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“Trap,” I say. “What are we doing here?”
He just smiles. Our guide gestures to the far end of the empty lobby. “You’ll want to start your visit in the Petite Rotonde,” he says. And when we reach the door, he says, “Please. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you enjoy your visit.”
“Thank you,” Trap says. “We definitely will.”
Our guide disappears through a door that says, in English and French,Authorized Personnel Only.
I hesitate outside the entrance to the Petite Rotonde. “What’s going on?” I ask Trap. “Where is everyone?”
“Enjoying a well-earned day off,” Trap says. “Well, the people who work here, anyway. Tourists who want to visit? They’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
“Trap!” I say, because the grin on his face is outrageous. Because no one should have that type of power. Because I’m grateful beyond words for the opportunity to see some of the world’s greatest artwork without fighting through crowds.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Ready,” I confirm.
And he leads me through the Petite Rotonde into heaven.
The room stretches out like a football field. It’s shaped like an oval and painted white, floor to ceiling. A massive skylight stretches overhead.
The walls are filled with four gigantic paintings by Monet. They’re water lilies, purple and green and brilliant. They’re taller than I am, curving with the space. It’s like standing in the middle of a garden, like breathing in the middle of a painting, like moving through a brilliant, sun-struck dream.
And it’s ours to look at. Ours to breathe in. Ours to absorb without needing to jostle strangers, without needing to wait our turn, without needing to use imagination to fill in the spaces blacked out by others’ bodies. I turn around slowly, utterly, completely awe-struck.
And when I turn back, Trap is kneeling on the floor in front of me.
He’s taken off his sweater. He’s wearing his black jeans and a T-shirt that shows the ripple of every one of his muscles. That’s how I first saw him, outside a Dover bar, Debasement. That’s how he looked the night I dared to go home with him. The night I became his for the first time. The night he became mine.
He reaches for my hand, holding it fast between both of his. I start to tremble like sunlight on the waterlilies around us.
“Alix,” he says, but his throat is tight, and he has to clear it, which makes my heart stutter into triple time. “Alix,” he says again. “The night I met you, I never imagined what you would mean to me. I just thought we’d have a good time. I thought you’d be out of my life the very next day.”
Bound, gagged, and gone by dawn, that’s what he told me that night in the bar.
“I never should have left,” I whisper.
“I never should have let you go.”
He didn’t. I sneaked out. And he spent thousands of dollars and countless hours trying to find me.
“I’ve lost you too many times,” he says. “I don’t like the man I am when you’re not with me. You’re the one who slays the Beast. I can’t stand to live when you’re not around.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, my words so soft they’re almost lost in the paintings.
“Will you marry me?”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a blue velvet bag. It’s cinched at the top with a crimson ribbon. He works the binding, opening the mouth, and he tips a rock onto his palm.
It’s the size of a grape, gray with lots of broken edges, almost a sphere. It looks like something a child would find on a playground.
“It’s a rough diamond,” he says. “The last from the ones my father gave me.”
The ones that saved his life. The ones he carried out of a stinking house of death. The ones that built the freeport.
It’s priceless.
“Let me make you a ring, Alix. Say you’ll stay forever. Marry me.”
