“It’s not fine.”
She raises her eyes to meet his and her mask cracks. Something in Oliver does, too.
A tear rolls down her cheek. She brushes it away. “I replayed our fight over and over in my head.”
“So did I,” Oliver says. “I didn’t mean it, that I didn’t care. I shouldn’t have said it. And I’m not jealous of you. I wouldn’t want your life. I just wish I had more of mine, and I let it get the better of me.”
“I thought you’d wait a hundred years to come back,” Beatrix admits, her voice no more than a whisper. “If you came back at all.”
Oliver’s blood runs cold. “Why would you think that?”
“I told you I had survived for a hundred years without you. That I didn’t need you.”
He sinks down onto the bed next to her. “You thought I would leave you for a century out of spite?”
“I know you would never do anything so cruel,” she says. “I do. But every day you didn’t come, and every day I remembered what I said. It was terrible of me. I don’t even know why I said it. I deserved for you not to come back.” She drops her gaze to her ring again.
“Nobody deserves that,” Oliver says quietly.
Beatrix lifts her eyes to his, and he can see exactly how deeply he has wounded her. His breath catches. “Bea, I had no right to look you up, and I had no right to tell you to leave London. I was—am—terrified of the idea of you being there when those bombs fall. I want to protect you. But it’s your life to live. However you choose.”
“Endlessly,” she agrees.
Oliver swallows. “Do you still want me in it?”
“I do,” she whispers, and the tightness in his chest eases.
He takes her hand in his. “Then I promise you, I will never leave you like that again. I will never leave you without a goodbye.”
“No goodbyes,” she insists.
“I’ll never leave without a plan to come back then.”
Her eyes search his. “A promise with me lasts a very long time, Oliver.”
“I swear it.”
When she smiles at him, it brightens the entire room. His entire world.
He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out his journal. He takes a folded slip of paper from it and offers it to Beatrix. “I came back because I needed to apologize. I needed to give you this.”
She takes the paper from him and unfolds it. Her eyes grow wide as her gaze darts across the page.
“If my math is right, she’s your great-granddaughter, times fourteen.” He counts down on his fingers. “Your great-great-great-great-great—”
Beatrix laughs. She grabs his hand, stops his counting. His heart skips at her touch, at that sound.
“I get it,” Beatrix says. “She’s my family.” Her voice breaks on the word. “Thank you.”
Those remarkable eyes find his. One brown, one blue, both impossibly old; sad and beautiful and deep enough to drown in. She leans closer, and he catches the delicate scent of flowers. Violets, maybe. His heart thuds against his ribs.
Her lips press against his cheek, soft and tentative and not at all how she kissed him in the Crystal Palace. He turns toward her. Her lips brush against his and time stops.
He leans in.
April 26, 1928London, England
London has evolved over the years, adapted and survived alongside Beatrix. Sometimes she fears every detail she knows will fade—change—until it becomes a stranger to her again. But this grander, more modern version is still loud, still dirty, and, for now at least, she can still find her city in it.
