Tears trickled down my cheeks as Kas shrugged. “So, say what you want to me. Hit me if you need to. I get your desire to protect her because she’s your family. I would do the same for mine. But afterward, you will accept me because I will never stop loving her. And if she loves me back the way I hope she does, then there’s nothing you can do to stop the inevitable.”
Josh swallowed hard, his anger making his cheeks red. “What’s inevitable?”
Kas let out a caustic laugh, shaking his head as if the epiphany surprised even him. “You’ve just shown me what I need to do. I felt it before in the hallway just now. A shift inside me. An acceptance and submission that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to handle.”
“And what’s that?” Josh sneered.
“I love your sister,” Kas murmured.
“You already said that.” Josh crossed his arms.
“I love her past myself, past my nightmares, past every shit I’ve lived through. I love her.”
“Geez, get to the point!”
Kas glanced at me, puffing out his chest as if the words in his head were terrifyingly new but perfectly right. “I love you, Gem. I’ve told you that before. But what I didn’t tell you is how I felt a few minutes ago. Standing in your corridor, I was so afraid I’d done something to fuck this up before we even had a chance to be happy, and it showed me just how deep those feelings go.”
He took my hand, his fingers trembling. “I want you forever, Gem. I don’t need to live another day in this new world or meet a thousand other people to know that I’ve found where I belong. Who I belong to.” His turbulent gaze searched mine, making my heart beat painfully quick.
Ripping his stare from mine, he looked at Josh again, determination etching his face. “You don’t know me. You don’t like me. You might never accept me. To you, it will seem fast...but to me? I’ve been waiting my entire life for this girl. Every romance book I read, when I had nothing and no one, filled me with jealousy. Every fairy tale that I wasn’t able to have made me desperate to find my own. I think...I think that’s why I never ended it. Why I kept going, even when giving up would’ve been so much easier. I wanted what was promised in those pages. I wanted to feel what they did. To be safe like them. Happy like them. In love like them. And...now? Now that I’ve found my own soul mate...” He looked back at me, sweat dotting his forehead and wildness cloaking his lean shoulders. “I never want to let her go.”
I choked on a swallow.
God.
My entire body melted for his.
I wanted him.
God, I wanted him.
Kas gave me the softest, most loving look as he squeezed my hand. “I want to keep her forever, and in order to do that...I have to marry her. I have to do what those heroes did in all those dusty pages and announce to the world just how much she means to me.” He ran his thumb over my naked ring finger. “I want a symbol between us, Gem, so no one else can question how much you mean to me. How much I’m in awe of you, grateful for you, and completely empty without you.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “The day I’m healthy and happy, Gem. The day I can earn my own money and feel like I’m your equal is the day that you become my family for real. Everything that I am is yours. All the parts that I know and don’t know. All the parts that are good and bad. I don’t know my real name. I have no way of finding who I was born to. But none of that matters because I have you...if you’ll have me.”
My mouth fell wide.
Wait...is this...a proposal?
If so...oh, my God.
I didn’t know what to say.
I couldn’t think.
I glanced from Kas to Josh, tensing for my brother’s reaction. I expected more rage, but his anger had faded, and his eyes had lost their hatred. If anything...he looked as dumbfounded as me.
Josh caught my gaze, and in a heart-clenching moment, he shrugged. His eyes were tight with confusion, hesitation, and sibling protection, but he didn’t forbid me from saying yes. He didn’t leap in my defense against a man who’d drawn my blood but had also gifted me his heart.
We stood in a strange kind of triangle, poised for the biggest answer of my life.
I should probably tell him that we’d discuss this later.
To help him understand that his panic at making me his came from a place of fear instead of sanity. There were so many things to talk about. So many things still to learn about each other.