My fingers dragged through his thick hair, and my kiss was frenzied between each rasping word, “I thought I’d never get to love again. I thought I’d have to hold it in forever. Hide it so deep inside me that one day I would disintegrate.”
Cease to exist under the weight.
“But I can’t hold it back any longer, Logan. I love you. I love you.”
He kept kissing me through the confession, and suddenly, we were beside the giant, twinkling tree.
Logan pulled back to stare down at me. “You are the existence that forever burned within me, Aster. You are the belief that I can live right. Do fucking better. Proof I can have a bigger purpose than this superficial bullshit that I’ve been chasing after. When I walk into a room? I want to walk in it for you. When I get up in the morning? I want to rise for you. When I live this life? I want to live it for you.”
My chest stretched tight, and emotion raced my throat.
My North Star.
I touched his face, and he took my hand and kissed across my knuckles before he stepped back.
It would have been close to a smirk tweaking the edge of his mouth if it weren’t for the nerves that carved his features in severity. The way his breaths were harsh clips of oxygen.
Fueled by intensity.
“One more gift tonight, Aster. But you should know it’s a gift for me.” That time, it was an affected smirk, so sweet my stomach twisted.
He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a small box before he knelt on a knee.
“Logan.” A shocked whisper got free, and my attention darted between the urgency in his gaze and what he held in his hand.
“I’ve had this for seven years, Aster.”
Seven years.
Emotion rushed. A tidal wave that came from the depths and rose to the surface. It crashed over me in an inundating swell. Tears blurred my eyes, and my hand covered my mouth.
“Logan,” I whispered it again.
Taken.
Overcome.
Unable to stand.
I slipped to my knees in front of him.
He set the ring beside him and took me by both sides of my face. He stared me down, his expression carved in fervency.
“When I came to you that night, Aster, I came with this ring and the promise that I was going to do whatever it took to convince your father you belonged with me. This ring? It was a promise of what I felt for you. I was going to tell him I was going to marry you, and we were going to have a family, and I was going to take you away from that place because you deserved so much better than the life he had planned for you. But I didn’t fight for you like I should have.”
His hold intensified, his big fingers digging into my hair and his thumbs running the angle of my jaw. We were so close our noses touched, our eyes wide and feeling, sucking every ounce of devotion in.
“I let anger and pride take me over, instead. I let your words impale me rather than recognize the torment that was in your eyes. That’s what I chose to see, the hatred and the bitterness, rather than to see you were hurt. That I’d hurt you, too. But that promise I came to make you that night? It still burns bright inside me.”
His eyes glassed over as they searched my expression. “Little Star…marry me because I’m tired of looking at the sky without you in it.”
I threw myself at him, my arms around his neck. “Yes.”
I knew we had to deal with Jarek. Finally put it in the past. But we would, and it would be us. Forever.
“It was always yes.”
A groan of relief vibrated through him, and he rose up high on his knees, taking me with him as he hugged me against the raging thunder in his chest.