Epilogue 1
Grace
~ Eighteen months later ~
“You’re not going to jump, are you?”
Mason’s standing next to me, just about a foot away and—I’m sure—ready to reach for my arm at any moment. I’m surprised he hasn’t grabbed my wrist up until now, as we’re standing just inches away from the cliff, the wild Mediterranean Sea raging beneath us.
“You couldn’t stop me, if I wanted to,” I let him know, my fists clenching as I try to calm my beating heart.
It’s still there. The urge to jump is rushing through every fiber of my body, yearning to go back to that thrill, the danger, the secrecy. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to leave it behind.
“I know,” he says next to me. “So, I’ll just ask you not to do it, for my sake.”
Amused, I turn to him, slanting my brows. “For your sake? You know I’d never try to kill myself.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he says, shaking his head. “But if you jump, I’d have to jump after you. And to be honest, I really, really don’t want to do that.”
He feigns worry as he looks down, pointedly swallowing before he looks at me with a playfully pleading look. “I don’t like heights.”
I can’t help but burst out laughing, and he’s quick to follow me when I take a step back, putting distance between ourselves and the cliff that scares him so much.
We’re on week two of our one-month long trip through Europe. He surprised me with it, saying it would be the perfect way to celebrate the completion of my first year as an undergraduate student.
“You’re majoring in Architecture and Preservation, what better way to unwind from all that studying than with a city trip to gaze at all that art of building that you’ve been talking about for the past year?” he said, when he handed me the tickets.
I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears at first. I couldn’t believe any of it. Never in my life has anyone shown interest in my interests, or even accepted them. Mason did more than that, though. He talked to me, asked me questions—and then he pushed me to pursue a dream that I was never allowed to have, before I met him. He got me out of the ward, but he supported me in finding a new therapist, knowing full well that he may have been helpful in bringing me on the right path, but he’s neither capable nor qualified to help me deal with the ghosts that have been haunting me since my early childhood. He can’t undo what’s been done to me all those years, and he can’t make me unsee the things I’ve seen as I grew up. I grew up with money in abundance, but surrounded by constant danger—a danger that was brought upon me by my own family, who then robbed me of the opportunity to build a life of my own, because their guilt forced them to keep me in a protective bubble.
A bubble I never would have needed if they had chosen a different path in life.
“Come on, let’s go, we still have some way to go,” he says, checking the time on his watch. “And I want to make it back in time for our reservations.”
“I thought this was it?” I ask, drawing a wide half circle with my arm as my eyes trail along the horizon. We’ve been hiking for almost two hours to get up here, making an exception from roaming through the city of Naples for days, before we continue our way to Rome tomorrow.
Annabelle and her husband will come and join us there in another week, which is something that we planned behind Mason’s back. He was adamant that he wanted this trip to be just ours, but I got too excited when Annabella mentioned that they had been thinking about a trip to Europe themselves, to enjoy the last few months as just the two of them. Mason doesn’t know about her pregnancy, yet, but she brought me in the loop a couple of weeks ago, saying she wanted to surprise him with the news. We came up with a whole plan, a kind of scavenger hunt that will eventually lead to the big revelation of telling him that he’s about to become an uncle—something he never thought possible, after all that Annabelle went through.
I can’t wait. My heart leaps with joy every time I think about it and imagine the look on his face when she finally tells him. Just a few more days.
“No, this is just a layover,” Mason says next to me, reaching for my hand to lead me further up the hill. “Trust me, the sunset will be even more spectacular after we pass that last curve up there.”
“But I’m tired,” I mewl playfully, yanking at his hand like a little kid.
He chuckles. “It’ll be worth it. Trust me.”