“You won’t always find the answer here,coneja.” She touches my forehead gently.
“And what do I do if this,” I tap my temples three times, the way Silas always does, “doesn’t give me the same answer as this?” I press my hand three times over my heart.
Her expression is gentle when she answers.
“This,” she also taps my temple three times, “isn’t built to answer questions about love, Amalia. Let me ask you something. If he’d been seriously hurt today, how would you feel right now?”
Inconsolable. Destroyed. Lost.
And with tears in my eyes, I look at my older sister as though I’ve just had the greatest revelation.
“I love him.”
“It was fairly obvious from the way you were staring at his injured shoulder as if he were about to go in for brain surgery. Sometimes people like you, who have too much of this,” she touches my head again, “don’t know how to absorb what’s happening in here too.” She moves her hand to my heart. “Go and end his misery. From the way he keeps tapping that watch of his, I think he knows exactly how many seconds we’ve been inside talking. Oh, and tell him that if he ever raises a gun at my man again, I’m perfectly capable of burying a body on my own.”
I shake my head with a smile on my face, and my eyes find Silas, who is tapping steadily at the watch on his wrist.
When I walk out into the back garden, he’s alone. When the door closes behind me, he turns immediately.
With his hands in his pockets, shirt slightly open so I can see the bandage at his shoulder, and those rolled-up sleeves that do things to me, he asks, “What percentage do you believe in me when I tell you that was the truth?”
I think about it for a second then answer.
“One hundred percent.”
A visible relaxation moves through his body as he continues, and I take another step toward him.
“What percentage have you forgiven me?”
It takes me a moment to give him an answer, not because I haven’t forgiven him, but because his former lack of trust still hurts.
“Eighty-seven point two five percent,” I answer, and at that, a smile spreads across his entire face.
“All right, only twelve point seven five percent left to recover. I can work with that. What percentage do you want me to leave?”
And even though the smile is still there, I see the way his muscles have tensed at the possibility that I’d want him gone.
I let him simmer for a moment, but when I look again at the bandage from the bullet that was meant for me, I know I can’t hold the answer back.
“Zero percent. Actually, negative infinity, just to be safe.”
He moves toward me, and as his hands settle at the base of my neck, his eyes move over my bun, my glasses, my nose, like he can’t believe he gets to see them again.
“Ask me what percentage I missed you,” he murmurs far too close to my lips for me to remember what he asked me in the first place.
It’s been over ninety days since I kissed him. Ninety days of dreaming about what it would feel like to have him hold me this close again, to have him look at me with that same expression of wonder that’s on his face right now.
“What percentage did you miss me?” Without meaning to, I wet my lips.
The sound that escapes him is somewhere between a breath and a growl. He closes the distance slowly until his lips brush mine, and my heart wants to beat out of my chest.
“One thousand percent. Beyond any limit toward infinity you could ever imagine.”
His lips press over mine, and a feeling of pure euphoria takes over my entire body. My hands move instinctively over his, and I know there are tears in my eyes, because I recognize the taste of him, mint and tea and musk.
I don’t know how long I kiss him, I don’t know when I pause to breathe, but I hear him say quietly, “I don’t have a formula forthis, but Amalia, for every single one of those mathematicians you always have on the tip of your tongue, will you be mine?”
I look at this man dressed entirely in black, with his aristocratic bearing, his vintage watch, so perfect in my eyes, and I answer.
