Page 120 of The Duke's Jilted Bride

His voice faltered. He rubbed his face with both hands.

“I was afraid that if you saw the real me, the broken pieces, you’d walk away. That you’d realize you deserved better than someone like me.”

Selina felt her chest tighten. She hadn’t heard him speak like this before. Not so openly.

“When she had the gun to your head,” he went on, “nothing else mattered. Not pride, not fear. Only you. Getting you out, holding you again, telling you what I should have said weeks ago.”

He reached for her hands. His were shaking. His grip was gentle, almost unsure.

“I love you, Selina. More than I know how to explain. You are everything. My heart, my peace, my reason for wanting to be better. If you can forgive me, if there’s even the smallest chance, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving I’m worth it.”

Tears slid down her cheeks before she realized they were coming. His words hit deep, not because they were grand, but because they were honest.

“You hurt me,” she said quietly. “When you pushed me away. When you decided I couldn’t be trusted with your truth. It made me feel small. Unworthy.”

“I know,” he whispered. “I know I failed you. I carry that.”

“I felt alone,” she said. “Even when we were happy, I always had this fear in the back of my mind that you’d disappear again. That if things got too hard, you’d close the door and leave me standing outside.”

“I won’t,” he said, leaning forward. “Never again. I swear it. You won’t have to wonder where I stand. I’ll be beside you, always.”

She searched his face, unsure. Wanting to believe him. Wanting it to be true.

“I don’t know if I can open my heart again,” she whispered. “Not fully. Not if it means risking that kind of hurt again.”

He nodded. The hope in his eyes dimmed, but he didn’t let go of her hands.

“I understand,” he said. “If you ask me to walk away, I will. I’ll never stop loving you, but I’ll go.”

He started to pull back, but she held on.

“Wait.”

He stilled, his gaze searching hers.

“I said I don’t know if I can,” she said, “but I do know that I can’t walk away. Not from this. Not from you. I love you, Rowan. Even when it was hard, I never stopped.”

His breath caught. He looked like he might fall apart.

“I don’t need you to be perfect,” she whispered. “I just need you to be real with me. Honest. Present.”

“I will be,” he said. “I am. You have my whole heart, Selina. No more hiding.”

She reached up to cup his cheek. “Then you have mine too.”

He leaned into her touch like a man starving. Then he kissed her. Not urgently, not desperately. Just fully. With all the tenderness of someone who had almost lost everything.

The fire cast shadows across the walls as they held each other. They didn’t need to speak. Everything they needed to say was already in the way their hands found each other, in the way they breathed each other in like something holy.

When he lifted her into his arms and carried her to bed, it wasn’t about passion. It was about closeness, about the quiet need to feel whole again. To be known. To be forgiven.

He set her down gently, his hands lingering at her waist, his eyes searching hers as if to make sure she was still with him in all the ways that mattered. She reached up and touched his face, her fingertips brushing along his jaw, memorizing the roughness, the warmth.

He leaned in, slow and sure, his lips meeting hers with a tenderness that sent something deep inside her trembling. The kiss was soft at first, unhurried, reverent. His hands slid up her back, pulling her closer, as if the space between them had grown too wide to bear.

She melted into him, her hands threading through his hair, her body fitting against his like a long-forgotten puzzle piece falling into place. Each kiss deepened, growing warmer, more certain, but never rushed. His mouth moved to her cheek, her jaw, the curve of her throat, pressing soft kisses that made her breath catch and her heart race.

Her wrapper slipped from her shoulders, forgotten. Rowan kissed her again, deeper this time, his hands caressing the soft curves he had missed like air. His lips moved from her mouth to the line of her jaw, then lower, trailing a slow path along her throat. He paused at the hollow just above her collarbone, breathing her in, pressing a kiss there.

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