Page 95 of The Duke's Second Bride
She looked up at him fully, too shocked to do anything else.
His eyes were filled not just with sincerity, but with a naked emotion she had caught glimpses of before, but never had been so obviously laid bare.
“I have been a fool,” he said. “The biggest fool in all of London, all of England, if not all the world. You are the best thing that could have happened to me, and I have been pushing you away.”
Ava felt frozen in place. The words seemed almost too good to be true. But she tried her best to listen without interrupting him, and without shutting down his words outright.
“It has been so long since I have opened my heart to anyone,” he continued. “But you made it impossible to do anything else, Ava. My feelings for you are so deep, and so vast, and so out of my control in a way I have never known. It makes it hard to eat, hard to sleep, hard to think.”
I have felt the exact same way, Ava thought, her heart beginning to thaw, even as she tried to keep her composure.
She still needed to protect herself.
Christian perhaps could see the hesitancy in her eyes, because he continued, “When we thought you might be pregnant, all of the love that I carried inside myself for you twisted itself into fear. All I could think of was the possibility of losing you.”
He let out a bitter laugh, more to himself than to her.
“All I could think of was the possibility that I could somehow be the cause of your pain, your demise, and how I would never be able to live with myself if that happened,” he continued. “I panicked.”
“You were trying to protect your heart,” Ava said quietly, unable to keep back the swell of sympathy that rose up in her heart.
Christian nodded. “And yet, in pursuit of that goal, I nearly destroyed it. I was so fearful of losing you in death that I all but guaranteed I would lose a happy life together with you. But I do want that life with you. I want you, Ava.”
He knelt to his feet and took her hands in his. But before she could respond, a dark cloud passed over his eyes. Not anger, but sadness—and, almost a kind of understanding.
“That is,” he said, “if you still want me. After every foolish thing that I have done, if you still want me, I will consider myself the luckiest man on Earth, and I will spend every day making up to you for the time I have so foolishly wasted.”
Ava stood up from the bench, leaving the bread and Pudding behind her, and took her hands out of Christian’s. He rose to his feet as well.
“Christian,” she began, her heart in her throat.
She had to take a moment to gather herself enough to speak.
“I was willing to dream of a life with you,” she continued. “A life that included everything this world has to offer: love, children, and yes, all of the uncertainty and risk that comes with that.”
She saw Christian swallow at her use of the past tense, as though preparing to be hurt by what she might say, and the thought made her chest pang even more.
“I wasn’t hurt by your fear,” she said softly. “I was afraid of what it led you to do. I was hurt by your decision that life wasn’t worth the risk. That I was not worth the risk.”
Christian took another step forward. “You are worth the risk,” he said.
Ava wanted so badly to approach him, but she held off, still guarding one last bit of her heart, even as it sang at the sound of him saying the words she had wanted more than anything to hear from him.
“If you’ll have me again,” Christian said, “I will build that life with you. I will take any risk you ask of me, but only if you want me.”
Ava hesitated only for a moment before stepping forward, folding into Christian’s eager embrace. He wrapped his arms around her firmly, pulling her into his chest with a joy and desperation she felt mirrored in her own heart.
“I want you more than anything, Christian,” she said into his shirt. “This past week has been agony.”
“For me, too,” he murmured, his lips brushing her hair. Then he pulled back to look at her, with his arms still wrapped around her waist. “I love you, Ava.”
Ava felt tears pricking her eyes, beading up and running down her cheeks. Christian, seeing it, reached down to wipe one of her tears away, and she could not help but lean her head into his hand.
She had missed his touch so much. Nothing felt as much like home as this—being held by her husband.
“I love you, too,” she whispered.
When he leaned down and pressed his lips gently to hers, it was as though a dam had broken in her chest, love and joy and emotion overflowing like water over a waterfall.
