Page 92 of Claimed on the Ridge

The name is the one I gave back to myself. The one I told Gary to his face while his empire burned. Coming out of Alex's mouth, it doesn't sound like a correction or a reclamation.

It sounds like mine.

"I love you," I say.

The words come out plain. No setup. No preamble. I say them the way I would report a fact.

Alex sets the pen down. He looks at me, and what moves behind his face isn't surprise. It's the expression of a man hearing confirmed what he already built his life around.

"Good," he says. "Because you're not getting rid of me."

"That's your version of saying it back?"

"Kendall."

Just my name.

His hand stills on the pen, and when he looks at me the composure he wears like a second skin is gone. For one beat he is open in a way I've only seen a handful of times.

"You already know."

I do.

I've known since the keys.

Since the open hand.

Since a man who controls everything within his reach chose to let go of the one thing he wanted most to hold onto, then stood in his kitchen and waited to find out whether it worked.

"I do know," I say. "I wanted to hear it anyway."

"I love you."

He picks the pen back up.

"Put the coffee on. I'm not done with the coordinates."

The laugh that comes out of me is sudden, real, and fills the kitchen with the same volume as my cabinet-slamming an hour ago.

The laugh of a woman who is no longer trying to be invisible.

This is what love looks like with Alex Sawyer.

Not candlelight.

Not speeches.

A man who says the words once, means them permanently, and follows them with a directive about coffee.

My mother would have understood. She died in a Sitka hospital room during the time I spent here. I wasn't beside her. She told me not to be. The love in her final act was in the envelope she pressed into my palms before I left, not in a bedside goodbye. She gave me the thing I needed to survive instead of the thing that sounded pretty.

Alex gives me keys on the kitchen table.

He gives me information that affects my safety.

He gives me his brother's tactical briefings, his sister's phone number, and a seat at the table where the decisions get made.

He gives me the truth about his fists, the truth about his father, the parts of himself that cost him to show.