“Because I am ruinously in love with you.” Everything stopped. The spinning room, my beating heart, the earth’s rotation around the sun… What the hell did he just say to me? “And I fear it may very well be the end of me—something I cannot allow to be.” He swallowed down hard as if trying to entomb his words, his truth. “But I could not lay it to rest until I said it out loud, just once, where you could hear the words and know that I am not just a monster, but a man telling a woman that he loves her.”
