Page 81 of Ruthless Claim

Not the transaction version, or the terms-of-the-alliance version.

Mine.

The woman who draws stars on her insults and keeps the ones I write back and said good when I told her I broke someone’s jaw for her and meant every damn syllable of it.

I’m in love with her.

I’ve been in love with her for a while now, probably since the hospital, possibly before, and I’ve been calling it everything else because naming it out loud felt like stepping off something I couldn’t step back from.

But I nearly killed a man tonight for saying Valentina’s name. I’m done pretending I don’t know what this is.

It’s going to need to be said eventually.

With Valentina, everything needs to be said eventually.

Nothing just settles between us; we are not people who let things settle.

There’s going to be a conversation.

Probably more than one.

It’s going to be a disaster somewhere in the middle of it, because that’s how we do things.

She might throw something, and I’ll probably say the wrong thing first and she’ll correct me on it and I’ll argue and she’ll be right and I’ll know she’s right and we’ll both know she’s right.

She drew three stars.

One more each time.

She kept my note in her robe pocket like it was something worth keeping.

She might say it back.

I tighten my arm around her.

She makes a small sound in her sleep and turns her face into my shoulder.

I was handed this woman like a transaction.

I walked into a cathedral two months ago convinced I already knew what she was going to be in my life.

I was wrong about every single part of it.

She is sharp and impossible and funny when she doesn’t mean to be, and she has made every possible thing harder.

I cannot imagine my life without her.

I’m going to stop at the bakery tomorrow.

I’m going to bring something home and she’s going to ask what it’s for.

I’m going to say nothing, it was just there, and she’s going to look at me with a skeptical look and know I’m full of shit, but she’ll say nothing about it.

We’ll have coffee and she’ll once again steal mine.

At some point—not tomorrow, I’m not rushing this; rushing things with Valentina is how you end up with a wine glass against the wall behind your head—I’m going to tell her.

That I love her.