“Look, let me try to explain. You were the only person who ever made me feel like I was worth more than just my brains, more than just my schemes, more than just surviving.” He raced on ahead. “And I was terrified of what that meant—that if I let myself love you, I’d have to learn how to be more than that. I’d have to be someone who knew how to love, how tobeloved. I was afraid of what that would make me. What it would take from me. What it would demand of me. I was afraid ofyou.”
His breath hitched, his fists curling like he was trying to hold himself together by will alone. “I was afraid of how much I wanted you. How much I needed you. I was afraid that if I let myself have you, I wouldn’t know how to keep you. I had so little to begin with, and if I lost you”—he swallowed hard, shaking his head—“there’d be nothing left of me.”
His hands trembled at his sides. In fact, his entire body was shaking. “And that’s why I couldn’t say it. When we said goodbye, the first time. I used to be afraid of what you made me feel. Of the way you looked at me like I was someone worth saving, worth—fuck, worth loving—when they told me my whole life I wasn’t.”
I opened my mouth.
“But I’m not afraid anymore.”
Our eyes locked. The tips of his fingers entwined with the tips of mine, desperate but certain. “I love you, Lou. I love you, and nobody ever taught me how to do it, but if you let me, I swear to fucking God I will try.”
“Shai.”
“Yeah?” he said, answering to his name immediately as if he were desperate to let me take over.
“Come here.” I swept his snow-dusted lock of golden hair, cupping his face as he lowered his lashes and leaned forward into my touch with the most exhausted sigh I’d ever heard. His cheek was frigid on the surface but warm beneath, and the warmth transferred to my fingertips as I held them there.
“I can’t speak for the world, but I can speak for me.”
He raised his eyes.
“And I know there isn’t any version of you, in any lifetime, in any universe, that I would ever not like. That I would ever not want. That I would ever not love.”
His sigh of relief seemed to shake him to his core. “I wasreallyhoping you would say that,” he confessed. “And I know Ihave some catching up to do, so I promise you’ll be hearingI love youagain, every day, for the rest of my life. And if I miss a day, which I won’t, call me out on it, yeah?”
“Oh, I will.” I pressed myself against him again, winding my arms around his waist under his coat, poking his hip with mine. And like that, we kept walking farther into the silent park, crunching leaves, kicking snow, toward a wall of elms and along a row of maples with not a single crimson leaf left to fall.
But his eyes were fixed on something even farther away. Across the icy river, beyond the iron-gray bay, over an ocean. “And—since you asked, there’s one more thing. I have to go back,” he said, turning to me suddenly. “With Maeve. To where the Alzette meets the Petrusse. That’s where—well. To put a marker up.”
Slowly, he raised our clasped hands, scientifically examining the way our fingers interlocked, before earnestly meeting my eyes. “Will you come with us? This summer,” he said, adding, “Luxembourg will be beautiful then.”
As if he thought he had to sell me on it. On seeing his homeland. His real homeland, where he’d been abused as cruelly as he had been everywhere else, but that he loved all the same.
“I’d go anywhere with you, Shai. You know that.” I kissed that intricate, interlocking bed of scars—a kiss that revealed, to my surprise, his initials etched in stacked script on the gold signet ring:S-v-S.
“I bought one for Maeve, too,” he explained. “She traced the genealogy. Van Someren was our family name, from generations ago. Before the hard times.”
“‘Van?’”
“They say it signifies nobility.” The trace of a smile, keen for my reaction.
“Nobility? Malin was right? Youarea prince?” I bounced a little on his arm.
“No,” he admitted, shaking his head. “Although my third great-grandfatherwasa grand duke, apparently. But don’t get too excited. I didn’t inherit anything. We looked into it, believe me.”
“Great-grandson of a grand duke,” I repeated. “Okay. Well, not every girl can saythatabout her boyfriend. Or that she named him,” I added slyly.
“All right, young lady, let’s clear one thing up right now: it was asuggestion,” he said as I laughed mischievously. “Which Ichoseto accept. Probably because it just sounded so damn sexy on your lips.”
“Sexy?! You weredying!”
“Yeah, I know. A guy can’t die happy? And where’d you come up with it, anyway? Do you speak Hebrew?”
“Not a word, but my grandmother did. And it means ‘gift.’ Which you are.”
“Gift?” He arched an eyebrow. “I think you mean ‘gifted.’”
“I mean both. Now kiss me, Shai. Oh, shit, wow, thatdoessound sexy.”
