He’s quiet while I snicker.
“You thought I would laugh about you fucking someone else?” he asks, a serrated edge to his voice. “I don’t find that funny at all.”
My light laughter fizzles into a thickening silence. He doesn’t crack a smile. “You’re being really intense right now, Doc.”
“I thought you knew I’m pretty intense when it comes to you.” Our stare holds in the moonlight with only the faintest clink of glasses and music in the distance. “I already knew you dated Wallace before because I kept tabs on you through the years. Not in a stalkery way.”
“Is there a non-stalkery way to keep tabs on someone for ten years?”
“Yeah, the way I did it.”
“If you say so,” I say with a tiny smirk. “Why’d you keep tabs on me in this non-stalkerish manner?”
“I wanted to see how your career was going. I knew you’d do great, but even I never imagined you’d do so well so quickly.”
“Thank you.”
“And I was curious if you married or had kids, a family.” He pauses before going on. “What I had with you, I’ve never even come close with anyone else, and that was in only a week. Imagine if it had been more. Now it can be more if you give me another chance.”
“I don’t know, Doc.” I let the words fall, unsure if I should pick them up again. I know what I want, that I want him, but the fear I hid even from myself still makes me hesitate.
“Give me another chance, Nix. That’s all I’m asking.”
“That’s all?” I nearly choke on my disbelieving laugh. “You’re a wolf in wolf’s clothing. You’ll want everything.”
“Everything.” His agreement comes softly, but his eyes turn hard as sea glass. “There’ll be no one else for you.”
“See what I mean? You’ll be growly and possessive and demanding.”
“Of course I will.”
“You’ll be all mine, mine, dammit, mine and—”
“Only when someone needs reminding.”
“I’m embarking on the most important campaign of my life, Maxim.”
“So am I, and I’m not talking about Owen’s.”
“Doc,” I groan. “Maybe this isn’t the right time. It’s a lot fast.”
“Fast? It’s been ten years.” He reaches up and caresses my lips with his thumb. “Any time we can get our shit together is the right time.”
“There’s something else we need to discuss.” I fix my eyes on the expensive boots peeking out from beneath his pants. “Wallace wasn’t the only thing I hid behind. I think I hid behind your lies.”
“What do you mean?”
“My therapist has a theory about me.” I laugh humorlessly. “She has several because apparently, I’m a basket case.”
He doesn’t laugh, but reaches for my hand and pulls me forward a few inches to stand between his legs. I don’t pull back.
“Tell me these theories.”
“Mena agrees with her. She always says, ‘you paid a stranger to tell you what I told you years ago.’” I lift my eyes to briefly meet his, but the intensity of his gaze is so much, I look back to the ground right away.
“Which was?” he asks.
“She said when my mother disappeared, I shut a part of myself off because I was afraid to feel. Afraid to hope. I understand myself better now than I did when I was younger. It wasn’t hard for me to abstain from sex because I need an emotional connection for physical intimacy, and I allowed myself that with very few people after my mother died.”
“I get that.”
“But then I met you again in Amsterdam.” I shake my head and squeeze the bridge of my nose. “And it was like someone took a stick of dynamite to a dam, and everything that had been held back gushed out. I felt everything. More than I had ever felt. When you told me you would walk away, I think I dealt with that prospect pretty well.” A bark of laughter scrapes my throat. “What you didn’t say is you might almost die a few times. I could handle you walking away a lot better than that.”
A single tear skids down my check and I swipe at it. “I hated that you made me hope, you made me pray again when you disappeared. No one could get to you. We weren’t sure if you were dead or alive. And I just . . .”
I shake my head and heave a breath, searching for the strength to keep going. He squeezes my hand, silently encouraging me to continue. I reach down to touch his hair, pushing it back to expose the silvery scar where stitches used to be.
“I had poured all my feelings into protest, into activism, into my studies—those things never let me down. They never disappeared.”
“But I did,” he says, understanding in his voice. “I disappeared.”
“Yeah, you did.” I drop my hand from his hair. “You disappeared, and I hoped and hoped and hoped like I promised myself I never would have to hope again. I thought you would die.”
“But I didn’t,” he reminds me, his voice rising. “Baby, I didn’t.”
“But you hadn’t even gotten home and were already planning to go to the damn Amazon, and then God knows where. You love danger.”
“No, I don’t love danger,” he says, his frown fierce and marring the line of his brows. “I love knowledge, and some mysteries have to be pursued. The greatest innovations, inventions, and solutions don’t just fall into our laps. Some answers have to be hunted down.”
“And they’re worth the risk, right? I heard the interviews after. You’re a thrill-seeker. You’re reckless. I didn’t have enough hope left for someone like you, and I couldn’t have my heart broken that way again.”
I close my eyes tightly, but the image of me whispering my mother’s name into the wind won’t go away. “Not like that. I can’t live through that again.”
“And my lie was the perfect excuse for you to give up on me.”
“In retrospect, I think so.” I run a trembling hand through my hair. “And it worked until you came back and started demanding that I feel again.”
He wraps his hands around the backs of my legs and brings me even deeper into the V of his thighs. “We can do this, Nix.”
“Can we? Is it worth it for someone I barely even know?”
His head snaps back. “Barely know? I’ve known you since you were seventeen years old.”
“Technically, yeah, but—”
“I know your favorite color is blue–green,” he says, tightening his hands on me. “Because they’re just better blended together.”
I bend my head, hiding my smile.
“I know you used to want to be a clown,” he continues, “but then decided to pursue the more conventional path of being an astronaut.”
He palms the curve of my waist with one hand and lifts my chin with one finger, holding my eyes when I raise them. “I know you’re the girl who chases stars, Nix.”
I smile and push an errant lock of burnished dark hair back from his forehead. The humor fades from his eyes, from his expression.
“I’ve seen the spot where you whispered your mother’s name to the wind,” he says, lacing his fingers with mine, drawing me down, unresisting, to perch on his leg. I snuggle into him, tucking my head into the strong slope of his shoulder and neck.