Page 122 of Shellshock

She couldn’t stomach hearing him repeat her worst fears. She despised this martyrdom bullshit. It was selfish. It was misguided. She wasn’t going to let him get away with it, not for one goddamn second. He washers.

Quietly, he said, “I’m going to destroy your portal. I know how unbearable it is to be trapped in a place that’s hurting you. I feel confined in my own shell every single day I wait for this agonizing nightmare to end.”

She envisioned all the horrible things that had happened to him. All the pain he tried to hide. It was no wonder he kept trying to protect himself. But it was unimaginably painful to realize he wanted to protect himself fromher. She’d broken his trust from the first day she’d lied to him.

“That doesn’t mean we give up, Caligher. I love you.” That ball of emotion infused her words with a shaky vulnerability, quieting her voice. “Please. I can’t let you go.”

His heartbroken expression gutted her. She knew she wasn’t getting through to him.

She swiped another tear. “We can fix it,” she whispered, repeating the broken plea. “I swear we can.”

His voice was gentle, his stance unmoved by her tears. “It’s not something that can be fixed. I was in too deep before you arrived. There was too much pain—and you made that easier, for a while, but… I’m gone, Lucca. I’ve been gone for a long time.”

She shook with grief in the silence, staring at him, shattering.

Breaking the heaviness with a loud sniffle, she scanned the room, knowing how easy it would be for him to force the issue. He could overpower her and shove her ship through the portal.

The look in his eyes shifted as if following her intentions. The instant she so much as flinched, there would be an explosion. She studied him, memorizing him, grasping with every sense that this might be goodbye.

And she couldn’t accept it.

Every quickened breath was like that frenetic moment before leaping from an airplane. She had one chance to get it right, and if he beat her to the punch, that was it. She would lose him forever.

The moment snapped like a gunshot.

She scrambled over the chair and he was on her in an instant. Weight slamming into her, Caligher ripped her hands away from the console.

But the buttons had already been hit.

A low dual-pulse sounded on either side of the Selkie, and seconds later, the portal exploded in pure silence. Her heart danced with a powerful sense of catharsis, cleansing the pain.

Caligher held her tightly as they watched the jump point collapse into dust.

He laughed.

She laughed, too.

His hand wound into her ponytail, drawing her back.

“You love me?” he asked.

A sob hitched in her chest. “I love you.”

He paused. “I love you, Lucca. I’ve known it for a long time. I just… didn’t know how to make it work. I certainly don’t deserve you.”

“You don’t get to decide that,” she said, her voice low and hot. She was so mad at him.

“Mh,” he huffed, going thoughtfully quiet. “You’re in this with me no matter how it turns out,” he said, looking for confirmation.

Clearing a final hitch from her chest, she answered him. “You’re stuck with me now.”

For a few seconds, there was only silence and the buzz that came after crying it out hard. His voice lowered. “Do you want to marry me?”

The question filled her with giddy, victorious trepidation. She was heavy and light, hot and chilled, emotionally wrecked even as her heart was knitting back together. Her body was a million tiny explosions of life and death and all of her parts agreed.

“Yes,” she whispered.

As insane as the proposition was, the answer was easy.

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