Merritt was quiet for a moment, her hand intertwined with his, as she took in this new information, her heart aching for him. So much about Niko suddenly made sense: his affability, his willingness to help, his desire to build, to repair, to make himself useful. His deep insecurity about whether he truly mattered to anyone, whether the people in his life really knew him, whether his hopes and dreams and desires were taken seriously.
She brought his hand to her lips and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “Have you ever talked to someone about all of this?”
“You mean, besides you?” He scrubbed his free hand over his jaw. “Some people know bits and pieces of it. Ex-girlfriends, I guess. But I don’t really like to get into it. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I told anyone this much. You’re easy to talk to.”
“I’m really glad you did,” she said gently. “But I meant a professional.”
His brow furrowed. “Like…a lawyer?”
“No, like a therapist.” She saw the corner of his mouth tighten, so she added, “It just sounds to me like you’re carrying around a lot of guilt about things that are absolutely not your fault. It might help. It’s helped me feel better about things thataremy fault.”
He was quiet for a long beat. “I’m not against it. I didn’t grow up in a family that did that, but that doesn’t mean that’s the right way to handle things. There’s a lot of shit that we just…don’t talk about.”
She propped herself up on her elbow, lifting her head off his stomach so she could get a better look at him. “I’m not trying to pressure you or anything. Just a thought. We don’t have to talk about it anymore.” She scooted up the bed, and he lifted his arm so he could wrap it around her shoulders, her head on his chest. “I want to know more about what it was like growing up in Greece.”
“It was the best,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. He stroked her hair as he told her about his huge extended family, the aunts and uncles who were more like older siblings, the grandparents who had loved him sternly and fiercely. Hiking in the mountains, swimming in the river, traveling to the white-sand beaches of the coasts, and exploring historical ruins in the cities. Tagging along after his grandfather, a carpenter, who always patiently explained every step of his process, even when it slowed things down. He spoke most fondly of his grandmother, who was only forty years old when he’d arrived on her doorstep.
“She was the first person who figured out that if she gave me a pencil and paper, she could keep me busy for hours. Iremember sitting in the kitchen with her while she worked, drawing at the table, sneaking food while her back was turned.”
Merritt smiled against his chest, then pushed herself up until she could meet his eyes. “Wait. That reminds me. Were you drawing me the other day at the house?”
Even in the darkened room, she could see his sheepish expression, which was as good as a yes. “Can I see?” she asked.
He glanced away, abashed. “Come on,” she wheedled. “I played for you. It’s only fair.”
He sighed, then leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Okay.”
Even though she’d asked for it, she still whined softly in the back of her throat when he got up, and in return, he waited until the last possible moment to drop her hand. He retreated into the living room with one of the candles and returned holding the leather-bound notebook she’d seen him scribbling in before, a flashlight under his arm, and something she couldn’t identify in his other hand. When he held it out to her, she realized he’d picked up her glasses, too.
She accepted them gratefully as he settled against the headboard, nestling her chin on his shoulder once he was seated. He handed her the flashlight, too, and she angled it toward the pages.
As she suspected, it was both a sketchbook and a notepad for his work, measurements and numbers and notes interspersed with unrelated doodles. Merritt wanted to ask him to slow down, to savor this insight into his mind—a mind she was more fascinated with by the minute.
“Wait,” she said, placing her hand on the book, stopping his progress, and turning back a few pages. “Is that…”
“That one’s not you,” he blurted out hurriedly as the book settled open on a sketch of a woman in a long, medieval-looking dress with flowers in her hair.
“No, I know,” she said, although now that she was looking at it more closely, there was something distinctly familiar in the woman’s posture and features. “I was going to say, is that Elora? FromOf Darkness and Destiny?”
Niko looked at her, wide-eyed, like she’d just spoken another language he hadn’t expected her to be fluent in. “Yeah,” he said, and she was tempted to swing the flashlight toward his face to confirm if his cheeks were tinged pink, as she suspected. “It’s pretty nerdy.”
Without a word, she eased off the bed, shining the flashlight on her bookshelf. Even though it was a mess, books stacked and crammed into every nook and cranny, it didn’t take her too long to locate the brick of a mass-market paperback: tattered, dog-eared, and extremely precious. She carried it back over to him and shone the light on it:Of Darkness and Destiny, Volume One: A Kingdom in Peril.
“I brought it with me on my first tour,” she said, as Niko studied the cover, his expression inscrutable. “I only had room on the bus for a few books, so I wanted them to be as chunky as possible. I reread it so many times.” She opened the front cover and showed him the pencil inscription on the title page: her initials, with a date almost twenty years earlier, followed by a long list of cities. “Now, if you want to talk about ‘pretty nerdy’…” She propped her foot up on the edge of the bed and pulled up her leggings a few inches, revealing a tattoo of a sword on her outer ankle.
“Holy shit,” said Niko, his expression shifting back to awestruck. “Is that Samson’s sword?”
She nodded. “I got it when I came home. It kind of felt like I’d survived a heroic quest of my own.”
“It sounds like you did. This is so fucking cool.” He traced his finger over the age-blurred lines. “I’ve actually never read thebooks. I tried to, but I’m not a great reader. I think I might be a little dyslexic. But they didn’t know how to handle it in my school in Greece, and by the time I got back to America, I think they thought it was a language thing, even though my first language is English. But I only saw the miniseries, I’m sure I was missing a lot. I mean, I know I was, because I was literally missing an episode.”
Merritt grinned, pushing the fabric down her ankle again and crawling back onto the bed. “You could get the audiobook, if you want to know what you’re missing. It might be nice to listen to while you work.”
“Or you could read it to me,” he teased, gently placing the book on the nightstand, nudging her flat on her back again, his knee between her thighs. She smiled, stretching and arching like a cat.
“I could,” she murmured, pulling him down on top of her. “But, wait, are you absolutely positive that Elora drawing’s not me? We got derailed on that one. I think I need another look at it.”
He smiled against her lips, picking up the sketchbook and tossing it to the other end of the bed, pinning her arms to the mattress before she could reach for it. “Hmm? What? I can’t hear you. I think the book is broken, sorry.”
