Page 232 of Sweet Ruin

Every time they drop, he tells me, Up, Lilah.

It’s awful and it’s incredible, because I can see what he’s doing to me, his hands, the rings, the ink on his forearms, and my own face breaking apart again and again.

In the middle of it, I cry out, “Don’t stop, right there, harder,” and he groans as we both go tumbling into oblivion.

After, when I’m shaking on the floor with my cheek against the rug, he purrs, “There she is. Say what you want and it happens. Every time.”

Kane suggests getting on the bed, but I’m too tired for that, so I just drag him down onto the rug with me. I lie on my stomach with my arms folded under my chin and he lies on his side facing me, tracing a line up and down my spine with two fingers.

I could lie like this forever, I think. Not one thing in my world is out of place.

I turn my head to look at him. “Can I ask you for something else?”

His fingers stop on my back. “You can ask me for anything, sladkaya.”

I take a deep breath.

Don’t chicken out now.

“I want this after Easter.”

Kane resumes stroking my back. “You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I want to hear it straight.”

I push myself up onto one elbow so I’m looking at him properly. My hair falls in my face.

“Easter is three weeks away,” I say. “That’s the end of our deal. Once we get there, the lien goes away and the bakery is mine and we’re square.” I make myself keep going. “And then what? Do you know what happens after that? Because I don’t.”

“You said this was just business,” he reminds me.

“Well, it isn’t.” I bite my lip. “It stopped being that a long time ago and I think you know it. I do, and I’m sick of pretending I don’t. I want to know if you want me when I don’t owe you anything. Because if the only reason I’m in this room is that my ex-husband signed my name to a contract in October, then I’d rather find out now than wait until Easter.”

He takes his time with that. He’s a huge figure, naked and mouth-wateringly beautiful in the darkness. I’ve never seen such a perfect man in all my life.

“And there’s one more thing,” I add. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

“Lilah…”

“You don’t have to say it back. I’m not fishing. I’m just— I’ve spent ten years living my life in fear of what other people might think of me, and I’m never doing that again. So I say things now. Out loud. To people’s faces. It’s a new hobby.” I shrug one shoulder. “It’s going okay so far.”

He sits up. He reaches over, takes my hand, and turns it over in his and looks at it, at the flour permanently living in the creases of my knuckles, at the little shiny burn scar on the inside of my wrist.

“You are not Connor Boyd’s debt,” he whispers. He looks up at me. “You are not his debt and you are not my collateral. Whatever you were in writing in October, you’re not that now. The only thing that ends on Easter is the lien. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“Say it straight,” I retort, throwing his own words back in his face.

His mouth twitches. “The debt ends. We don’t.”

I blush. “That’s better.”

“I want every day you’ll give me,” he continues. “If you tell me on Easter Sunday that you never want to see me again, I’ll go. I’ll fucking hate it, but I’ll go. But you’d have to tell me—and you’ll have to say it straighter than anything you’ve ever said before—because I’m not leaving on my own.” He tightens his hand on mine. “That’s the truth. All of it that matters.”

There’s a hitch there, where I feel him not say something else. It’s the same hitch that was there when I asked about his mother at the dinner table and he said not tonight, and when I asked about the map and he changed the subject.

But he answered the question I asked.