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“What?” El-Mudad turned to Neil. “Why wouldn’t you go to Venice with us?”
“It isn’t final. I thought we could discuss it together, the three of us.” Neil added a pointed, “Calmly.”
Oh, I would absolutely explode by the end of this. I just knew it.
Neil explained the situation briefly. “In a rare stroke of fate, my brothers both have time off during this next week. They wondered if I might accompany them to my lodge for some hunting and...brotherly bonding.”
“Don’t you want to throw in a dig at your mortality, too?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest. “He tried the ‘in my old age’ bullshit to justify it to me.”
“You don’t want to spend New Year’s with us?” El-Mudad asked, puzzled more than hurt. “The fireworks are spectacular.”
“I would love to,” Neil said, helpless. “But I rarely get to see my brothers, let alone have time together, just the three of us. Sophie, you know this. I truly don’t understand where this opposition is coming from.”
I knew. With clarity I really didn’t like at all. But I wouldn’t admit to the real reason. “It’s coming from the fact that the three of us are finally all together, and you want to run off immediately.”
“But we’ll be together when we return to New York,” El-Mudad said. “I will be disappointed to spend the holiday apart, but it isn’t as though we’ll be separated forever.”
“Oh, so you’re on his side?” I demanded. And it wasn’t like I had any right to feel hurt or betrayed like that. El-Mudad wasn’t privy to the weird, overly-emotional web of complex insecurities that had been driving me for the last few months.
El-Mudad shrugged. “Yes. I don’t see the harm in the two of us going to Venice and enjoying ourselves. If Neil misses out—“
“It’s not a question of missing out!” I snapped. I dropped onto an antique chaise that I very much hoped wouldn’t collapse or something from age. It was surprisingly sturdy.
Neil sat beside me. “Then what’s troubling you? This isn’t like you, at all.”
“It’s very much like me,” I argued. “I’m a spoiled brat.”
El-Mudad laughed, and at a sharp look from me, fell serious again. “I’m sorry. But did you expect me to argue with you?”
“You’re not helping,” Neil warned him. Gentler, he asked, “If I could understand your reason for being upset, maybe I could reassure you in some way?”
“So you’d get to go on your trip, without us.” I blinked back tears and directed my gaze to the mess of crystals in the chandelier. “Okay. Just let me say what I’m going to say and don’t patronize me.”
“I swear,” he promised.
I took a deep breath. “You bought the place in Venice for your ex-wife. And we’ve been talking about going for a long, long time. Even when you were considering selling it, the thing that held us back was that we wanted to go there together. I thought if we did that...”
“You’d be able to replace my memories of Venice with Elizabeth with Venice with Sophie,” Neil finished for me. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where is this coming from, all of a sudden? You’ve never been jealous of Elizabeth. I don’t even have contact with her anymore.”
“I know you don’t.” Hearing my reasoning out loud made me feel foolish and ashamed. “But I have been jealous of Elizabeth. I just didn’t make a big deal out of it. I’ve never seriously worried that you’d leave me to get back together with her. I know how your marriage ended and how hurt you were. And I really don’t mean to dredge any of that up now—“
“You aren’t,” he stated with conviction. “I came to terms with the end of my first marriage a long time ago. Long before I married you. But I had no idea this was still an issue.”
“It’s not. Not normally.” Not since I turned thirty and worried you’d get tired of me.
“But now things have changed,” El-Mudad said quietly. He leaned against the mantle of the small, white marble fireplace.
“With the addition of you?” Neil asked, his brow creasing in a frown. “Sophie, this doesn’t have anything to do with moving in together, does it?”
“No, not at all,” I swore, shaking my head.
“But it does have to do with being thirty.” El-Mudad might as well have been strolling through my subconscious and perusing the files there. “And you’re chronically ill, now. Perhaps those things together are giving you doubts?”
I wanted to glare at him, but it failed. I burst into tears instead.
“Oh, my darling,” Neil opened his arms to me, and I leaned in, resting my head in the cradle between his shoulder and collarbone. “Do you still think that matters to me? After all my reassurances, you still believe that I love you less because you’ve aged a year?”
