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But of course she hadn’t understood. That was the kind of thing that was only obvious in retrospect.

What I want is immaterial, he had told her, with all that turmoil in his gaze and that serious tone in his voice. The crown must always come first. The kingdom will always take precedence. It is not a choice to make, it is a simple fact.

I understand, she had said.

When, of course, she couldn’t have. Not back then.

And there had definitely been anguish, then. All over his gorgeous face.

You don’t, he’d said. But I fear that you will, in time. I can only apologize to you now, in advance.

Aeryn had held that close for years. She had considered it a badge of honor that she did not, ever, give Vesuvius a hard time about being late to meet her. About being called away from her. About the thousand little ways the kingdom intruded on everything they did. When the flights she took back and forth were no longer commercial and anonymous, she told herself that she would simply cry when she got back home to Chicago and leave it there when she left. She had shared an apartment with two friends back then, and she had become an expert at sobbing into her pillow. And hiding the evidence with excellent cosmetics when necessary.

She hadn’t even complained when she’d flown all the way to see him and had spent a whole weekend waiting for him to come to her, only he never had.

After their weekends—always punctuated by crises and important calls—she could, if she liked, torture herself by looking through various news sites and tabloids to see what he’d actually been up to. One thing that was always true was that she’d never liked what she found.

Maybe because he’d looked entirely too happy out there, doing his thing without her.

But it had been a point of pride on her part that she’d never mentioned any of that to him. Because, tacitly, she had agreed on that long-ago night that his dedication to his role and his people was what mattered.

For a long time, she had believed that the time they did get to spend together mattered too, if in a different way. Those magical hours that were only theirs. She had been sure it would all balance itself out, somehow.

Aeryn didn’t feel that way any longer. She’d had two difficult, joyful, transformative years away from him and perhaps a little too much clarity because of that.

“I think it’s high time that we accept that we make each other miserable,” she told him now. “Just because we fell in love so fast doesn’t mean that there’s anything healthy about it. Or us. As I think we’ve proven. The smart move here is obviously to go our separate ways.”

“You do not make me miserable, Aeryn,” Vesuvius said.

She scowled at him. “I am trying to be evenhanded and temperate about this,” she said, and maybe she was a little louder than before. Less targeted and more temper. “But all this does is hurt. You know that. I certainly know that. You only think that I make you happy because your kingdom makes you miserable. And I’d love to take that on board, Vesuvius. But I can’t. I won’t. They’re not the same thing.”

“I don’t think you understand.”

“I understand perfectly,” she threw back at him. “There has never been any room in your life for me. We tried. We tried so hard, and it never worked out. It didn’t matter how accommodating I was, how determined you were. There can be hurt feelings all along the sides of that, but the fact remains. We tried. What I don’t understand is why you would come after all this time, after everything we’ve been through and all those dire documents you had me sign, and literally crash right back into my life. I’m fine here, now. I’m finally fine, Vesuvius.”

He gazed at her for what felt like an eternity, an expression she had never seen before on his face. And Aeryn felt something hitch deep inside of her, like the precursor to the sort of sob she wasn’t sure she could survive.

She couldn’t decide what scared her more. Him leaving her for good this time…or him mounting an argument she couldn’t refute.

This was the essential madness when it came to Vesuvius. She simply couldn’t tell what hurt the worst. And tonight she could feel a faint tenderness between her legs. She could still taste him in her mouth.

She was screwed, in other words.

And still he looked at her in a way that made every single bone in her body ache with longing and need, as if any part of this was new.

“I love you,” he said, and it was the way he said it.

It was that ache inside of her. It was all of these complicated, multilayered years. It was the way he’d kissed her back on the couch with no memory and the way he’d cried out when he came, then buried his face in her neck like she was his only tether to the earth.

It was everything.

But it couldn’t matter the way it would have, once. Not with so much water under the bridge that it rivaled Lake Michigan. And his gaze on her in this dimly lit room so early on Christmas morning, so early it didn’t feel like Christmas at all, didn’t help.

And she was sure of one thing. “You don’t,” she said. “You never have.”

He shook his head slightly, baffled. “I always have. I fought it and I lost it and still, I love you, Aeryn.” He didn’t reach out a hand to touch her, and still she felt as if he had set her on fire. “I always have and I always will.”

Aeryn could have sworn that she was staggering backward, possibly even falling, and it was disorienting to realize that she hadn’t moved at all. That the only thing she was doing was gazing back at him.