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Chapter 725:
“My mother,” he said. “She came here. After my father died, when I was too young to understand grief as anything but absence. She would leave me with the staff, drive up alone, spend weekends in the chapel or walking these trails.” He smiled—small, private, absolutely unexpected. “I resented it. The abandonment. The preference for solitude over my company. It wasn’t until years later—” he paused, let the silence stretch, “—until I found my own reasons to seek solitude, that I understood. She wasn’t running from me. She was running toward something. Something she could only find in silence p>
June felt the words land. Felt their accuracy, their uncomfortable resonance with her own history, her own drives, her own desperate need for spaces where she didn’t have to perform, to explain, to be anything other than exhausted.
“You’re manipulating me,” she said. “Using your mother’s memory to p>
“Yes.” Crawford’s admission was immediate, unapologetic. “I’m using everything, June. Every tool I have. Every weakness I can exploit. Because—” he turned to face her, his knee on the bench between them, his body angling into her space, “—because you won’t give me anything. Won’t take anything from me. Won’t let me be generous or protective or even properly grateful for the chance to know you. You keep me at arm’s length with ethics and boundaries and the absolute, devastating certainty that I don’t deserve what I want p>
“And what do you want p>
“Everything.” The word came out rough, stripped of polish, the truth beneath the performance. “I want your mornings. Your evenings. The moments when you forget to be guarded and let yourself laugh at something stupid. I want to be the person you call when you’re scared, when you’re proud, when you’ve achieved something extraordinary and need someone who understands exactly how hard you worked to get there.” He reached out, his hand finding her jaw, his thumb tracing her cheekbone with a tenderness that made her breath catch. “I want to be necessary, June. Not useful. Not convenient. Necessary. The way oxygen is necessary. The way—” he stopped, swallowed, “—the way you are to me p>
𝖱𝘰𝗆𝖺𝗇𝖼е ոо𝘃𝖾𝗹𝘀 𝗈𝘯 ѕ.𝖼𝘰m
June closed her eyes. She felt the pressure of his fingers, the warmth of his palm, the absolute, terrifying sincerity of a man who had never learned to want anything by halves.
“You’re going to hurt me,” she whispered. “Not intentionally. But because you can’t help yourself. Because your love is—” she searched for the word, found it, “—consumptive. It takes up all the space. Leaves no room for me to breathe p>
“Then teach me.” His voice was soft, urgent, absolutely desperate in a way she had never heard from him before. “Show me how to love you without smothering you. I’m capable of learning, June. I’ve learned everything else. How to build an empire. How to destroy enemies. How to—” he laughed, bitter, “—how to wait. God, how I’ve learned to wait. For you. For this. For the chance to prove that I can be what you need p>
She opened her eyes. The valley was visible now, the fog burning off, the Hudson a silver ribbon below. The world was waking up, ordinary people beginning ordinary days, and here she was on a mountain with a man who had admitted to surveillance, to manipulation, to the absolute refusal to accept her no.
“Take me to the wishing well,” she said.
Crawford blinked. “What p>