“And Snow saw your magical lineage, so you ended up as a member of the Society.” She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d been presented with the same impossible choice Snow had given her.
How did Nico choose? Life in a world with his Julia, but she would live in unimaginable pain. Or life in a world where his beloved would never think of him again, but thrive?
“I did. But the pope was assassinated and my Julia walked free before any harm was done to her. She lived a good life here in our Florence, eventually marrying another and having a whole brood of children.” Nico smiled, but Jo wondered how much sorrow he’d felt over the years—watching his love, his betrothed, marry another with no recollection of his existence.
“And you still love her, after all that,” Jo whispered mostly to herself, so she was startled when she got a response.
“Immensely. There is no time or world where I love her less.”
“I wonder. . . what that feels like.”
“Have you never been in love?”
Now, there was a question. Jo had certainly gotten around, experimented, had her fun, but love? Actual heart-pumping, world-shaking love? She thought she felt that for Yuusuke once, but the feeling wasn’t returned and it fizzled way too easily back into friendship to have been much of anything more.
“Not really,” she finally admitted, to herself as much as him. It seemed almost. . . sacrilegious to attempt to lie, even to herself, in a place like this. Before a love like the one Nico still carried. “Not a love like yours at least. . . I don’t think I’d know it even if I saw it.”
“Why is that?”
“My parents divorced when I was a kid.” Jo shrugged, turning her eyes skyward, blinking. Instead of seeing clouds, she saw spats between her mother and father, the precursors to the day he walked out.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nico said, offering the usual platitude. “But that hardly means you don’t know, or can’t know, love.”
Jo chuckled and shook her head. “No role models at home to equate to true love, really. . . And it’s not like there’s much room for it in the mob. Love just means people who can be hurt to get to you. It’s safer to act alone.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You haven’t seen what they’ll do to people who fall out of line.” Jo met his eyes, mostly as a challenge—one Nico did not attempt to meet.
“I may not know what they’d do,” he conceded one battle, and continued another. “But I do know that love is its own form of protection—to have another that will look out for you, no matter what. To have an unquestioning shelter to retreat to when the world becomes too much to bear.”
It was Jo’s turn to be quiet. She couldn’t argue with a man who had given his life for the woman he loved. Hadn’t she done the same for Yuusuke? Perhaps even if their love hadn’t been romantic, it was genuine.
“I still wouldn’t know,” she mumbled in direct contradiction to everything in her mind.
“Lying does not become you, Josephina.” Nico called her out with a gentle smile. Jo returned it weakly. He was the only man who could have her smiling while backing her into a proverbial corner at the same time. “And I mean that in all areas.”
The smile fell from her lips. “Huh?”
“I think you know exactly what love is.” He finally began walking back toward the gate, the transition in conversation begging a physical transition back to what their lives now were. “And I think you’re looking to find it.”
“I don’t know—” A look from Nico had Jo changing gears mid-sentence. “I can’t.”
“Why not? The foundation is clearly there, waiting to be built upon.”
“We are talking about the same Snow, aren’t we?” The idea of there being the opportunity for something genuine between them seemed so outrageous that she had no choice but to clarify. The contrast between Nico’s counsel and Wayne’s was so disparate, Jo felt something like a short circuit sparking in her brain.
“Who else?”
“Snow is. . . he’s. . .”
“If you doubt yourself when it comes to seeing the ways of love, fine. But you have made it clear you don’t doubt me. I know what a love that transcends time looks like.”
“Getting a little heavy, aren’t we? It’s not like he and I have even broached the subject of a date, even.” Jo laughed, feeling nervous energy creep up from somewhere deep within. She wanted to change the topic, desperately. And yet. . . didn’t. She had originally sought out Nico for clarity and all she felt was more of a mess.
“Have faith in yourself, Jo,” Nico encouraged. “You know what to do.”
“Wayne thinks it’s a bad idea. Too risky,” Jo mumbled.
