“Tomorrow,” she said, and he swallowed, nodded once, though he didn’t think she was looking at him. He nodded more for himself, a reminder, a coming-back-to-earth. Scanning his body, he still only felt pain in a mundane way: his feet achy in his shoes from walking, like a regular tourist; four out of ten on the thigh and knee; some itchiness along the ragged terrain of his torso; no weird heat or tingling or electric currents coming from a place he couldn’t point to.
That was a victory, he knew.
No crossing into heaven, but no going back to the gates of hell, at least.
“All the other guests arrive,” she continued. “It’ll really feel like a wedding now. Best-man, big-sister stuff.”
He nodded again. But he couldn’t say anything, not yet. He was busy packing himself up, a green stall shuttering, vintage postcards from his life that he’d taken out for Layla to see tucked away again.
Bad confidence, he thought, scolding himself. What had his fucking confidence ever gotten him, really, but too close to the sun? He couldn’t everreallystay with her. He couldn’t ever avoid hurting her.
He could never predict what touch would be too much.
He shouldn’t have ever let himself wander so far from what he’d come here to do: see Michael settled, finally. See Michael happy.
One hurt he’d always wanted to see healed.
“There’s some kind of spa thing in the morning,” she was saying, maybe packing herself up, too, in her mind already getting out the spreadsheet that she’d admitted, only an hour or so ago, also had all her carefully chosen outfits listed, the ones that would help her—what a joke, to think it was possible—“blend in to the background.”
For the first time in probably a half decade, Griffin thought of this pain management specialist he once went to, a six-foot-five former basketball player who had a wait list a mile long. Griffin had walked into the two-hours-away clinic for his long-awaited appointment and had seen all the state-of-the-art equipment—ergonomic machines, water tanks, massage tables that moved with the press of a button, nerve stimulation kits at every station—and thought,Give me the works.
But instead ofthe works, he’d been forced to sit in an uncomfortable chair for thirty minutes while this man talked earnestly to him about meditation, the untapped power of his mind, about how the rest of Griffin’s life would be about honoring the days when he felt good, and not allowing himself to forget about them on the days when he felt like he wanted to die.
Fucking fine, he thought, beaming a belated apology to the doctor he’d never gone back to.I should have kept doing the meditation. I should have learned it all, just so I could eventually remember this one day in Paris with Layla Bailey.
“Griff,” she said, and he let his eyes close, bracing himself for the end of this.
He was pretty sure they were only two bridges from the turnoff toward the hotel. He’d go back to his room, check in with Michael; he’d go back to being a bad best man in the usual aloof Griff way, instead of the entirely-absent-for-an-entire-day way. He’d sit down at that weird little desk in his room and try to remember everysingle place they’d wandered to today; he’d pretend he was carving it all into the stone wall of his tower.
He opened his eyes, and faced her. He would not put her in a car alone this time. He’d walk with her. Two bridges, a turnoff, the hotel lobby, and an elevator he’d been in with her before. He’d manage.
“Good day,” he managed. Then he added, “Thanks,” as though she was his paid tour guide.
He would not write this part down, obviously.
Twelve hours ago, she probably would’ve rolled her eyes at him. She would’ve scowled and said the sort of cutting thing he’d only ever heard her say to him. That would have been welcome in its own way, he supposed, because at least he would still have the truth of her.
But she didn’t do either of those things. She looked at him, calm and steady. She broke bad news like a good doctor did; he’d give her that.
Two bridges, a turnoff—
“The thing is, though,” she said, “it’s not tomorrow yet.”
Chapter Twenty-One
She’d startled him.
She could tell that now, after a whole day of being with him, uninterrupted: Griffin Testa was not, in fact, a column of mysterious smoke that muddled your mind, not a fae prince who stole a part of your soul with a kiss, not a black-bronze statue that broke your heart in half.
Not even, really,the best man.
He was just aman.
A complicated man. Bold but cautious, demanding but flexible, stubborn but still curious. He would say things like,No phones, but then he would—instead of demanding to stop—just slow his steps outside a shop window displaying model trains, waiting for you to say,You like those?He’d say,We’re going in here, when you were halfway to starving but overwhelmed with where to stop and eat, but then he’d wordlessly switch plates with you when it was clear you wished you’d ordered the same as him. He would declare that he had no interest in fashion, and then—like Fitz, not that Layla would ever make the comparison aloud—would read every display text he could in a museum devoted almost exclusively to clothingand accessories, seemingly memorizing every detail so he could mention them to you later.
He had a face you could read, if you really paid attention—if you let yourself stop worrying about what happened on the one side, if you recognized that the tense set of his jaw and the straight line of his mouth were distractions from the dark expressiveness in his eyes. There, you could see all sorts of things. Confusion, and then delight, when he bit into a raspberry macaron. Loving respect when he spoke about his mother; a false, flippant dismissiveness when he talked about his background in product design. Leashed but feral frustration when you told him about your own family: the one you were born to, and the one you married into.
Grudging defeat when something started to hurt. Grim determination when he was trying to ignore it.
