“I’ve missed you, too.” I place my hand over his chest, feeling the steady beat underneath. Aleksander has a soft, gentle heart, like Constantine. A heart that knows how to love, but one that is also fragile and easy to break.
Clambering off his lap, I motion for him to scoot forward so I can slide in behind him. He settles between the vee of my legs and hums in pleasure when my fingers dig into the tight muscles of his shoulders. “How was your day?”
“Filled with meetings. The boring kind.” His large hands caress up and down my thighs in lazy strokes, but the effect his touch has on me is like throwing a lit match into a lake filled with gasoline.
“Were you writing in your journal?” The book I thought he was reading is actually the brown leather journal I gave to him.
I have boxes filled with journals I’ve kept over the years.The History of Us, I call them. I got Aleksander into journaling last year. It’s a good way to help unload the demons of your trauma. Put them on paper and let the pages be their keepers, not you.
“Reading and reminiscing,” he replies.
“What about?”
“You and me.”
Resting my chin on his shoulder, I kiss his neck, the sandalwood soap he uses every morning in the shower still clinging to his skin. “I like that story.”
He plays with the ends of my hair draped over his chest. “I don’t know if I say it enough because I’m shit with words”—he tips his face—“but I love you, Syn. Madly and deeply.”
My freaking heart melts into a puddle inside my chest. Aleksander has difficulty expressing himself, but he never has to say the words for me to know how much he loves me.
“Grá geal mo croí, m'fhear céile.” You are the bright love of my heart, my husband. Picking up his journal, I set it in his lap. “Read me our love story.”
It hasn’t been an easy one to write, but like with most stories, ours would start withonce upon a time. That is usually how fairy tales begin.
But my love story is no fairytale, and I’m definitely not the naïve damsel in distress waiting for her Prince Charming to rescue her.
I’m a woman who loves more than one man. Three of them are my childhood best friends. Hendrix Knight, Constantine Ferreira, and Tristan Amato.
And then there’s the lonely boy from my youth with soft gray eyes. Tristan’s half brother. The man whose twin I killed. Our former enemy turned ally.
My love story is filled with death and blood, and my Prince Charmings are four brutally beautiful, dangerous men. Men who would drench the world in gasoline, light the match, and smile as they watched it burn.
The five of us are a confusing jumble of mismatched pieces to a puzzle that somehow fit together perfectly. We’re five souls who were destined to be together, no matter what was thrown at us to keep us apart. Our love is something that should be impossible, but we’ve managed to shape it into something extraordinary.
I once told Hendrix that he was my freedom, Constantine was my sweet, safe place, and Tristan was my strength.
And Aleksander? Well, that part of my love story is…complicated.
I fell in love with the one person I shouldn’t have. I tried to stop my heart from jumping off that cliff of no return, but I think Aleksander and I have been on a collision course since the moment he asked me to dance when we were kids. Just like my heart knew that Tristan, Constantine, and Hendrix were my soulmates, it instinctively knew a piece of itself would always belong to Aleksander.
It’s that damn broken compass inside me, forcing me to travel in the direction of my true north. Apparently, my true north seems to be all four cardinal directions. North, East, South, and West.
You already know most of our story, but in order to understand how Aleksander embedded himself into my heart, we need to start in the past.
Two
Journal Entry
The Society gala
Eleven years old
Tap,tap, tap.
My fingers drum against the starched fabric of my trousers.Index. Middle. Ring. Pinkie.There’s too much noise. Too many people. The air too viscous with cloying perfume and men’s cologne, making it unbearable to breathe. Beads of sweat pop along the back of my neck, and I yank at the bowtie that’s trying to strangle me.
“Stop fidgeting, Aleks,” Mama quietly admonishes, glancing down at me from the height of her five-inch stilettos.
