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“And?” I prompt him to continue. To hurt me more.
“And things are not what they seem,” he says finally.
Like hell they aren’t. “Right now, it seems that you are saying you ‘took’ things from me, things I gave willingly. Things anybody else would be happy to get from me.”
He nods, hiding his eyes again.
“Exactly,” he whispers, and lifts a hand to wipe his face. “Exactly, princess.”
“Well, don’t you think…?” He lifts a hand in the air to stop me midsentence.
“Please,” he murmurs, sounding as if he is in pain slightly. “Please, don’t be mad. Don’t be sad. I know I’m hurting you right now, and God knows I’m destroying myself, but we are almost out of time, and there’s one more thing I want to do with you.” He turns to face me, and his face is so open, vulnerable and lost, my anger melts away. “What do you say?”
What do I say?
He’s right. I would be very surprised if there isn’t an army of guards, palace soldiers as well as reporters outside our little cabin right now. And even if there aren’t, there will be in a few hours.
He is right. We are so out of time.
And if he wants one more thing to do with me, I can’t help myself: I need to find out what it is. Even though my heart hurts so much right now, it might actually kill me before the assassins get to me.
Marco is reaching out a hand, palm up. Open.
Waiting for me to take it.
I don’t want to touch him. I will shatter if I do.
“Please,” he says again, and there’s something final about it, as if it’s going to be the last thing he ever asks of me. It won’t be, of course. He’s such a drama queen.
“As long as you know that I hate you right now.”
He smiles widely, teeth showing, and for some reason I know that it’s his happy smile. His incandescently happy one. Weird, weird dude.
“Oh, I know,” he says. “Believe me, I know. I hate me too.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
His eyebrow lifts. “Nothing,” he says, “and everything.”
But his smile fades, and he gets up to get dressed in the bathroom, away from my sight.
***
He takes me down to the water.
We drive for about thirty minutes, and then we walk to a soft patch of grass, and then he grabs a bag he’d strapped to his back, and starts spreading down a blanket. He has gone and organized a freaking picnic.
If I wasn’t so mad at him right now, I would be impressed.
I would be melting.
Good thing I’m mad, right? Yeah, I’m definitely mad at him.
There is hardly anybody around, and the weather is warmer somehow. It’s the second day of November, and the lake looks like a Taylor Swift song, all browns, reds and yellows.
We just sit there, eating bagels, soaking it all in. The vastness of the sky, the smell of the trees. I am about to ask him something about last night, which is not a good idea, but I can’t stop myself, when he speaks first:
“Will you hold my hand?”
