“El, I...” Jesstin sat and slipped one of his hands onto the bench. She took it between both of hers and squeezed. Tears streamed down his face. “I love you a thousand times more than I’ve ever hated myself.”
“Jess.” She brought his hand to her mouth with a firm kiss. “I’m tired of every day feeling like a new struggle, and it doesn’t have to. Are you not tired too?”
“I’m exhausted,” he answered in a near whisper. “I want to be... to believe the things you say are possible. But how can I?”
Elloven fell to her knees in the snow. “We are not only our worst moments, Jesstin! We cannot own our sins if we dismiss the good we do. This is true no matter who you are.”
“Elloven, it’s cold. Please get up.”
She shook her head no. “People are complicated. Heavy. Beautiful. And no one will ever understand the life you and I have lived. Not the before, the during, or the after.” She took a deep breath. “If second chances don’t exist, then what reason do any of us have for continuing on with life at all? If there can be no lesson, no change, what’s the point? I’ve killed, just as you have. Should I live in darkness for the rest of my days?”
He locked his eyes to hers. “No, no. No, El, you are not... no. You deserve?—”
“Love?” She smiled up at him. “I had it. It was imperfect and built upon the shifting sands of our messy lives, but it was real, and it was mine.”
“Had?” Jesstin’s face crumpled in sorrow. “I will love you, Elloven, until the earth chokes the last of my breath. I will love you beyond that because now I know there’s more waiting for us. Nothing exists that could change it. Nothing. Not a thing.” He squeezed his eyes closed, freeing more tears. “But how can you look at me, knowing what I’ve done?”
“I’m looking at you now,” she said softly. Her hand cradled his cheek. “And inviting you to do the same.”
Jesstin’s foot tapped an anxious pattern in the snow, and his expression kept shifting, as though unsure what it intended. But he opened his eyes and looked at her. Slowly, he calmed, and his breathing steadied. He tried to answer but gave up the effort and sighed instead. “Will you please let me take you inside?” he asked.
Elloven stood, pulling him with her, hopeful for the first time in months. It was a start in the right direction.
Jesstin didn’t head for the tavern right away. He reached for her hand and tugged her close. “If you ever questioned whether my love for you is real, then it’s my failure to own.”
“I never questioned whether it was real, not if I was being honest with myself,” she answered. “Only if it could be just as real here as it was there.”
“There. Here. Anywhere.” He gathered her hands and brought them to his lips, then crushed them to his chest. “Everywhere.”
Jesstin was no better than a schoolboy with his first crush. He’d never gotten used to the feeling of entering or re-entering Elloven’s life, all the ways his body held him hostage and his thoughts failed to be useful. A complete dissembling, limb from limb, blood from bone, and mind from heart.
But she was there. She knew everything, and she was still following him up the narrow, rickety steps to an apartment that wasn’t remotely ready for hosting her. He’d always known they were one serious conversation away from being strangers, and that had been the shadow following them, until the worst had finally happened. She’d come to tell him there need not be a shadow anymore, but he’d have to accept that too.
He paused at the door and pressed his finger to his lips. She nodded and didn’t ask why. He hadn’t said anything about the boy. He hadn’t really had the chance, and his head was far from straight.
In the kitchen, he helped her out of her shawls and coat and hung them on the crooked rack. As she stood by the sink, watching him, he questioned even his most basic moves. Was he acting as weird as he felt? Had he draped her coat correctly? Should he have removed his own muddy boots, like she’d graciously done? Was he fidgeting?
Overthinking was what he was doing, putting way too much of his mind into a place it wasn’t needed.
“It’s a small apartment,” he said quickly, in a tone loud enough for only them to hear. He rushed to clear a dish sitting on the counter, and she grinned, still watching. “I have two bedchambers, but my fussy uncles are staying, and I’m housing... someone.”
Elloven’s eyes widened in curiosity. “Not the redhead your workers mentioned?”
A kick to the gut from a man twice his size would have hurt less. He searched for a way to explain, but she leveled him with an adjudicating scowl. “Jess, I understand. You missed me. You were desperate.”
What little he’d eaten for supper rose to the back of his throat.
“Why wouldn’t you find a lookalike to pretend to be me?” Her seriousness cracked, and she buried a laugh in her hands. He scoffed at having been so easily had and then chuckled with her. “Did you make her go by the name of Elloven?”
Jesstin cringed. He scratched the back of his neck. “I may have accidentally called her that.”
“Ouch,” Elloven teased. “Would be silly to be jealous of a stand-in for myself, wouldn’t it? Will she be upset when you tell her the dalliance is over? Or would you prefer I do it?”
He held back a grin at the subtle way she was letting him off the hook while being clear what she expected going forward. Elloven was jealous, but she wasn’t hurt, and that was the main thing he wanted to avoid. “She already knows. It’s done.”
“She won’t be expecting you in her bed tonight? Tomorrow?”
“Her expectations aren’t my obligation.” Jesstin stepped toward her. “She’ll find some other reprobate to rankle her father, and I’ll be forgotten by noon.”
