He could tell her, but she wouldn't believe him unless she was able to see it with her own eyes — and feel it. Which is why he lifts her hand to his chest and places her palm over his heart so she can feel it beating away beneath his ribs. He's alive. Angel died in hell in reset time and managed to somehow rewind it all back to right before everything started to fall apart around them. He couldn't have had this sort of happy ending while he was still undead and sporting a pair of fangs (happiness clause and all), but as a human? There was no risk involved.

Yes, there was still a part of him that believed he didn't deserve this, but there was another part that was tired, that had been through the most trying experience of his nearly three hundred years of existence, that wanted this, because he'd done so much. Didn't someone who went to bat for the whole of humanity against a force that could've — and almost did — squash him like a bug?

Angel breathed in deeply so she could feel the air filling his lungs, too, and smiled.

"No flames. Not anymore."