“We lost them. I don’t think Maurice and Louis are suddenly going to drive up on the side of the road here.”
“You almost died, Theo!” Dani yelled. “He had you pinned under the water, gasping for air. You could have drowned.”
Her words stopped him in his tracks.
“What happens the next time? Huh?” she continued as cars whizzed by them. “Do you think they’re just going to let you go? You may not know where the eye is, but you havesomethingthey want. Your loyalty? Your silence? I’d say your intelligence, but you’re being pretty stupid right now.”
He winced internally. It felt like a stab through the heart. But he had no retort.
Because she was right.
He thought of all the times she took risks back when they were kids. She’d always been so stubborn, never listening to anyone when they told hernoor said she was being foolish.
And now there he was, the foolish one.
“I know you think this means something. That your papou told you those stories because he wanted you to make this discovery someday, but you said it yourself—it was just a story.”
Her voice pleaded with him to understand. Pleaded with him to believe his own words, the very words he said to Vautour to convince him of his ignorance.
“I thought you were dead, Theo. Please don’t make mewatchyou die, too. I don’t think I could take it.”
Theo stared at her, picturing himself in her shoes. If he had to witness her death, he would never be able to live with himself.
“You’re right,” he finally said. “We’ll go home.”
She closed her eyes, let out a long breath, and smiled.
“We still need to get to Christos’s, though,” he said, and her eyelids flung open, but he tamped his hands to calm her down. “Just so we can go through Andreas’s connection at the embassy.”
“And then we go home?” She looked at him with those eyes that could make him do anything.
Even give up his search for answers.
“And then we go home. I promise.”
* * *
By the time they madeit back to Christos’s, Andreas had already beaten them there. The relief on his face when they pulled up in the cab told Theo all the answers he needed: they were cousins, regardless of whether by blood or not.
They spent the evening making arrangements for Theo and Dani to meet Andreas’s contact at the embassy in the morning, and then after another one of Christos’s meals that they would most certainly miss, and Andreas agreeing to send some moneyto the boat owner on Theo’s behalf, Dani went to bed. Theo and Andreas stayed up a bit longer, telling stories about their grandparents and becoming surer of their blood relation with each similar mannerism. Theo said he’d send a photo of his papou as soon as he got back to the States so Andreas could compare. Though they still weren’t sure how—or evenif—they’d bring it up to Lydia or their parents. Truthfully, Theo didn’t want to leave. He wanted to verify Papantonis’s existence. He wanted to explore his roots.
But he’d made a promise.
Theo snuck into the bedroom a little after midnight, but Dani was already sleeping on her side. Even with the windows open, the room was hot. So he stripped down to his boxers and snuggled up behind her, careful not to rouse her. It had been a long day, and tomorrow would likely be just as grueling, even if not physically. Her vanilla scent soothed him quickly to sleep, however. And as he dozed off, he wondered if he’d ever sleep the same without her again.
He’d been asleep for a few hours before eventually needing to relieve the pressure on his shoulder. Throwing the chair at the window in the library earlier in the day definitely didn’t help with his healing. Plus, it was hot as fuck in that room. Theo turned onto his back, trying not to displace the mattress and disturb Dani too much, but where he expected their bodies to dip toward each other in the center of the bed, Theo felt nothing.
His hand darted over to her side of the bed. Empty. Theo flung his eyes open, ready to fly out of the room to search for her, but when he shot up, he saw a light coming from underneath the door of the adjacent study. With the slightest, slowest of movements, Theo climbed off the bed and crept over to the other room.
He twisted the doorknob and opened the door a crack. And there she was, sitting at a tiny desk in the corner of the roomwith one leg pulled up to her chest and the other dangling below her as she hunched over a couple of books, a pencil in her hand.
His movement in the doorway caught her attention, and she spun the chair in his direction. The light cast a halo around her, and Theo lifted his hand to shield his eyes as he quickly slid into the room.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said, angling the light away from the door. But now that he could see her, he almost wished she’d turn it back.
Because seeing Dani sitting there in the world’s shortest black shorts and a hot-pink low-cut tank top sans bra wasn’t going to help when and if he tried going back to sleep. How did he not notice that’s what she was wearing when he got into the bed?
“You didn’t wake me,” Theo finally said. “It’s…it’s too hot to sleep.”
