His hand closes around the skin above my elbow and I suck in a sharp breath. I mutter some lie about his hands being cold, but James doesn’t let go, just lifts his mouth into a lopsided grin and then tugs me softly up the path.
“No more humiliation. I’ve decided to tolerate you,” he tells me. I notice that the hand that isn’t holding me still has the camera balanced firmly in its grip. His fingers are rolling along the dial on the lens, restless and eager.
“How magnanimous of you,” I murmur. “You’re a photographer then?”
He looks at me for a moment, shakes his head a little, then lets out a frustrated breath.
“You realize how American it is to make everyone fit inside a single box,” he asks—no, tells me.
I consider shrugging off his hand, but it is sliding down toward my wrist and I’m not sure I have the will. But then I picture Ethan’s long, elegant fingers and nonchalantly slide my wrist out of his calloused hand.
“You realize how condescending you are, right? Would you prefer art-eest?” I ask, making sure to top on some extra sarcasm.
“I’m a lot of things, Ava. Most people are. Get used to it,” he says.
But I’ve stopped listening to him.
The earth has ended—dropped out from beneath us—and a fortress is rising from below us like it’s an extension of the rocky hills it was built upon.
“Is that Atlantis?” I whisper.
James chuckles, a low, deep sound that shakes the air around me.
“Urbino,” he says, his voice soft. Reverent.
And I can see why.
The walled city appears to be built of gold—thousands of lights illuminate the sawdust-colored stone that stretches in every direction, peaking here and there into bronzed turrets and duomos that seem to reach into the stars above. It’s a castle—no, it’s more. Morewelcoming. A palace? A kingdom? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
“I’ve seen it on my postcard, but …”
My thought trails off as I trace the expanse of the walls with a finger in the air, dipping down and around the hillsides that surround it.
“The image rarely captures the reality,” James says, and I sneak a glance at his profile.
He lifts the camera to his eye just as I notice the way his top lip rests just slightly over the bottom.
“Enjoying the view?” he asks, turning the camera on me.
“I’ve seen better.”
He’s snapping away and I roll my eyes and turn back toward Urbino and all of its splendor.
“It seems quiet down there,” I say to myself.
“In the summer, yes. When the semester begins it gets a bit more boisterous,” he explains.
“College town.”
He nods. “Something like that.”
This is the longest we’ve gone without insulting one another. I’m about to point that out when he speaks.
“You seem a little old to be a college student,” he says.
There goes that. Patronizing shit.
“I’m twenty-eight. And I’m graduating from law school. Not college.”
