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“I need you to know about last night,” he says, lips pressed hard against my head. “How much I wanted you. How it nearly killed me, wanting you so much.”
“I did too.”
“I know, my queen. But it was not the time.”
“Because you were here to kill me,” I say and immediately I wish I hadn’t said it, because a shudder wrecks his entire body next to mine, but he doesn’t let go. He swallows, hard.
“I…” he says, choking. “I would never harm a hair on your head,” he ends up saying in a quiet, desperate voice.
“I know,” I reply at once. “I know you wouldn’t, Marco, I’m sorry I said that. I’m sorry I was so mad at you—I was just so sick of all the lies. But I know you would never do the job they gave you, not you. You vomited on the street after nearly hurting a dog and you hadn’t even touched it. After all we’ve lived through, don’t you think I know what kind of a person you are by now? Give me a little credit.”
He looks at me with shock on his handsome face.
“Yeah?” he says. “You think… You mean that you believe me? You believe me when I say that I was hired to do this horrible thing, but I had no intention of actually doing it? You don’t think I’m beyond redemption?”
“No one is beyond redemption,” I say. “And especially not someone like you, who has sacrificed so much for others. You have been sacrificing yourself every day since the day you met me. And I am including that night in the hotel room.”
He’s shaking his head. “I wouldn’t be able to let you go if I had done anything with you last night. Just kissing you once, twice, was too much for me. The moment your lips touched mine, I was yours. I would do anything for you. I would have annihilated that snotty Angel dude the day we went to Yale—I barely stopped myself from beating him to a pulp for hurting you.”
“That snotty Angel dude is a prince,” I say.
“Well, he’d be a corpse,” Marco replies. “I would have destroyed anyone who so much as looked at you, I wouldn’t be able to keep it together enough to keep you alive. Not that I am making such a great job of that either. It was you who saved me, instead of the other way round.”
“I’m alive so far,” I say again. I’ll keep saying it, and I don’t care how many times I have to repeat it until it sinks in. He inhales sharply, as if he’s taken a hit to the abdomen. “Hey, it’s going to be ok.”
He shakes his head.
“I’m in too much pain just being in love with you,” he bites out. “Just imagine how it would feel to actually touch you, to… What?” He stops talking, his eyes searching my face anxiously. “You’ve gone all pale. Livy?”
“You said the l-word,” I say, feeling the blood drain from my face. The room is swaying.
Marco laughs and ducks his head. “Oh,” he says, “that. It slipped out. Sorry.”
“Is that all you have to say? It slipped out, sorry?”
“What else can I say?” he shrugs. “I’ve been thinking it for a while now. I know I shouldn’t. These feelings will never ever be allowed for me, but I can’t help it. Sorry. Sorry.” He keeps apologizing and I want to smack him.
“Well, do you feel these feelings?” I press. “After two days?”
“It’s not been two days. It’s been two months. I’ve been watching you, monitoring your every move, remember? It was my job. I have seen you at your lowest and at your highest. I have…”
“Stop, please.” I’m getting angry again. Claustrophobic. He cannot be saying these things right here, right now, with me in a vest and the gunshots pressing closer. There should be a law or something that he’s not allowed to say such things to me unless there’s a sunset in my eyes.
“Sorry,” he says immediately. “I’m sorry. But I… You probably don’t want to hear it.”
Like hell I don’t. “Tell me.”
“It hit me one day at basketball practice.” He leans his head back and closes his eyes as he speaks. His face is completely relaxed, at peace, as if he doesn’t even hear the shots outside the barn. “You were dripping with sweat, your hair gathered on the top of your head in the messiest bun in history, and you were yelling at another girl about the best way to nail a three-pointer. You were arguing, but she was being rude to you, so you were shouting at her—she was shouting back at you—and your eyes were flashing. You were angry, but you radiated happiness. I can’t explain it. I just felt that you were happy to be having this fight with a girl at school, like an ordinary girl. I just watched you; I couldn’t stop. You spit a little as you yelled at her. I think I got a little bit choked up, because my throat hurt afterwards. As if I had been crying the whole time. You… I saw you that day. How strong and selfless you had had to be all your life, how you had had to put yourself second, third, last. How you were finally living a little for the first time in your life, livingforyouasyou, and how filled to the brim with it you were. I saw you.”
He stops abruptly. He’s breathing hard. He…
He is so spot on. I remember that day.
I remember everything he just said: it happened exactly as he described it. But I remember what happened afterwards as well.
I remember that I went to my room afterwards and cried my eyes out for yelling at that girl. Princesses don’t yell. My dad would have been so disappointed in me, I thought. I have betrayed my kingdom, I thought. I have embarrassed everyone who raised me, I thought, I have let them down. I have crushed their expectations.
Now I think that I should have yelled at that girl some more, and have gotten yelled at some more myself, and allowed myself to be as angry as I wanted. As passionate as I wanted.
