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That, in fact, she still looked furious.

“Aeryn,” he began.

“I don’t need you to give me whatever story you spent the last hour making up, thank you.” She let out a shaky sort of laugh and rubbed a hand over her face. “I’m exhausted, Vesuvius. Not only because we stayed up most of the night, but because of the past five years. I don’t know why I keep wanting you to be someone you’re not.”

“I didn’t mean to lie to you,” he said, gruffly.

“Don’t you think it’s indicative of how messy this thing is between us that you could be referring to… I don’t know, literally anything?” Aeryn shook her head at him. “When exactly did you get your memory back tonight?”

He didn’t want to tell her. He realized how ill that spoke of him. “It came back to me gradually,” he said. “While we were kissing.”

“And so you sat there and pretended you couldn’t remember what I was talking about.” This time, when she laughed, it was derisive. “I don’t even know why I’m surprised. What I need to do is ask myself why I have some version of you in my head who’s never existed. And why, even though I’ve never met the man that’s in my head, I’m constantly shocked when you’re not him.”

Every word felt like a blow, but he deserved them. So he took them.

“I don’t know what version you’re looking for,” he told her. “But I’m right here. I’m one man. And I’m happy to be whatever version of me you’d like.”

She stood up then, in a rush, and he could see she was vibrating with fury—actually vibrating—from head to toe. “What I would like, Vesuvius, is to go back in time so that none of this ever happened. So that I never met you. So that I never believed in you, for even one second. That’s what I would like.”

Chapter Eight

“I am afraid that time travel is not a course of action that is available to you,” Vesuvius said, in that soothing, serious voice of his that at some point had used to make her feel good. Or better, anyway, about their situation.

She knew it had.

Right now, however, she wanted to throw him out the window into the snow below. It would purely be for show, she knew. She’d seen members of his security team, and she knew full well that they would simply pick him up, dust him off, and put Humpty Dumpty back together again. They were good at that.

The trouble was, that particular service had never been available to her. Aeryn had always been responsible for putting herself back together, no matter what state she found herself in. There had never been any help, only the length of transatlantic flights to sob it all out—quietly, of course, so as not to disturb anyone, because she might have been a fool where Vesuvius was concerned but she was still a Midwesterner—and then act as if nothing had happened when she got home.

When she’d usually started counting the days until she got to see him again. Living for phone calls that only sometimes came when promised. Existing entirely for the special chime on her cell that meant he’d texted.

She might have missed him, but she didn’t miss any of that.

While he’d been downstairs, having important conversations with important-looking men as usual, Aeryn had once again been forced to contend with her own absolute idiocy where this man was concerned. In truth, she really shouldn’t even have been mad at him. He was simply behaving the way he always had. He was completely himself, whether he remembered anything or not, and surely she should have known that by now.

Had she really believed that he could show up here and leave his throne behind?

The reality was that Vesuvius was inextricably linked with his crown. There was no distance between the two, no possible separation. He might have claimed that he’d abdicated, and the internet seemed to believe he had, but it looked to her as if half the kingdom had come with him either way.

Even here, in her home, in a place so far removed from Liandero that there should not possibly have been any overlap—which was one of the many things she loved about it—the kingdom was not only with him. It took precedence.

When the kingdom called, its king answered.

It was no different than all the years they’d spent together. She’d gotten a few stolen hours, that was all, interspersed with the calls he had to take, the meetings he had to rush off to, the business of governing he was always required to show up for.

Back then, she’d been the very soul of understanding. Vesuvius was a king. She hardly thought that she could fall in love with a man who she’d known full well was already the king of a whole country, and then complain about the inconvenient weight of his crown.

She never had.

And it was almost too easy to slip right back into that space. She’d been stunned to see his security detail arrive, as well as a host of powerful Lianderoan noblemen she knew by sight—though obviously she’d only met a few of them when they’d happened by the art gallery while she’d been there.

Aeryn knew who they were. She probably knew far more than she should.

She had been shocked that they were here. She felt betrayed. Exposed. Vesuvius had looked up at her and she’d seen that he, at least, knew how she felt—but that did not exactly help the situation, did it? So she had hurried out of view.

And it wasn’t until she’d come into this room, shut the door, and sat down in the chair where she’d nursed Faith while she’d still been breastfeeding—where she still held her daughter now, to comfort her, or to soothe her, or to read to her—that she’d asked herself why, exactly, she had rushed off to hide away in her own house.

The one place she should never have to hide, no matter who was visiting.