Wished

Chapter 23

23

We’re wrapped in the deep silence of night, in the contentment of the early hours and the hush of moonlight before dawn. A soft glow cascades through the bedroom window, reflecting the lights of Paris and casting a rosy, dreamy luminescence over the bed.

Max’s arms are wrapped around me, and I lie sprawled naked across his chest. His breath is steady, his chest rising and falling in a soothing rhythm as he strokes a hand through my hair. His heartbeat thumps against my chest, and I pull in a breath, drinking in the cloaked night air full of the memory of freesias, slick bodies, and deep kisses. The cotton sheets are warm, soft, and tangled around us.

The neighborhood is quiet, the old stone building is quiet, the bedroom is quiet. It’s strange how quiet a city can be in the deep of the night. Yet without the noise and the color and the sights, it’s easy to get lost in the way Max’s fingers tangle in my hair and how his exhales fall in warm puffs across my skin.

I’m lulled and floating in a euphoric afterglow. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so relaxed, as if I’m floating down a lazy river, lounging on an inner tube in the sun, Max cradling me in his lap as I drag my fingers through the cool water and he kisses the edge of my mouth.

Earlier, when I said “I love you,” I claimed I said it first. But what I really meant was I said it and Max didn’t.

Instead he made love to me. In the bed. Bent over his desk. Against the wall, with the balcony doors flung open and the sounds and scents and sights of Paris falling over us. In the shower, with hot jets of water spraying over us and frothy soap suds sliding over bare skin. In the kitchen, after we devoured a plate of hazelnut croissants and sipped burning liquor from a fifty-year-old bottle of Dalmore that Max said he’d been saving for the right moment.

Ten hours of making love. With his mouth. With his hands. With him thrusting desperately inside me. Max told the truth on the footbridge in the museum. He kept me coming all night long.

And now, with two hours left before sunrise, I can feel our time slipping away. Draining like grains of sand through an hourglass.

Never in my life have I wanted the sun to never rise—until now.

“I almost wish tomorrow wouldn’t come,” I say, my eyes drifting closed at the soothing rhythm of Max’s hand stroking through my hair.

He makes a soft sound, his chest rising beneath me. “It will work out. Don’t worry.”

I open my heavy eyelids and stare out the window, past the rooflines and the tops of dark chestnut trees, toward the Eiffel Tower.

“I know our wish will work,” he says, his chest rumbling with the deep baritone of his voice. “I felt something there, like I was spinning. A strange whirring, an odd tingling.”

“Like you were flying?” I ask, wondering why I didn’t feel anything—not like I did the first time.

“That’s right.” His hand trails over the back of my neck, his fingers playing over my spine.

“I felt that the first time. In your library,” I say.

He presses his mouth to the top of my head, feathering his lips over my temple. We’ve touched each other so much tonight, explored everything, yet this intimate, casually gentle kiss makes my chest squeeze tight.

“Tired?” Max asks.

“Mm-hmm,” I murmur, pressing my face into the pillow of his chest.

“Tomorrow, in case I don’t remember you ...”

I nod, my cheek scraping against the hair on his chest.

“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone. If you tell me this, I’ll listen. All right?”

I lift my head and look into his eyes. They’re shadowed by the muted dark, barely catching the glimmer of the lights outside. But still there’s a warmth there, and the knowledge that tomorrow he might not know me or remember this. He might not like me. In fact, he might dislike me. Quite intensely.

“Okay,” I say, my voice raw from the night of crying out in his arms.

He shifts me so we’re sitting up, leaning against the dark wood headboard. The room is just as opulent as his home in Geneva. Lots of antique, elegantly carved wood, brass and gilt, and sumptuous fabrics. I know for a fact the interior design and the furniture was passed down and Max, being Max, left it as it was. He’s a traditionalist in a lot of ways, and he values family and history and consistency. Even, I suppose, when family and history and consistency let you down.

“You know my father drank?”

I nod and he looks away, out the window, over the city.

