Author's Notes…

Hello. I know that it's been a very long time since I updated this. I have left notes in my other two major works that state why—I just really don't want to have to write it out again. It's just been a very hard, very trying time. And just when I got back on my feet, I got a kidney stone, and it's been a miserable ride from there!

Anyway… without further ado… I present…

Falling for the Enemy

Chapter Fifty-Two

The Heart of Bravery

"Is it me, or were you trying to get rid of Sitrine?" Ben mused as they handily left Rey's friend at a tavern in the company of a beautiful group of boys.

Rey smiled to herself. "You know that I was."

Ben's brows flicked in a distinctly upward direction. "Do I?"

She rolled her eyes and smacked him lightly. "Yes."

This earned her a flash of a devilish grin. He twirled her on the snowy sidewalk so that she was nestled against his side, his arm snug around her shoulders, and dropped a kiss to her hair. And her heart squeezed in on itself in that new way that it had, reminding her of all the unspoken feelings between them—well. From her side. Ben had voiced his quite succinctly.

How had it come to be that way? Not that she had spent a lot of time imagining how… how they would say they loved one another, but… for him to say it first…

How had Ben grown more emotionally mature than her?

Well.

In this regard.

"Where do you want to go, then? I don't want to head back to the castle," he was saying.

"Oh… um… somewhere… we can talk…" she half-whispered.

His steps hesitated—continued on as though they hadn't. He could have pressed her, asked her what it was that she wanted to talk about. He didn't. He simply kissed her hair again and stroked her shoulder.

He knew.

Similar to the time before when they had been here, they took a car out for a drive by themselves. This was done in mostly silence. Alderaan was sleepy with the cold, nestled deep in the snow, its trees thick with it, its roads less plowed the further they went outside the city. They didn't travel very far because of this. Ben pulled off into a sightseeing overlook, and Rey watched snowflakes gather on the windshield, sticking together to form a light layer in no time at all.

"Do you want to get out of the car?" Ben asked when that layer had grown so thick, they couldn't see through it.

Rey hesitated. To be honest, she… well… This wasn't how she had imagined telling him—she hadn't allowed herself to imagine telling him. What if she chickened out? What if she couldn't do this, after all?

She buried her face in her hands.

Ben gingerly tucked her hair behind her ear. "Are you going to break my heart?" he asked in the softest voice she had ever heard him utter.

Her eyes widened. She snapped her head up, twisting in her seat, and the seatbelt pulled at her chest in an irritating fashion, rubbing the skin of her neck raw from where she'd unwound her scarf. She unfastened the bloody thing, gripping onto his strong hands over the center console—found she was breathing hard. She didn't know why. She hadn't run a marathon. She'd barely moved a muscle until just now. It was just… her heart was pounding so fast, it was like she couldn't get breath to her lungs fast enough…

"Do you really think that?" she asked, anguished, not blaming him but unable to bear the idea that he might.

He was quiet for a moment, his eyes on her hands. They were so tiny compared to his own, something he would note in the late hours of the night before kissing each of them. The pads of his thumbs dragged over her wrists as he turned them over, exposing her palms. And, as surely as her heart struggled to beat in her breast, he lifted those palms to his lips and brushed a kiss to first one and then the other.

"I think you don't want to," he said carefully.

"I don't," she replied, her voice so strangled it was hard to get anything out. But she had to try. She clenched his fingers to force him to look at her. "Ben. Ben."

But he wouldn't.

It seemed this was the moment.

Her mouth opened and closed, and tears slipped down her cheeks because she couldn't blink them back in time, and the earth felt like it was opening up beneath her feet and wanted to drag her into its depths. To cover her up, to hide her from everything, to make it safe. Safe, where her heart was protected, shielded from the one thing she had thought it incapable of.

But the thought of him not in her life was too much to even contemplate.

"Ben, I would never hurt you like that." She hated it when she cried. She didn't think she was very pretty when she did so, and her voice got a rather rough quality to it. It was especially so now, low as it was, forced around the lump lodged so firmly in the hollow of her throat. "Never. Ever."

"Are you asking for more time, then?" The words were barely audible. He closed his eyes.

"N-No—I—I wanted to speak with you because I—"

Why was this so difficult?!

He had done it!

"Rey, I'm not going to make you say it if you don't—"

She kissed him, her hands leaving his so that she could slip them into thick, silky strands of black hair. His arms came around her in surprise. She knew he could taste her tears—tasted them herself. They were salty, bitter with the knowledge that she was being a coward, that he had been brave where she couldn't, treading where she didn't dare.

"Are you afraid?"

Yes. Yes, she was so, so afraid.

"Time to tell him, hm?"

It wasn't that easy!

But did she want to be the girl who was so broken, she thought again—the girl who was so broken, that she couldn't say—that she couldn't say she—that she—

Ben brushed her tears away and let his forehead rest against hers as the kiss came to its natural end. His hands settled in the vicinity of her waist, keeping her close.

"I love you," he murmured for the second time.

And she crumbled into pieces.

"Are you going to break my heart?"

Rey wept. Ben kissed each tear away, slowly, methodically, and the more she trembled, shuddered from the pulse of emotions inside of her, the harder he held onto her.

"I love you," he breathed between each kiss. "I love you…"

A sob launched itself from her throat. She clutched onto his hair so tightly it must have hurt.

But the words were there, a warm ball in her chest, coaxed closer to the surface with every admittance from him. Her cries died into sniffles until her head tilted up, and she was gazing into velvety brown eyes. There, she found a warmth to match her own. Ben Solo, who was not known for his patience, was… waiting, as he had been waiting, for days and days.

She couldn't make him wait anymore.

No more running.

"I love you, too," she quavered.

He smiled, and his next words stole away all the air she had managed to gather for herself.

"Then marry me."

She didn't ask him if he was sure. In this, Ben would never be spontaneous, would never dream of it. She held his gaze a moment longer, sniffling some more, and then nodded just once, her return smile tremulous.

"Yes," she said, because there wasn't any other answer.

Not to this.

Not to Ben Solo.

Then, with all the enthusiasm of the love bursting in her heart, "Yes!"

She would always remember how… how happy he looked.

"Yes," he said, his mouth closing over hers.

And then there weren't any words at all.