I didn’t answer right away, not because I was uncertain, but because some part of me needed to sit inside the question a moment longer — eleven days that had rearranged my entire life, a mark on my wrist that had turned out to measure exactly the kind of man he was choosing to become, a fear I’d carried into this world that had, somehow, resolved into something worth staying for instead of running from.
“Yes,” I said finally, and felt the word land with a certainty that had nothing frantic or rushed about it, only the quiet, settled weight of a decision I’d actually earned the right to make. “Yes, Ronan. I choose you too.”
The mark on my wrist flared warm the instant I said it — not painful, nothing like the cold pressure of Callum’s instrument, but something closer to recognition, a loc
