Chapter 272. Anton’s Vows

The library at the townhouse was supposed to be a sanctuary for the task. Quiet, lined with the leather-bound ghosts of literature and history, it was a room that had always demanded precision of thought. Now, it felt like a courtroom where he was both defendant and unforgiving judge.

A single sheet of heavy, cream-laid paper sat in the exact centre of the vast, empty desk. A fountain pen, uncapped, lay beside it like a surgical instrument. The blankness of the page was an accusation.

Anton Rogers, who could articulate a hostile takeover in three bullet points and inspire a boardroom with a handful of dry, powerful phrases, was drowning in the oceanic depth of his own feelings. The words he needed were not in the lexicon of quarterly reports or corporate vision statements. They were in the shaky, silent space between heartbeats when he watched her sleep. They were in the memory of her laughter on the jetty, a sound that had rewritten his definition of victory. They were in the terrifying, glorious vulnerability of her tears as she’d clutched him, the ring finally on her finger.

He picked up the pen. The weight was familiar. The task was not.

Sabatine, he began. Simple. Direct. Good.

From the moment you walked into my life…

He stopped. Cliché. A greeting card sentiment. It dishonoured the seismic, chaotic reality of their beginning. He had been a fortress under siege; she had been a storm he hadn’t known he needed. He crumpled the page, the sound harsh in the quiet, and tossed it towards the fireplace. It missed, landing on the Persian rug in a forlorn ball.

A fresh sheet. He smoothed it with a trembling hand.

You saw the cracks in my armour before I offered you my hand.

Better. Truer. But it was about him. His flaws, his defences. This wasn’t a corporate restructuring plan; it was a love letter. It had to be about her.

Your courage is the compass by which I’ve learned to navigate…

Too abstract. ‘Courage’ was a medal given to soldiers. Her strength was more elemental, more personal. It was the stubborn set of her jaw when she was right, the gentle way she’d learned to touch his scars, the fierce, protective light in her eyes when she looked at him now. How did you capture that in ink?

The second ball of paper joined the first.

Frustration rose, a hot, familiar tide. He was a man of action, of deals sealed with a handshake and billions moved with a keystroke. This… this alchemy of emotion into language felt impossible. What if the words failed? What if he stood before her and their gathered world and sounded like a stranger reciting bad poetry?

A third attempt: I vow to be the shelter you never had…

Patronizing.She didn’t need a shelter; she was a fortress in her own right. She needed a partner in the watchtower.

A fourth: My love for you is the only truth I’ve ever been certain of…

True,but insufficient. It was the bedrock, but the vows were the house they were building upon it.

The crumpled failures multiplied on the rug, a small, snow-white cemetery of his emotional incompetence. He dropped his head into his hands, the heels of his palms pressing into his eyes. A pressure built behind them, hot and insistent. He fought it, the old, ingrained reflex: Rogers men do not cry. Over anything.

But the man writing these vows wasn’t just Rogers. He was Anton. And Anton loved Sabatine with a force that shattered every old rule.

The dam broke. Not with a sob, but with a silent, relentless spill of tears that tracked through his fingers and splashed, dark and shameful, onto the pristine fifth sheet of paper. He cried for the sheer, staggering impossibility of capturing her in words. He cried for the boy who’d been taught that such feelings were a weakness, and for the man who now knew they were his greatest strength. He cried from the overwhelming gratitude that she existed, that she had chosen him, that she would stand before him and expect him to articulate the inarticulable.

He let the tears fall, his shoulders shaking in the silent library. He didn’t hear the soft click of the door opening.

Sabatine had come looking for him. She found him not at his desk, but broken before it, surrounded by the evidence of his struggle. Her heart clenched. She saw the proud, disciplined curve of his back, now bowed under the weight of a feeling too big for language. She saw the tear-stained paper under his hands.

She didn’t go to him. She didn’t offer comfort. She knew, with the deep, cellular knowledge she had of him, that this was a sacred, private battle he had to fight. To interrupt would be to steal something from him.

Instead, with the silent efficiency of her training, she moved. She gathered the discarded balls of paper from the rug, picking them up one by one, handling them as if they were fragile, precious artifacts. She smoothed none of them. She simply collected them, cradling the evidence of his failed attempts, his frustration, his tears, in the cradle of her sweater.

She paused at the door, looking back at him. Her own eyes burned with a fierce, proud love. He was in the arena, wrestling with the angel of his own heart, and he was winning by the simple, brave act of trying.

She slipped out as silently as she’d entered.

Later, when the storm had passed and Anton had finally, exhaustedly, found a thread of words that felt honest—a simple, direct series of promises that spoke of partnership, of chosen family, of building a life of meaning together—he looked for his discarded failures. He needed to burn them, to erase the evidence of his struggle.

They were gone.

He frowned, checking under the desk, the chairs. Nothing. Only the single, finally-right sheet remained.

He found her in the kitchen, making tea. Her back was to him.

“The drafts,”he said, his voice rough from crying. “The ones I threw away. Did you…?”

She turned, her expression serene. She nodded to a small, beautiful wooden box on the counter, one he’d never seen before. It was inlaid with a geometric pattern of darker wood. “They’re in there.”

He stared. “Why?”

She walked over to him,taking his hands. Her thumbs stroked his knuckles. “Because they’re the most beautiful thing you’ve ever written,” she said softly. “More beautiful than the final version will ever be. They’re the map of how hard you tried. How much you felt. How much this matters to you.” Her eyes glistened. “I want to keep them. To remember that the man I’m marrying wept at his desk because he couldn’t find words big enough for his love. That’s the real vow, Anton. Not the perfect words on the perfect paper. The imperfect, human, glorious struggle behind them.”

He pulled her to him, holding her tightly, burying his face in her hair. He had no words left. She had taken his failures and transformed them into the ultimate testament. She had seen him, truly seen him—not the billionaire, not the strategist, but the man fumbling in the dark with a heart too full—and she had cherished it.

The final vows, when he would speak them, would be clear and true. But they both knew the real promise had already been made, in a library filled with silent tears and crumpled paper, and collected with a love that understood the profound beauty of the broken, heartfelt attempt.

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