Page 132 of A Smile Full of Lies
“No. Let me finish.” My fingers tightened around hers. “You saved me from that. From destroying what’s left of my life. You took that risk —you bled for me— because you love me.”
Tears spilled freely now, hers and mine both. No shame. No hiding.
“So I’m telling you right now, Rosalind Cooper,” I said, voice sharp with everything I felt, “I’m done pretending this is anything less than everything. You’re it for me. You’vealwaysbeen it for me, ever since the first time I laid eyes on you at a Halloween bonfire when I was eighteen years old, and every day after that, even when you were dating Thayer.”
She opened her mouth like she wanted to argue — but I cut her off the only way I knew how.
I kissed her. Soft and slow andabsolute. And when I pulled back, her voice trembled against mine.
“Even after everything?”
I pressed my forehead to hers.
“Especially after everything.”
She sobbed out a laugh, wrecked and shaking and real. And I knew, no matter what came next — courtrooms, media, fallout,grief — none of it could touch us. Not really. Because she was mine. And I was hers.
She’d nearly died for me. Now I was going to spend the rest of my life proving she hadn’t bled for nothing.
Chapter
Thirty
NOVEMBER 13
ROS
They letme go ten days after I almost died.
The scars were still fresh — stitched tight over my abdomen and floating ribs for the slash, then the stitched up stab wound sat high on the left side near my sternum, dangerously close to my heart. The nurses said I was lucky. The doctor called it ‘a narrow miss’. Said I’d heal fine, long as I didn’t push it.
But the worst damage wasn’t physical.
It was the look in Knox’s eyes when he carried my discharge papers in one hand and gripped my overnight bag in the other like it might disappear if he didn’t hold it tight enough.
He’d barely left my side. Not since I woke up in that too-quiet hospital room, full of tubes and monitors and the weight of everything we hadn’t said before.
After our initial conversation, he hadn’t brought up the wire again. He also hadn’t asked me for the full story. But the way he’d kissed me — like he meant it, like he was mine — had said enough.
More than that, he’d told me he loved me, even though he was furious at me for putting myself in danger the way I had.
I didn’t try to talk much that last morning. My voice was still hoarse. My lungs ached. But when the nurse wheeled me out and Knox helped me into the truck, his hand firm beneath my elbow, I leaned into his touch like a lifeline.
He opened the door to his house for me without a word. Led me down the hall to his bedroom like it was already mine. I didn’t argue. I didn’t tease. I just let him settle me into the middle of his bed, the sheets soft and smelling like cedar and safety.
He didn’t hover, not the way he could have. I suspected he wanted to, badly, but he was holding himself back. He just brought me water, made sure the pillows were propped right, and knelt beside the bed, brushing my hair back from my face.
“I’ve got you now,” he said quietly. “And I’m not letting go.”
It wasn’t a promise. It was a vow, and I was too wrecked to do anything but believe him.
NOVEMBER 14
I woke up warm but alone.
The sheets still smelled like Knox, but his side of the bed was cold. My hand drifted to it anyway, fingertips grazing the dip in the mattress where he’d slept the night before — where he’d held me while I drifted in and out of pain-laced sleep, whispering things I couldn’t remember.
Now? All I had was the echo of him.
