"I've been watching you," I said. "I know I told you that before. But I don't think you understand what I meant."
"Then explain."
I took a breath. The words were hard. They were the hardest words I'd ever said.
"From the first night I saw you—through the window of the diner, when my father was sitting at the counter—I couldn't look away. I told myself it was curiosity. Concern. I told myself I wastrying to understand what was happening to him. But that was a lie. I was watching you. Only you. And I haven't stopped."
Her arms tightened around me.
"I know how that sounds. I know it sounds obsessive. Maybe it is. Maybe I'm obsessive. But you're the first person in my entire life who has looked at me and seen something other than a Mire. You see Gabriel. Just Gabriel. The boy who wants to be a doctor. The boy who held his mother's hand while she died. The boy who's terrified of becoming his father."
"You're not going to become your father."
"You don't know that."
"I know." She pulled back and looked at me. Her eyes were steady. Certain. "You're not him, Gabriel. You're not Nathan. You're you. And you're good."
I kissed her forehead. Her nose. The corner of her mouth.
"Thank you," I whispered.
"For what?"
"For seeing me."
She smiled. The dim light caught her face, illuminated the curve of her lips, the softness in her eyes.
"Thank you for letting me."
We stayed in the greenhouse until the stars came out.
We didn't talk much after that. There wasn't anything left to say—not tonight, not in this place, not when the air between us felt so fragile and so precious. I held her. She held me. The orchids bloomed in the dark, indifferent to our presence, their petals glowing faintly in the LED light.
When we finally walked back to the house, her hand was in mine. My father was standing at the window in the library, watching us. I saw his silhouette against the glass, the pale oval of his face, the faint glint of his eyes.
He didn't move. He didn't call out. He just watched.
I squeezed Monika's hand. She squeezed back.
Whatever happened next—whatever my father wanted, whatever Nathan planned, whatever this family would demand of us—we would face it together.
I swore it to myself in the dark.
I swore it to her without words.
And for the first time in seven years, I felt something that might have been hope.
That night, I lay in my bed and stared at the ceiling.
My hand still smelled like her. I pressed my fingers to my face, inhaling, trying to memorize the scent. Something floral—her shampoo, maybe—and underneath, something that was just her. Something that I would know anywhere.
I touched myself that night, thinking about her. The way she'd looked in the greenhouse. The way she'd said my name. The way she'd guided my hand, patient and gentle, teaching me what she liked.
I came thinking about her face.
Afterward, I lay in the dark and made a vow.
I would learn her body the way I was learning medicine—thoroughly, obsessively, with every ounce of attention I possessed. I would learn what made her gasp, what made her moan, what made her fall apart in my arms. I would learn it until I knew her better than I knew myself.
