She steps away. Cool air fills the space where Oliver was, chills her skin where his touch was warming her a moment ago. “I’m sorry. I need some air.”
She turns on her heel and she leaves him—like he has left her countless times—standing alone in the crowd, watching her go.
Beatrix doesn’t stop until she is on the island of grass in front of the Louvre, among the trees. She sits against the widest trunk and breathes deep, searches for the scent of damp earth and rotting leaves. There is only city and stone and now.
Oliver slowly crosses the plaza, his hands shoved into his trouser pockets. He sits next to her on the grass—together, but not—watching the patrons come and go from the museum until Beatrix finds her voice.
She twists the ring on her hand. “You’re a time traveler. Do you ever wish you could go back and change something? Make a different choice?”
“All the time. That has nothing to do with being a time traveler. That’s just being human.”
“Would you change us?” she asks him.
Oliver sighs. “Something has to change, doesn’t it?”
Beatrix looks over at him.
“Honestly? Sometimes I wish I had met you years ago, in my time. I wouldn’t have to leave you. We could have more than twelve hours together. You wouldn’t have to wait for me.”
“That sounds nice,” Beatrix says.
“It does. But that Oliver wouldn’t be the same person whose pocket you picked at the Globe.”
“Like my Louvre isn’t your Louvre?” she asks.
“Not yet, anyway,” Oliver says.
“Sometimes I lie awake at night and imagine what my life would look like if I had left you standing on the Rialto Bridge,” Beatrix admits.
Oliver shifts next to her. “And?”
She has tried to imagine it so many nights. After the Great Exhibition. After Barnbow. After Anna. And each time, she has failed. She can’t separate Oliver from her life. The more she tries, the deeper the cold, awful truth settles into the pit of her stomach: He is hopelessly entangled with it. With her. “If I hadn’t met you, I’d be a completely different person.”
Oliver takes her face in his hands. “Don’t go back. When I’m gone. Don’t go back to living like before.”
Beatrix doesn’t want to think about a life without Oliver in it. She stands, out of his reach. “Let’s forget it, all right? Let’s go inside and forget about all of this.”
But Oliver won’t let it go. “Promise me you won’t be a ghost, Bea.”
She shakes her head. “You can’t ask me that.”
“Please.”
“I can’t,” she insists.
Oliver’s gaze turns dark. “Why not?”
“Because I’m not sure what losing you will do to me.” Her words land like a blow. Oliver sags against the wide trunk. “A ghost might be all that’s left of me for a very long time.” Now that she has seen how the threads of her life are woven through with his, she is certain of it. She turns away, blinking against the burning in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” Oliver rises to his feet and catches her arm. “I’m sorry. I just—I don’t know if I’m supposed to stay or go or never see you again.”
“I don’t know, either,” Beatrix whispers. Because she is never happier than when she is with him. Because he puts another crack in her heart every time he leaves. Because they can never have their happily ever after.
Oliver’s shoulders slump. “I want to make you happy, Bea. Just tell me how.”
He’ll leave if she tells him to, leave her to return to a life before she met him. But she wasn’t happy before Oliver, either. If she had been, she wouldn’t have imagined leaving him on the Rialto Bridge. She would have done it.
But she didn’t. That night, she chose him, chose to live as more than a ghost. Chose to try, at least. And she has tried. For centuries, she’s tried.
