Page 81 of Rebel Moon

“Oh. Well, then.” He didn’t laugh. He set his wine down and looked at me like he wanted to be sure I heard it while he was awake to mean it. “I’ll say it again. I love you. I’ve loved you for forever, I was just too stubborn to see it.”

“You and me both.” I hesitated, buying time by taking a sip of wine. “I want you to know more about what happened to me yesterday. Why I unraveled.” I set the glass down. If I was going to do this, I wasn’t going to do it with something in my hands to hide behind.

“You introduced yourself as Mindy. And it set you off on a spiral.”

“It was more than that.” I made myself hold his eyes. “Blake caught it on camera. That’s what triggered me more than anything. I imagined everyone seeing the movie, watching me fall in love with you and we’d already have broken up by then. You would have dumped me by the time the movie came out, and the thought of being humiliated and hurt like that, it made me panic. That morning after I crept out of your cabin and back to mine, I went to see Blake. I asked her to delete any footage she had of the two of us, which she agreed to do. But first she asked me to watch some of what they’d caught. Three weeks of it. So I did. I watched. That’s what did it. I saw with my own eyes what I was like when I was with you.” I had to stop for a second to swallow the lump in my throat. “I watched myself on that screen. Laughing. Singing off-key on the hayride. Looking at you across a room like you hung that big old moon you’re always going on about. I barely recognized myself.”

He didn’t say anything, but his expression was open with compassion.

“I’d already made up my mind to end things with you. To go back to Nashville and be Madeleine and pretend Montana never happened. I wasn’t going to fight for you. I was going to disappear, and let you forget anything ever happened between us. I knew you would, see? Or that’s what my broken mind told myself. This isn’t real. Everything will go back to the way it was the minute we’re home. So I have to end it first.”

“Makes me sad to hear you say it. But I understand.” Knox looked down at his hands for a moment. “Do you think it could happen again? That feeling like the only answer is to run from me?” His voice wasn’t angry but certainly careful. “Because I won’t make it. It might actually kill me. I’ve never hurt as bad as I did last night when I thought you’d … sent me away.”

I started to cry. How could one person have this many tears? “When I think of you out there, believing I’d betrayed you—it feels like I’m the one dying.”

“But I was wrong,” Knox said. “You were scared and alone.”

“You were mistaken, not wrong. I treated you terribly. I walked right past you, into my own cabin, after you’d been nothing but good to me. Patient with all my crap.” I wiped my face. “I can’t promise I’ll never get scared again. The thought of everyone seeing me this vulnerable frightens me still, but I love you enough to risk it. That’s not something I ever thought I would say, let alone feel.” I reached over and took his hand. “The next time it comes—the demons that tell me to run—I’ll knock on your door instead of locking mine. As long as you’ll have me, I’ll be there.”

Knox turned my hand over in his and ran his thumb across my knuckles. “I’m not going anywhere. I don’t care who knows it or what opinions they might have, I love you. We belong together. I’ll fight for you the rest of my life if I have to.”

“I won’t make it this hard again,” I said. “But there may be some therapy in my future.”

“I’ll support you. Whatever demons come your way. And I’ll ask that you do the same for me. Because I sure have some of my own. For example, why did I immediately believe you’d leave me out in a storm? I know you. You wouldn’t do that, even if you hated me. I don’t know what I was thinking, but it wasn’t clearly.”

“I’m glad you don’t think I could do that,” I said. “Because I’d rather die myself than let anything happen to you.”

“Don’t do that. Not when we’ve finally smartened up,” Knox said.

“And you’re right, you know,” I said. “I am Mindy Sue and she is me. I’ve changed and grown since childhood and in a lot of ways it’s been only good. But I also don’t have to be so very Madeleine all of the time. Maybe I could just be Maddie. Or Mads.”

“Maddie.” He said it slow, smiling. “It suits you.”

“You’re the first person who’s ever called me it.”

“As it should be.” He smiled, reaching out to take my face in his large, talented hands. “As a man who fell for Madeleine and Mindy, I think I’m going to love Maddie.”

“She loves you.”

He got up, drawing me to my feet and looking at me for a long moment, like he still couldn’t quite believe I was standing next to him. He kissed me softly. “Hello, beautiful Maddie. Would you care to stay the rest of your life?”

“Like married?”

“Like married.”

“Is that what you really want?” I asked.

“I didn’t think so, you know. Seeing my parents’ marriage and how miserable they always were, I didn’t think it was for me. I thought the same as you, actually. That no one could love the real me. Only Gramps did that.”

“But you were wrong. The guys love you. I love you. We’re your family now.”

“Do you want to get married on New Year’s Eve?” Knox asked. “Right here?”

I stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“Everyone we love is already here,” Knox said.

“Except my mom and Charlie. And what about your family?”