Rosalind swallowed, something inside her tightened and warmed at the same time.

He had rekindled that feeling in her and now it burned brighter than before, leaving her eyes misty before she could stop it.

Rowan noticed immediately, his expression shifting into a frown as he stepped closer and asked, “What’s wrong?” while reaching out to hold her face.

Rosalind shook her head quickly, swallowing hard as a tear slipped from the corner of her eye, and he gently wiped it away with his thumb.

“If you don’t like this place and you want to go somewhere else, you just have to tell me,” he said, clearly confused.

From everything he could see, she had liked it, so he couldn’t understand why she was suddenly crying.

Rosalind lowered her gaze for a moment and drew in a slow breath before looking back at him.

For a while, she simply studied his face, almost as if she was trying to find the right place to begin because there were so many things she could say and yet none of them seemed enough.

“The truth is that I don’t know what happens next,” she admitted at last, and Rowan remained quiet, allowing her to continue. “I know we’re better than we were before and I know things between us aren’t the same anymore, but that doesn’t mean everything that happened suddenly disappeared.”

His chest tightened slightly as he had been expecting this.

“Sometimes I think about giving us another chance and it feels easy, then other times I remember everything that happened and I become scared all over again.” Rosalind said honestly.

Rowan’s expression softened.

“I’m scared of trusting all of this again,” she admitted. “I’m scared of believing that things will be different and then finding myself back in the same place.”

Rowan lowered his gaze. “The difference is that I know what I almost lost now.” He said softly.

For a moment, Rowan seemed to be searching for the right words. Then he let out a breath. “I spent a long time thinking about where everything went wrong,” he said quietly. “And if I’m being honest, I think it started long before the secrets.”

Her brows furrowed. “How?”

“Because I stopped treating you like someone I loved and started treating you like someone I needed to protect.” His jaw tightened slightly. “I kept making decisions for you without you. I kept deciding what you should know and what you shouldn’t know. I told myself it was for your own good, but looking back now, I never stopped to think what you would have wanted.”

Rosalind remained silent as she listened.

“And that’s my biggest regret.” Rowan’s voice dropped lower. “Not just the secrets themselves but the fact that I never trusted you enough to stand beside me and face them with me.”

The wind stirred around them, lifting a few strands of her hair.

For a while neither of them spoke.

Then Rosalind asked the question that had been lingering inside her for days. “If I give this another chance…” Her voice trailed off briefly before she found the courage to continue. “How do I know we won’t end up exactly where we started?”

Rowan didn’t answer immediately as the question deserved more than a rushed response. Eventually he answered “You don’t.”

Rosalind blinked.

He continued before she could misunderstand. “You don’t know… There isn’t some promise I can make that will magically erase what happened.”

His gaze never left hers. “But I do know that I don’t want the man I was back then to be the man standing in front of you now.”

Something shifted in her expression.

“I hate who I became during that period, Rosalind. I hate the choices I made, I hate how much pain I caused you and I hate that I can’t change any of it.”

His eyes softened. “But if there’s one thing I’m certain about, it’s that I love you far too much to ever take you for granted again.”

Rosalind’s breath caught.

The confession made her stop in her tracks, though it wasn’t something she was hearing for the first time….

There had been moments before where he had almost said it and moments where she had heard it hidden beneath his words.

But this time there was no hesitation or uncertainty.

Just the truth.

Rowan reached for her hand slowly and she didn’t pull away. “I love you enough to tell you the truth even when it’s difficult.”

His thumb brushed lightly across her knuckles. “I love you enough to listen when you’re angry.”

A faint smile appeared on his lips. “And I love you enough to spend the rest of my life earning back the trust I lost.”

Rosalind looked down at their joined hands.

Her heart hurt, not because she was unhappy but because she wanted to believe him and perhaps that was the most frightening thing of all.

When she finally looked back at him, she said under her breath “I still have fears.”

“I know.”

“I still have doubts.”

“I know.”

She swallowed. “And there might be days where I remember everything and become angry all over again.”

To that Rowan smiled faintly. “I think I’d be worried if you didn’t.”

A reluctant laugh escaped her and the sound alone made his chest feel lighter.

Then Rowan’s expression softened once more and he brought her hand closer to his.

“We don’t have to figure out the rest of our lives now,” he said quietly. “We don’t have to know where every road leads.”

Rosalind listened.

“But I do know one thing.”

His eyes held hers. “If there’s a future waiting for me, you’re in it.”

For a moment, the world around them seemed to fade away as her heart seemed to stall while she processed his words, and then Rosalind smiled through the tears gathering in her eyes and gently squeezed his hand in return.

For the first time in a very long time, neither of them felt like they were standing on opposite sides anymore. They didn’t have every answer and they didn’t know what challenges would come next, but somewhere between the hurt, the honesty and the hope, they had finally found something they hadn’t had in a long time.

A way forward.