He had peeled back every layer, stripped her down to her very core, the beauty and the filth, the ruin and the radiance, and held all of it in his hands like it was his right. Like he wanted it. There was no point in denying it anymore. No point in hiding. He already knew. She was certain. Perhaps saying it now wasn’t even for him. Perhaps it was for her. A truth made real by the act of speaking it. A confession given weight by breath. Something she needed to hear, maybe even a little bit more than he did. And it made her smile, faintly, no more than a ghost, before she put her head back on his chest and closed her eyes again, unwilling to spend another second without listening to the beat of his heart or the heat of his chest flush against her cheek.