Chapter 126

“And I’m not making the same mistake twice,” he continued in a voice barely above a whisper. “I’m not walking away without saying it. Not when I almost lost you before I ever got to tell you.”

There was silence in the room the moment he said those words.

Grace turned her face slightly as her eyes drifted toward the window where the light slipped in soft and pale across the white sheets. But it wasn’t the light she was seeing. It was her own memories... shadows that never left her. The past had a way of clinging to her skin, staining even the brightest moments before they could reach her heart.

Keegan’s hand was still warmly and steadily wrapped around hers.

But it terrified her.

She wanted to believe him. God, how she wanted to. But belief required something she had long lost, and it was the ability to trust what didn’t hurt.

All her life, love had been a ghost. She had been born into a world that never once made space for her, handed from indiffe