I’m flustered, both dying for his answer and nervous about what he might say. “If it meant nothing, that’s fine. I’m not expecting—”
“Wheeler.” He moves closer. “I didn’t plan it, and I don’t have a good explanation, but when we stood on that beach and said our vows, I realized all of mine were true. It’s that simple. I did it because I meant it.”
He reaches up and brushes a wild strand of hair off my forehead, his fingers trailing fire everywhere he touches. In the water, his foot nudges mine.
“I know that piece of paper has made everything infinitely more complicated, but I thought I was dying, and I loved you, and in that moment, I wanted to marry you as me, not as Blaze Danger. I wanted it to be a decision I made for myself.” He wears an expression that I’ve memorized down to my bones: it’s the same look he gave me when I took his picture with a Polaroid camera in Greece, and for the first time, I realize it wasn’t the angle or the early-morning magic light or even my mind playing tricks on me.
“I meant it too,” I whisper, closing the final distance between us until my body is flush against his. He hooks a finger onto the chain around my neck, his pupils expanding in the dark. He lifts the necklace out of the water and stares at his ring for a long time, before gently letting it slip from his fingers and tucking a finger in the waistband of my underwear.
I’m buzzing everywhere.
“I think that might be a bad idea,” I whisper, my lips brushing against his.
“I’m certain of it,” he answers, and I squash the flash of guilt that hits me.
There’s a warning on the edge of my consciousness telling me there’s something I’m forgetting, one more question I have to ask. But when Theo tilts his lips to mine and whispers, “Third question?,” the words that come out of my mouth are “Why haven’t you kissed me yet?”
His hands rest on my waist, and even in the heat of the spring, his touch is searing. The kiss starts as a question—hesitant and soft. Everything fades away, and we’re not in a hurry. I feel rooted to the muddy earth as we melt into each other, the burn in my chest answering the only question that really matters. His tongue presses against mine and the pace of the kiss changes. From question to answer to desperate resolve. He clasps my waist and presses his body to mine, opening an ache in me that I’ve done my best to ignore. We fit as easily together as we did in Greece, and the months of waiting finally catch up to us. I worry that if I keep kissing him, I won’t know how to stop.
I rake one of my hands through his hair and he swears softly in my ear. He pushes us backward until we hit the edge of the spring, where he flips us around and presses my back against the muddy banks. He sinks his teeth into my bottom lip, and I hiss in pleasure. His hands are everywhere: in my hair, tracing my collarbone, pressing an indent of his ring against my sternum, feathering lightly across my stomach. His mouth breaks free from mine and trails down my neck, and then reality hits.
“Theo.” My chest heaves with the effort of not kissing him. “I have one more question.”
“You already had three,” he growls, kissing me behind the ear.
“I know. But it’s important.”
“Only one more,” he whispers, sending shivers across my damp shoulders. “And then I get to kiss you again.”
“What are we going to do when we get off this island?”
He draws back, his brows scrunched in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“How are we going to make this work? The public needs a story, and obviously the Firm is going to want to be involved in figuring all this out.”
The heat drains from Theo’s eyes as his hands fall away from me. “I’m not telling the Firm.”
“We can’t exactly sneak around without them finding out. You travel with an entourage everywhere you go.”
“Right.”
Now I’m the one confused. “So wearegoing to tell them?”
“No.They’ll want to control every aspect of your life. How you dress and where you go and who you spend your time with. You’ll become another piece on their chessboard, something to be maneuvered to their advantage, and that’sifthey decide that you’re allowed to stick around. If not, Graves will plant horrible stories about you in the press and ruin your life. There is no scenario in which you win.”
I finally understand, and I feel like an idiot for not getting it sooner. He won’t tell the Firm, because after we’re rescued, there’ll be nothing to tell. I swallow the emotion in my throat and force out the next words. “What if I don’t want to win anything but you?”
“I’m sorry, but I love you too much to ever let you date me,” he says simply, like those three little words won’t change my entire world.
“You’re in love with me—present tense?”
He laughs softly as he lifts our intertwined hands out of the water and kisses each of my knuckles in turn. “Did I not make that obvious? I’m in love with you, past, present, and future, which is why there is no world in which I would ever subject you to the life that killed my father.”
I think of my palace-and-ball-gown daydreams.Theo and Me. King and Queen. Fate. The whole shebang.
But when I look at him now, my heart sinks. Because I’ve seen that conviction in his eyes—the one that says he believes in his cause and he won’t change his mind. As long as he thinks he’s protecting me, love was never going to be enough to keep us together.
“I love you too,” I whisper into the dark. The harsh reality of our situation settles firmly around us: Theo and I have not been brought together by fate. The plane crash was just shit bad luck. “Can we pretend?” I don’t want the heartbreak yet.
