“It was only after a private meeting with Domenico Moretti that I agreed to work with L’Alliance,” he says. “Human affairs were never relevant to me. I simply joined because it was logical and practical. But after meeting you...”
He trails off. Looks at me with those pale eyes.
All I can do is swallow. It’s just so hard to believe that a man like Alexei has feelings for me, and when he suddenly sweeps me into his arms and carries me to the shower...
All I can do is wrap my arms around his neck. The thought of what we’re about to do feels so embarrassingly intimate, but...oh...oh...
AFTER, WE TOUR THEfortress.
He walks me through rooms I didn’t know existed: a library that spans three floors, a conservatory with plants that glow faintly in the dim light, a music room with a piano that he tells me hasn’t been played in years. I touch the keys and a single note rings through the space, pure and lonely, and I wonder how long he’s lived in this beautiful, enormous place by himself.
We pass those same stone structures I noticed during the ceremony, the low weathered ones along the tree line. “For changing,” he’d told me then, and I still haven’t asked what exactly needs changing in them. Riding gear, probably. The estate has stables. I file it away again and keep walking.
He shows me a balcony that overlooks a valley I’m fairly sure doesn’t exist on any human map, and we stand there in the cold mountain air while I wear his shirt and his arm rests around my shoulders, and I think about how the word “home” has always meant a studio apartment with books arranged by color and a window that doesn’t close all the way.
It might mean something different now.
It might mean the weight of his arm and the scent of mountain air and a piano waiting to be played.
I take his hand.
He looks down at our intertwined fingers like he’s never seen anything like it before.
And I think:I love you. I love you. I love you.
And I will say it soon.
But first, I need to find my phone, because my mother has probably called seventeen times and organized a welcome brunch and invited the neighbors.
Ruby, efficient as always, has collected my things from the garden and placed them in the suite adjoining Alexei’s bedroom, a room that I think is supposed to be mine, with closet space that could fit my entire apartment and a vanity table that has already been stocked with products I recognize as my brands. I don’t ask how she knows. I’ve stopped asking how anyone in Alexei’s world knows things.
My phone is on the nightstand. Dead.
I plug it in and wait for it to come alive, and when it does, the screen fills with the expected flood: texts from Joni, texts from Trish, notifications from social media accounts I keep forgetting I have. I scroll through them with a half-smile, my thumb moving automatically, my mind still back in the music room with his hand in mine and the single piano note hanging in the air.
And then I see it.
Between a congratulatory message from a college acquaintance and a missed call from an unknown number, there’s a text.
From Billy.
The name stops me cold. Not because I want to see it. Not because some dormant, traitorous part of me has been hoping for it. But because the body remembers things the mind has tried to forget, and the body remembers what that name used to mean.
Late nights waiting for his text. The three-dot bubble that was the highlight of my day. The secret smiles I wore like armor against the loneliness of being someone’s hidden thing.
My thumb hovers over the notification.
I should delete it. I should delete it without reading it, because nothing Billy Stein has to say can touch me now. I’m married. I’m in love. I’m standing in a fortress in the Rockies wearing my husband’s shirt and my body is still warm from his touch and his mouth and his whisperedZia, Zia, Ziaand nothing,nothing,from before can reach me here.
I tap the message.
Billy: Zia, I saw the news. I know I don’t have the right to say this. I know I lost that right when I let you go. But I need you to know that I’m sorry. For all of it. For every day I kept you secret and every night I should have fought for you and didn’t. I was a coward. You deserved better. You always deserved better. And I still love you. I never stopped. I’m sorry it took losing you to make me brave enough to say it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ALEXEI IS WATCHINGme put on earrings.
He’s still in bed, propped against the headboard, tablet in hand, looking like the cover of a magazine that hasn’t been invented yet because no publication could afford the printing costs of his cheekbones, and he’s watching me in the vanity mirror with a focus that most people reserve for important documents.
