“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. “Especially that all of her husbands looked like me? And that she killed every single one of them with her water magic?”

I shrugged. “I thought about it. But after everything that happened, I wasn’t sure how to tell you. I wasn’t sure that you’d want to know.”

I wasn’t sure that it would have made any difference, since you loved her so much.

I didn’t say the words, but that had been my main fear. That Owen had loved Salina so much that he would forgive her even that. That he would never get over what I’d done to her. That he could accept all of her awful actions but not mine. That she’d always have more of his heart than I ever would, despite all of the terrible things she’d done.

He nodded. “I suppose I can understand that too.”

“So what changed?” I asked, repeating my earlier question. “Why are you here now?”

He stared down at the tabletop for several seconds before finally lifting his gaze to mine. His violet eyes burned with emotion. “Because part of me shattered when I thought that you were dead.”

My breath caught in my throat, even as hope blossomed in my chest. There were so many things I wanted to say to him, but I held my tongue. This was Owen’s chance to speak, and I wanted to hear what he had to say, all of it—no matter how good, bad, or ugly it might be.

“When Clementine threw Jillian’s body into the middle of the rotunda, and I thought it was you, when I thought that you were dead . . .” Owen’s voice trailed off, and the memory and pain of that moment etched lines of anguish into his face. “It ripped me apart inside. Not just that you were gone but how things were between us. How I’d left things between us. I couldn’t believe that I’d never get the chance to tell you how I felt about you.”

“And how is that?” I whispered.

He looked me in the eye. “I love you, Gin. That hasn’t changed, even with everything that’s happened between us. I love you. I’ll always love you.”

“But?”

He sighed. “But every time I close my eyes, I still see Salina lying there, reaching for me, asking me to save her. And I feel guilty that I didn’t.”

“You didn’t have a choice. I took that away from you when I had Finn hold you at gunpoint.”

He nodded again. “Maybe you did, but I still felt like I should have tried harder, fought harder. Can you understand that?”

I let out a tense breath. “I do, because I feel the same way about Jillian. Like I should have been able to save her, even though I didn’t know anything about McAllister’s plans.”