Page 309 of Ruin Me Gently

His throat bobbed. “So fucking happy, Lilith. You have no idea.”

He wasn’t just Silas Graves. He wasn’t just the man who had haunted my every step, who had lingered just beyond my reach.

He was the man who had caught me.

The man who had carried me when I was too broken to stand, who had burned for me, almost killed for me, loved me in ways I never thought I deserved.

The man who had become my home.

And now? Now, he wasn’t just the man in the shadows.

He was mine.

Completely.

Every thread of me belonged to him, tangled in the spaces between his ribs, sewn into the very fabric of who he was.

He sighed, low and content as his eyes locked onto mine. “I love you so damn much, Lilith.”

I leaned down and pressed a slow, soft kiss to his lips.

“I love you too,” I whispered.

They say that the brain should be fully developed by the time you reach the age of twenty-five.

Well, I didn’t know who ‘they’ were.

And honestly, I didn’t even care anymore.

My grey matter hadn’t just missed the memo. It was blatantly obvious that it had developed in all the wrong ways.

But it was fine.

The wiring may have been a little faulty. The circuits definitely still flickered, and sometimes a bulb might burst—but the whole thing didn’t short out anymore.

On paper, my life still looked good—clean lines, neatly printed, easy to read.

But I’d learned that life wasn’t meant to stay inside the lines. The ink was messy, unpredictable. It smudged, bled, and sometimes rewrote the story in ways that were never expected.

And my ink? Itstill spilled, still stained—but now, I knew it didn’t ruin everything it touched.

Sometimes, it just asked me to let go, to stop fighting—to let it ruin me gently.

EPILOGUE

One year later

“Ineed the shade,Silas,” Lilith groaned behind me, her voice dragging like she’d just spent three days crawling through the desert. “I’m going to fucking die.”

“You’re dramatic,” I muttered, but I didn’t let go of her hand. If anything, I held on tighter—half because I didn’t trust her not to collapse just to prove a point, half because… well, because I liked holding her hand.

“I’m serious,” she gasped. “If I drop dead, just leave me here. Let the locals mourn me. Tell my story. Make it sound tragic and mysterious.”

I snorted. “Yeah? Want me to tell everyone you perished bravely on a cobblestone street after a long, hard battle with the weather?”

“Exactly,” she muttered. “Say I was stoic. A fighter. A tragic beauty.”

I turned fully, walking backwards so I could watch her. Her dark hair was braided back the way she’d asked for most mornings—ever since she found out I’d been the one braiding it for her when she first came to the penthouse.

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