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“Hard enough to leave bruises?”

“Probably.”

“Good.” He took a deeper breath, the muscles in his jaw relaxing a shade. “Want me to go over there and give his bruises their own bruises?”

I considered it for a good few seconds. “No. But only because I don’t want you to waste time with him that you could be spending with me.” I smiled. “I don’t like sharing you.”

A small smile eased onto his tight-​lipped expression. “You said that when you answered the door to him, you had been hoping it was me?”

I sat a little straighter in his arms, getting my other hand out so I could hold his face in both. “Yes. Because there was something I needed to tell you. Something I should have told you yesterday, but I was chickenshit and afraid of being too much and pushing you away. I actually said it as I opened the door.” I paused. “Which is probably what spurred him on with his stupid monologue and attempt at a kiss. He genuinely thought that I was saying it to him, the knob.”

Pain flashed across Kerr’s face as I mentioned the kiss. He took a beat to compose himself, then cleared his throat. “What was it that you needed to tell me?”

The hope in his eyes nearly killed me, though it gave me hope that he felt the same. I rushed to get my words out, keen to appease any remaining anguish and silence his doubts. “I love you, Kerr.” I took a big breath, calling on my courage to release the floodgates and allow my words to flow. I wasn’t too much for Kerr. For him, I was just right as myself. “You are, without doubt, the best thing that has ever happened to me and the best man I have ever known. You make me feel so good about myself, to not only accept all my flaws but in many cases make me realize that what I once viewed as flaws are actually attributes, and I just need you to know that I’ve never felt like this about anyone in my life—”

He ducked his head and pressed his mouth to mine, and it was like the kiss of life itself. His soft, warm lips heated my icy ones, the hot stroke of his tongue eking warmth into my mouth and throat, seeping through every nerve and vessel until my heart glowed brightly with it and I felt it seeping out of my pores.

He broke off to lean his forehead against mine. “I love you too. I wrote it in the snow for you, on your front lawn. But I’m guessing Drew ruined that too when he landed in it.”

I remembered seeing the word you written next to Drew’s snow demon. I’d thought it had been some kids, but it was the you in Kerr’s I love you. He loved me. He loved me for me, without any redactions, without any suppression. He just loved me as I was.

With a contented sigh, I sank deeper into him, and he tightened his arms around me.

“I’m sorry for taking what I saw at face value,” he told me, regret lacing his words. “I should have stormed over there and taken him out. It was just my self-​doubt overwhelming me again.”

“Listen,” I said, grasping a handful of his jumper. “From this moment on, never, ever doubt my feelings for you. I love you more than anyone I’ve loved before, including Drew. Especially Drew. I want us to be together for the long haul, because you are enough and so much more. Infinitely more. As proven by my nearly drowning myself in order to get to you.”

He blinked, then swallowed hard. “I love you so fucking much it terrifies me, but I’ll learn to tamp down that fear, I promise. Because you’re it for me. My endgame, Nisa Caitlyn Ansari.” He smiled. “And NCA for short.”

“Shut up,” I said, letting out a laugh, then dragging him down for another kiss. He cradled the back of my head like I was a precious gift, drinking me in like a man who had been dying of thirst, and I was more than happy to be swallowed whole.

We broke off again and cuddled in tightly for a minute, my body temperature gradually increasing and the shivering diminishing.

“Was that all three things you needed to tell me?” Kerr said. “The truth about Drew, that you love me.” He sounded so in awe as he said that. “And that you want us to be together?”

“Holy shit,” I said, sitting up and nearly making the towels fall away completely, until he grabbed them and wrapped me up again. “No. There’s another thing. And this one is huge.”

35

Kerr

I BLINKED, MY brain unable to process what she had just said. “Pardon?”

She took my hand this time, staring up into my eyes with those big, dark doe ones of hers. “I think that your mum is alive.”

I blinked again. Nope, still not computing. “Why on earth would you think that?”

She started talking about that patient of hers, the one with the delirium who couldn’t remember where her son James was. I mean, James was actually my given name, the one on my birth certificate. But I’d gone by Kerr as soon as I’d left home because I’d always hated having the same first name as my dad.

“She remembered everything, Kerr. Her name is Anna MacDonald.”

A bolt fired into my heart, goose bumps erupting over my skin.

“She said her son was James Murdoch, Murdoch being her ex-husband’s name.”

Another bolt, taking my breath away.

“But that her son’s middle name was Kerr, and that’s what he preferred to be called when his dad wasn’t around.” Her voice was barely a whisper now, eyes even wider than before.