I looked at her openly, shamelessly—no more of those pathetic stolen glances I'd been rationing like a starving man counting crumbs. Just raw, uninterrupted staring, the way you look at a masterpiece that makes you forget you were ever walking toward anything else in the first place.
"Can I say something?" I asked.
"I doubt I could stop you if I tried."
"You are—and I need you to hear this exactly as the honest, unfiltered truth it is, not as some cheap line or strategy you can file away under 'predictable male bullshit'—you REALLY are one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life."
She didn't flinch. Didn't blush or shift in her seat. Those dark, razor-sharp eyes—Luna's eyes, but forged in decades of ice and armor—locked onto mine, and in a voice so flat it could've paved a highway, she delivered:
"I'm your mother-in-law."
"I'm aware."
"Compliments don't work on me."
