's head tilted, confusion flickering across his features. But he rose slowly, gracefully, the bracelet still cradled in his palm. The movement brought him closer, until I could feel the heat radiating from his body, could smell the familiar scent of leather and something darker that clung to his skin.

I reached up with trembling fingers, my hands finding the edges of his mask. The fabric was warm from his breath, soft against my fingertips as I traced the elastic that held it in place. He went perfectly rigid beneath my touch, a statue carved from obsidian and patience. Not even his chest rose and fell—as if he'd forgotten how to breathe.

"I want to see your face," I whispered, my thumbs hooking beneath the elastic bands.

The mask fell away like a whispered secret, my fingers brushing against his jaw as it dropped to the floor among the lilies. The sharp planes of his face were revealed in the golden light—the cruel curve of his mouth, the devastating beauty that had been hidden beneath surgical fabric for so long. He was beautiful in the way disasters were beautiful—destructive and mesmerizing and impossible to look away from.

"Yes." The word left my lips like a vow, like a confession, like everything I'd been too afraid to say until now. "Not because I'm healed. Not because you're fixed." My thumb brushed against his stubbled cheekbone, feeling the warmth of his skin beneath my palm. "But because I want to spend forever breaking and building with you."

He lifted the bracelet, fingers grazing my wrist as he fastened the clasp. The infinity symbol pressed against my pulse point, catching the light like a promise written in silver. The metal was warm from his touch, and I could feel it settling against my skin like it belonged there, like it had been waiting to find its home.

When he looked up, his eyes held something I'd never seen before—hope, fragile and new and utterly human.

"You're choosing me?" he asked, the words barely more than a breath against my skin.

"I'm choosing you," I confirmed, and the words tasted like coming home.

Before I could take another breath, his hands found my waist, lifting me effortlessly from the floor. My legs wrapped instinctively around his hips as he pressed me back against the wall, my dress riding up as his palms settled on my thighs. The rough brick bit into my back through the thin fabric, but I didn't care. All I could focus on was the heat of his hands on my skin, the way his fingers spread wide to hold me against him.

My arms circled his neck, pulling him closer until there was no space left between us. His forehead came to rest against mine, and I could feel his breath mixing with mine in the narrow space between our mouths. The bracelet caught the light between us, a silver promise that bound us together more surely than any ring ever could.

I cupped his face in my hands, thumb tracing the sharp line of his jaw, feeling the slight roughness of stubble against my palm. This man who had destroyed my world just to rebuild it with me at the center. This beautiful monster who had made himself mine as completely as he'd made me his.

"I'm choosing you," I whispered again, and this time it sounded like a benediction.

When his lips found mine, they moved with desperate reverence, one hand tangled in my hair while the other gripped my thigh, holding me against him like I might disappear. The kiss tasted like coming home to a place I'd never known I was searching for, his mouth warm and certain against mine as flour dust settled around us like a blessing.

I used to dream of a prince. Now I was married to the villain.

And I'd choose him again in every life we had after this.