MY RUIN: In Love With My Step-Uncle-Chapter 41 - Forty-One: Worth the Fire

//CLARA//

The ink had barely dried on my reply to Oliver when the terrace doors burst open with a violence that sent the candle flame guttering.

I spun in my chair, pen still poised like a weapon, as Casimir stepped over the threshold.

He was a mess. His overcoat was rumpled, his hair disheveled by the wind, and his breathing was jagged. The moonlight carved sharp, predatory angles across his face, turning his eyes into something feral.

He hadn’t bothered with the door, hadn’t bothered with the stairs. He’d scaled the damn terrace like a thief in the night, all to avoid the indignity of knocking.

My pulse stuttered. I’d expected him to be in his study, drowning in expensive brandy and the suffocating weight of his own self-recrimination. Instead, here he was, his hands streaked with mortar dust from the climb.

The sheer absurdity of it—the great Casimir Guggenheim, a titan of this century, who moved through the world like a blade through silk, reduced to clambering up walls like a lovesick boy—should have made me laugh.

But the way his gaze locked onto me, dark and searching, stole the breath from my lungs.

"What the—" I let out something between a laugh and a shriek. "What the hell, Casimir? The door works. It has a handle. I’ve used it before. It’s fully functional."

He didn’t answer. He crossed the room in three heavy strides and stopped directly in front of me. His hand came up, his fingers cold from the night air and trembling with a fine, rhythmic shudder. He traced the faint bruise on my cheekbone with a gentleness that made my chest ache.

"Are you sore?" His voice was rough. His eyes dropped to my throat, to the marks there, to the bruises peeking above the neckline of my nightshift. "I hurt you."

I glanced down at the evidence of his hands, the fingerprints on my wrists, the dark bloom of his mouth on my collarbone. I set the pen down carefully, flexing my fingers as if testing them, as if the ache was something I needed to measure.

"Never been better."

A muscle in his jaw twitched, his internal struggle clearly screaming. But I just tilted my head, letting the candlelight catch the marks.

"I’m fine, Casimir."

In my head, I couldn’t help the dry laugh. I had officially lived the impossible—setting aside the small matter of traveling through time—I’d been virginized twice in one lifetime.

Once at seventeen in a dorm room with bad lighting, back when I still believed sex came with a satisfaction guarantee. And now, at eighteen, in Eleanor’s body, against a tree in the woods like something out of a romance novel I’d have mocked a year ago.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. My first time had been a clumsy, forgettable fumble. This one? This one had left bruises and a story I’d be unpacking for years.

It was a weird, cosmic reset, and honestly? The 19th century was winning on the intensity scale.

The silence that followed was comfortable, heavy with the scent of pine and his expensive tobacco. But then his gaze drifted to the desk, to the folded paper bearing Oliver’s name in my handwriting, the ink still drying on my reply.

I watched him process it. The way his shoulders went rigid. The way his jaw locked. The way he exhaled through his nose like a bull preparing to charge. The darkness hit him instantly, that possessive, bone-deep jealousy he tried so hard to smooth over with marble restraint.

But he didn’t move. Didn’t reach for the letter. Didn’t demand an explanation. He just stood there, the silence stretching thick between us, and I let him stew in it. Let him sit with the knowledge that I wasn’t trembling. Wasn’t weeping. Wasn’t any of the fragile, shattered things he’d expected to find when he climbed through my terrace.

"What is the letter about?" His voice dropped an octave.

"Progress," I said, leaning back. I didn’t hide it. I wanted him to see. "Oliver says Mr. Chamberlain has accepted the terms. Do you know him?"

Casimir’s expression shifted into the mask of a magnate.

"Augustus Chamberlain? I’ve financed half his printing presses. He’s the founder of the New York Times."

I gasped, then squealed, a genuine, high-pitched sound of pure giddy shock.

The New York Times?

Theeee...New York Times?

That monstrous, ink-stained leviathan I’d grown up reading, the paper that had chronicled my life like some grim fairy tale. The paper that had splashed my face across the cover when I made it into "The New Face of Beauty," they’d called me, my smile plastered next to a seven-figure contract.

And now—now I was going to meet the man who’d built it. My laugh spilled out, bright and disbelieving. Now, I was standing at the birth of the legend. I wasn’t just reading history. I was the one holding the pen.

"The launch is in three weeks," I chirped, bouncing slightly on the carpet. I couldn’t hide my excitement. "I’m meeting Oliver in the park tomorrow to—"

"You will no longer meet him alone." The command was sudden and absolute. The darkness in his gaze wasn’t just jealousy anymore. It was a territorial claim. "When you conduct these... meetings, I will be present."

"Fine," I said, rolling my eyes but feeling that secret thrill in my gut.

"But if you so much as breathe wrong at Oliver, I’ll drown you into the creek myself."

A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. He didn’t argue. He sat on the edge of my bed, the mattress dipping under his weight. I turned back to the letter, reading it again, tracing Oliver’s looping script with my fingertip. The words blurred.

Not from tears—from the sheer, electric rightness of it.

I was doing this. I was really, actually, no-take-backs doing this.

The paper rustled as I held it out to Casimir, wanting him to see it, to understand what this meant.

"This is Oliver’s letter. Read it."

He didn’t take it. Instead, his hand closed around my wrist, his thumb pressing against the pulse point. Not hard. Not enough to bruise. Just enough to hold. To remind himself that I wasn’t going anywhere.

The letter fluttered forgotten to the floor. I didn’t reach for it. Instead, I took the initiative.

No grand gesture. No dramatic declaration. I simply stood, stepped between his knees, and settled onto his lap like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like I’d been doing it my whole life. Like there was nowhere else I was meant to be. His hands found my waist before I was fully settled, pulling me closer before I’d even finished moving.

His breath hitched, a sharp intake of air that told me he wasn’t as composed as he looked. I ignored it, draping my arms around his neck and burying my face in the crook of his shoulder. He smelled like smoke, leather, and the faint, sharp bite of whiskey. I wanted to berate him for climbing walls after a drink, but the silence blanketed us, and for once, I let the lecture slide.

His chin rested on top of my head. I could feel the frantic thud of his heart through his coat.

"There is not a day in my life since you arrived that I haven’t prayed for our situation to be different," he whispered into my hair. "That you were not my ward. That I was not bound by the names we carry."

I hummed, pulling back just enough to take his face in my palms. My thumbs traced the sharp, tragic line of his cheekbones, forcing him to look at me.

"And there is not a day since I got here that I haven’t thanked God it was you," I whispered back.

The words came out steady, but I felt them catch somewhere in my chest. Because it was true.

Because despite the suffocating silk, the evil witch Aunt Cornelia, and a parasitic pretty boy like Bartholomew—not to mention the literal century of history between us—I wouldn’t trade this for any of it.

I wouldn’t trade him. Not for the way he looks at me like I’m the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth, even if he knows I’m the very thing that’s going to burn his entire world to the ground. He’s already seen the match in my hand, and he’s already decided it’s worth the fire.

"I don’t need a guardian, Casimir. I need a match. And I’ve finally found someone who isn’t afraid to burn with me."

His breath shuddered out, his forehead dropping against mine. And then his mouth was on me. It wasn’t like the creek—there was no war for dominance here.

His lips moved against mine like he was memorizing the shape of me, like he was afraid I’d dissolve into the moonlight if he pressed too hard.

I let him. Let myself sink into it, into the warmth of him, the solidity.

For once, I didn’t fight. Didn’t bite back. I just... let him.