You have loved her without exhaustion for years.
Yes. His mother. He had always been willing to do what he had to in order to make her feel safe. Even if it compromised his own happiness. He had not been sacrificial with his father. But maybe it was because he judged him. Because he felt like his father should be able to handle what Romeo had taken on. And then there was Heather. It had always been her. She had always been the only one. The only one who had engaged more than just his body. But his heart.
And he had rewritten that. Had told himself that it was hatred. With the fire of a thousand suns, so that he wouldn’t have to…live with the extraordinary, magical, devastating miracle of love.
He knew how strong love was. How complicated.
But when he looked back over the years with her, he didn’t feel exhausted. He felt foolish. Because how could he have ever believed that he hated her? He felt small, because he had taken his own fear and fashioned it into a weapon used to keep her away.
But it hadn’t worked. Maybe she was right.
There were all these complicated loves. But maybe theirs wasn’t. Maybe theirs was the one that was meant to be. Maybe theirs was the one that was stronger than anything else. Maybe theirs was the one that would actually heal, and not hurt.
Because God knew a life without her wouldn’t do a damn thing to fix him. But he had to stop running. He had to stop fighting.
He had to stand there, and let in the light.
Eventually she would go back to New York. Eventually she was going to have to tell him where she was. But not right now. Right now she was happy to just live with her best friend and try to piece together some semblance of a routine. She could feel the baby move now. She was so happy about it. And so mad at Romeo that she couldn’t share it with him.
She had gone grocery shopping so that she could cook tonight. Something to make her feel alive.
Someday she would inhabit her strength fully. It was not this day. The streetlights were beginning to come on, and she simply couldn’t make herself walk faster as she approached Catherine’s town house. And then, beneath the glow of the light, she saw a tall, imposing figure. All in black. A man that she would know anywhere. A man that she knew better than anyone else.
“‘Wherefore art thou, Romeo?’”
He stepped into the light fully. “I haven’t had any poison.”
“I’m thankful for that.” Her chest tightened. “Why are you here? Because if it’s for your wounded pride, to enforce a document or to try and have your way I—”
“It’s not. It’s not I… I came for you. Not because we signed papers. Not because of my pride. Because of my heart. It would’ve been so much easier if I could have believed that what my parents had wasn’t love. The problem is, it was. My father loved me. My mother loves me. Their best version of love left me scarred. And the intensity of my own feelings…it terrified me. That if I ever love somebody I would hurt them, the same way that my parents hurt each other. That I would hurt a child the same way my mother hurt me. When I met you, it felt like it was confirmed. All of the feelings that we have traded back and forth, it seemed to confirm that. That I would be a danger to you. To me. I kept renegotiating the boundaries, because I wanted you. It isn’t going away. It isn’t going to change. So I surrender, Heather. To you. To this. To love. If this is how I die, then it’s how I die. By loving you. And I would rather experience it that way than to live all the years ever without you.”
She didn’t have words. So she just stretched up on her toes and threw her arms around his neck, her grocery bags hitting him in the back. “I love you.”
“I love you.”
“It won’t be the death of us,” she whispered.
“How do you know?”
“Because it has kept us going all this time. Even when we called it something else. So let’s have this now. Let’s have each other. I love you. I love you so much it hurts. And I love that it does. Because it also brings me joy. And so do you.”
“Heather… I’m not worthy of that.”
“You never had to be. You simply had to be you. That’s all it’s ever been. It was you from the beginning. And you all the days after.”
“And it will be us forever.”
She stretched up on her toes and kissed him. She kissed him with all of the love in her body. “Do you know that love has a flavor?”
“What is it?”
“It’s you.”
EPILOGUE
Their love wasn’tpainful. It was beautiful. The pain had been in trying to keep it from flourishing. Growth that was being suppressed by fear. But once it was given free rein, it spread over everything. And it made their life beautiful.
Once he let go of the idea that he had to earn everything, even his relationship with his mother improved. And ten years later, as they brought their four children to visit their grandmother for Christmas, going to the house in Vienna felt light. Which was something Romeo would have said was impossible. But it turned out that nothing was truly impossible with love. Especially not the kind like he and Heather had.