“Living with an alcoholic, as a kid, it’s like this nightmare where you’re walking across a field full of landmines. Every day you wake up and you’re shoved into this field, forced to walk across it, and you can tiptoe, or you can run, but either way, you have to do it. Sometimes you make it across with no explosion. Other times you step on a mine and it doesn’t detonate. But then some days the explosion is violent, and you break an arm or blacken an eye, and your ears are still ringing days later. But it’s not the landmines that are the worst. It’s the fact that every day you have to stand at the edge of that field and walk across it. There’s no escaping it. You have to keep walking, keep living it, over and over and over. And every day, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You have no control. You have no idea which step will set a landmine off.”

He stops, his jaw tight, the muscles in his chest hard. I press my hand to his heart, feeling the slow, steady beat. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t have walked it with you.”

He smiles down at me, the hardness in his eyes softening. “I’m glad you didn’t. I’m glad you weren’t there. I hated so much. The only thing that matched how much I hated was how much I loved. Can you imagine? Loving so intensely, hating so much. It was too much for a kid. All those emotions bottled up inside. I promised myself every day that when I was eighteen I’d escape. I’d make my own way.” He shrugs. “I didn’t. It turns out I loved my family more than I thought. Love, even in small portions, is enough to defeat an ocean of hate. So that little light, it took me back. After university I returned home, the dutiful son to my father, the loyal younger brother, the loving son to my mother. And then, on a ski trip I was meant to be part of, all three of them were caught in an avalanche. They died.”

He shakes his head, his expression a mask concealing his heart. “I was never afraid of the violent outbursts, my parents’ passion, my brother’s cruelty. What I was afraid of was that I saw myself in them. I saw that if I wasn’t careful I could be just as violent, just as cruel. Every one of us has the capacity for cruelty—it’s there inside us all. Every day we choose whether we’ll live in the shadows or the light. I saw that more than most, because in myself I saw my father, and I saw my brother. So when I decided to let my family rest in peace, when I decided to let them go, I made myself a promise.”

I look into his eyes. His steady, direct gaze. This is important, his dark eyes say. I’ve never told anyone, his expression says.

“I wrote a letter and buried it in a cognac bottle under a pile of rocks at the folly. I’m meant to break it if I ever falter. Read it and remember.”

“Falter in what?” I ask, my hand curling against his chest.

The air between us is thick, heavy and full of the yearning memory of last night.

“I promised myself I would never love so deeply that I could hate in equal measure. I told myself that if I ever found myself embroiled in passion, I would step back. I would walk away. I reminded myself of all the good things in life—all the constant, pure, good things that didn’t involve a field full of landmines or a love that was like a wooden boat crashing against a rocky shore, over, and over, and over again. The letter is there. I want you to remind me. And then I want you to tell me that I was wrong. Love isn’t the opposite of hate. It doesn’t have room for hate. It’s pure and compassionate and forgiving and full of grace. It’s constant. It’s quiet. It’s loud. It’s steady. It’s the night sky full of a million blazing stars. It’s the first snowflake landing on your outstretched palm. It’s a hand gripping yours in the dark, holding on when you’re certain you’re all alone. And passion? It isn’t anything to be afraid of when it’s rooted in love. Tell me that, Anna. Please? Will you promise to tell me?”

I lean forward and rest my forehead to his, looking into his eyes. I can see stars there now, the reflection of Paris’s lights in the deep brown. The warmth of him sinks into me. The fear that tomorrow, all this will be forgotten.

I may have wished to be married to Max, I may have wished for his love, but I could never have wished for this. Because while I thought I knew him—while I thought I loved him—I never knew that I was only sitting at the shore of this love. After today, I’m sailing on an ocean of love and it spans as far as I can see. I could spend a lifetime exploring; a lifetime sailing this sea.

“I promise,” I whisper. Then louder, “I promise.”

He smiles, relief flooding his eyes. Then he pulls me down to the bed, the sheets rustling beneath us, the mattress rolling, and gently kisses me, quietly loves me, until we fall asleep to the soft, seeking, golden light of dawn.