He was a man who had never known softness before, and now he was drowning in it.

Drowning in her.

And he shouted out her name in the end, and she clung to his shoulders and said his.

Like marriage vows. And then she curled up against him and started to drift to sleep in his arms. “I love you,” he whispered. And she wrapped her arms around his and said nothing. But he could’ve sworn that he felt a tear land on his wrist.

“Merry Christmas.”

And he knew what he had to do next.

CHAPTER NINE

SHE WOKE UP when she heard him moving around the living room.

She had known that he would do this. She had known that it was the end. Last night when he had told her that he loved her, she had known. And she should have said it back, because she felt it, with every inch of her, all the way down. But she had known that it wasn’t a declaration of love built around him staying.

She had known.

“You’re just going to go?” she asked.

“I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because. I have to turn myself in. I have to face the police. I have to face Jake. And in the end, I don’t know what’s going to be left. I might end up in prison. I might not be able to clear my name. I ran from the law, whether I was an innocent man or not. And then there were the years beforehand when I was an innocent. I’m going to have to confess to crimes, Tala, and it doesn’t matter that I was a child when I committed them. The truth of the matter is, I committed them.”

“Just stay here,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please.”

“You know that I can’t.”

She did know. Because she knew him. And she knew that he was right.

Because she had fought to get away from her parents and...

But she felt like it didn’t matter. She felt like the broader world didn’t matter. She would go into hiding if it meant that she could be with him. Because with him she had found something new and different and special. With him she had found a freedom in herself and with herself that she hadn’t known existed.

But he wouldn’t ask that of her. And if he did... Well then he wouldn’t be the man that she knew he was. The man that she loved would sacrifice for her, because it was who he was.

Because he cared about her in a way that no one else in her life ever had.

“But you have to say goodbye to me.”

Something in his expression changed, the light in his eyes like a black flame. “It’s the one thing I wasn’t sure I could do.”

And she wanted to weep. She hadn’t said very many goodbyes in her life. But the one she’d said to her mother, when she had left without a word, had been easy. Simple. But devastating all the same.