turned toward me then, grabbing my mashed-potato-coated hands and holding them both close to his chest. Getting, I’ll note, mashed potatoes all over his shirt. Not that either of us was going to say anything about that.
“Trish, what I’m saying is… What if you didn’t leave at all? What if you were here in the fall because you’d never left?”
I gulped again, reminding myself not to let my emotions run away with me. Was he saying what I thought he was saying? Or was this another tease that would end up being nothing at all?
“That would pretty much defeat the purpose of going home and getting back to my life,” I noted.
He leaned in and pressed a quick, unexpected kiss to my lips. “What if your life was here?” he whispered.
And at that, I decided, I’d had enough of the double talk and hinting. I wanted to hear what he was saying straight outright. I wanted to know for sure where I stood.
“Say what you mean, Nikos,” I said. “I’m tired of guessing. I’m tired of thinking something is happening and then finding out that it’s not. I’m tired of you being right in front of me, and then pulling back at the last moment. I need to know what you’re asking me.”
And then I prayed I’d been right to say that. Prayed that he’d answer me the way I so desperately wanted him to.
He took a deep, almost heaving breath, like he was shoring himself up for something big, and then dove in.
“Remember when I said that someone died on my operating table? Well, it was… it was my daughter. My little girl. She had a heart condition, and I was so certain that I could fix it that I talked her doctors into letting me perform the operation. I was so sure that I could do it.”
His voice broke at that, and I jerked, wanting to hug him, but he shook his head and carried on.
“I even joked with her before they gave her the anesthesia. Told her I’d be right there when she woke up. Then it all went wrong. I failed. I failed her. And she died.
“It crushed me. It crushed everything I’d ever believed right out of me. Soon after that, her mother left. We just couldn’t find common ground anymore when we were both so broken. And I stopped trying to live. I didn’t care about anything anymore. I bought this place, moved out here, shut the world out. And I didn’t think I’d ever want to live again. Until you got here.”
He gave me a quick, searching look, and then glanced down again. “You made me feel again, Trish. You made me want to live again. But I was scared. I was so scared of losing another person I cared about that I tried to keep a barrier between you and me. The problem is, I can’t seem to keep you at arm’s length. You kept breaking that barrier down. You broke it again and again and again, and then you disappeared, and I… I realized that I wasn’t scared, anymore. Or rather, I was scared, but of something completely different. I was scared of losing you.”
He looked up, met my eyes, and pulled me closer. “I don’t want to see you leave. I can’t stand the thought of you going. Please stay in Greece with me for good. Please say you’ll stay.”
I gulped, trying to get my heart to go back down to where it was supposed to live. Trying to remember how to breathe. He’d told me the whole story. Finally. And that was the other shoe dropping, officially.
That was why he’d worked so hard to keep me away.
Now that he was letting me close, he was also asking the question I’d been waiting for.
But the bigger question was… was I willing to stay? Was I willing to give up on Texas and my career there and all my friends and family, to stay on this magical island with this enchanted man?
I knew the answer before I’d even finished the question. I’d known the answer ever since I got here.
I just needed to find a way to get it out.
“I don’t want to leave any more than you want to see me go,” I finally whispered. “So if you’re honestly asking me to stay with you, here, forever, then my answer is yes.”
Epilogue
A Year Later: Trish
I put the finishing touches on the email I’d been working on, smiled to myself at