Page 143 of Beautiful Ruins
My chest tightened as I stared at them now.
It had been two weeks.Two weeks of carrying this alone and not knowing how to tell him.
Because loving a man like Raze meant understanding the weight he carried.The things he had lost.The life he had built in the ruins of it.
And the thought of him rejecting this—rejectingus—I couldn’t breathe through it.
The door creaked softly behind me.
“Izzy?”
My heart jumped into my throat.
I turned too quickly, my hand catching the edge of the stool beside me.
“You startled me.”
Raze stepped into the room, already watching me too closely.Too carefully.
He noticed everything.
“You’ve been in here all day,” he said.
“I was working.”
His gaze flicked to the canvas behind me—half-finished, abandoned hours ago.
“I came to check on you.”
There it was.
I forced a small shrug.“Artists require solitude.”
He didn’t smile.
Which meant he didn’t believe me.
“I feel like you’ve been a little… off.”
He moved further inside, his presence filling the room without effort.His eyes swept the space once—slow, deliberate—and then stopped.
On the shelf.On the shoes.
Everything inside me locked.
He walked toward them, picking them up without a word.Turning them over in his hands like he was trying to understand what they meant.
Then he looked at me.
“Izzy.”
My throat closed.
“What are these?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
“You bought baby shoes.”
