Chapter Forty-Seven #2
He stilled. Something about the door seemed to wipe the colour from his face.
“I know what’s up there,” he said quietly.
“In my dreams I lived up there with you.” He turned and looked at her properly.
“There are two options here. That’s either news to you .
. .” A beat passed. “Or you’re not surprised at all. ”
Augustine didn’t answer. She couldn’t: her mouth was dry and her heart in her throat, with every possible response caught somewhere behind her ribs.
Theo watched her for a second longer, and something in his expression shifted. “They weren’t just dreams, were they?”
Augustine swallowed. “No,” she finally admitted. “They weren’t just dreams.”
For a second, Theo didn’t move. Then his shoulders dropped, the tension leaving him all at once like something inside him had finally unclenched.
“Thank God,” he breathed. Augustine watched as he dragged a hand over his face, letting out a shaky, relieved laugh.
“I thought I was going mad,” he admitted.
“I thought my brain had just built the whole thing out of nothing. Invented a beautiful woman and tricked me into loving her. Tricked me into losing her. Tricked me into missing her.” His eyes found hers again. “But it didn’t. You’re real.”
Loving her? Augustine’s breath caught in her throat.
She licked her lips. “I’m real, and I . . . I missed you, too.” She took a step closer to him. “You’ll never know how much I’ve missed you.”
“You know who I am.” His voice changed, something almost like awe threading through it now. “Because you were there, too.”
Augustine held his gaze. “Yes,” she said. “I was.”
Neither of them moved, and the world outside the shop seemed to fall away entirely, leaving just the two of them standing there.
Theo let out a slow breath. “Okay,” he said, more to himself than to her. “They weren’t just dreams. I’m not crazy.”
“They weren’t. And no, most likely not.” Augustine gave him a wry smile. “Although you did get involved with me. That was pretty crazy.”
“Involved with you?” Theo shook his head. “I wasn’t just involved with you. Augustine, I loved you.”
“You . . . you can’t remember that,” Augustine stuttered. “Maddy’s spell, the coma . . .”
Theo acknowledged that with a small smile.
“I don’t remember you from before the coma, that’s true.
But I remember searching for you. I remember missing you.
I remember finding you and falling in love with you all over again.
Maybe my memory isn’t what it was but I know I loved you.
I know that for a fact.” He paused. “And you?”
She let out a small, breathless laugh. “I think you know the answer to that.”
“Maybe. But I want to hear you say it all the same.”
Augustine met his gaze, steady despite the way her heart was racing. “I loved you, too.” She swallowed. “I loved you so much, I conjured your subconscious . . . your soul . . . whatever it was, to be with me again.”
There was a moment of quiet between them as the weight of it all hung in the air between them. Everything they’d been. Everything they’d lost. Everything they’d somehow found again, despite the odds against them.
“Do you regret it?” Theo suddenly asked, his voice low. “Wiping me from your memory? Letting me go?”
“Yes.” She didn’t even need to think. “I want to keep my family safe. Of course I do. But yes. I regret it. What about you?”
“I think you know the answer to that,” Theo replied, echoing her earlier words, and Augustine stepped closer to him.
“Maybe. But I want to hear you say it all the same.”
“I regret it more than anything.” Theo ran a hand through his hair, frustration in his eyes. “There’s nothing I want more than to remember you.”
A sad kind of wistful ache built within her. “You do remember me. Maybe not from before, from what we once had, but the memory is there. You wouldn’t be here right now otherwise. You remembered me enough to come back to me. To . . . fall in love with me, all over again.”
He nodded slowly. “I promised you I’d find you. Remember? I promised you I’d come back.”
“I know. But I didn’t know if or how it would work. I wasn’t sure whether you would remember being that Theo. That part of you that found me.”
“That Theo is me,” he replied firmly. “It was always me.” He took a deep breath, stepping closer to her. “Okay. Let’s think about this logically.”
“There’s no logic in any of this.” Augustine couldn’t help a smile from crossing her face.
“You’re right. So, let’s think about it statistically then.”
Augustine laughed. “Oh God. You’re really doing this?”
“Yes,” he said, completely serious. “Because this is what I’m good at.” He gestured lightly between them. “And this — whatever magic this is — is already so far outside the norm it’s practically its own dataset.”
She folded her arms, but she was smiling now. “Go on then. Dazzle me with numbers.”
Theo nodded once, like he’d been waiting for that. “All right. So. Baseline probability — two strangers meet, fall in love, and make it work long-term. Not great odds to begin with.”
“So, statistically we were doomed even if we hadn’t erased each other from our minds?” she asked.
“Stay with me,” he said. “Now, factor in everything else. Your witchhood. My unfortunate status as a fallen witch hunter. Our attempted memory erasure, as well as the coma-induced metaphysical reunions. Take all of that, and the probability of us finding each other again?” He paused.
“Astronomically low. One in ten billion.”
Augustine’s smile widened. God, she’d missed conversations like these.
“There are only eight billion people in the world, Theo.”
“Exactly,” he agreed, “that’s how improbable it all is.”
Silence settled and he took a step closer. “So statistically speaking, this shouldn’t have happened. Not once. Definitely not twice.” A beat. “Which means either we are the single most improbable coincidence in modern history . . .”
“Or?” she asked softly.
“Or we’re the outlier that proves the rule doesn’t apply.” Theo held her gaze. “Look, we already tried being sensible,” he said. “We did everything right. We made the safe choice.” His jaw tightened slightly. “And it still broke us.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
“So maybe,” he said, quieter now, “we stop trying to be sensible.”
“What do you mean?”
Theo held her gaze. “We leave,” he said simply.
She blinked. “Leave?”
“Yeah.” A small shrug. “Disappear. You and your sisters managed it once already, right? New names, new place, new start. We could make our own version of that. We know we can’t be together as we are.
My family would find yours and snuff them out in a moment.
” He looked pained. “I did some research on witch hunters during my recovery. It didn’t make for pleasant reading.
The things the Manford family have done, my father, my cousins . . .”
Augustine winced as Celestine, Clem and Maddy crossed her mind.
“I won’t let that happen,” Theo reassured her. “You won’t let that happen. So, we go. We’ll disappear. Make it work.”
Augustine met his gaze. “You’re serious about this.”
“Completely.”
“But Theo, your life . . . your job—”
“Isn’t worth anything if I’m not actually living it,” he told her. “And apparently, I’ve already proven I’m quite capable of falling in love with you under impossible circumstances. Twice.” A faint, crooked smile. “Feels like I should try for a third time.”
Her throat tightened. “You’d give all that up?”
“For you? Yes.” He didn’t even hesitate. “Would you?”
Augustine opened her mouth, before she stopped just as quickly. Because the honest answer should have been simple.
Yes. Of course yes.