Chapter Seven
By the time the plane landed in the United Kingdom, Saskia felt like herself again.
Not completely herself, of course. It was complicated. There were those five years in Wales to come to terms with, not to mention her remarkable decision to marry a man like Pavlos. It was going to take her some time to unpack that.
Maybe a lot of time.
But once she was back in London, she felt as if she could take a full, deep breath for the first time in a long, long while.
The funny thing was, she hadn’t even realized that she wasn’t doing that already.
She would have sworn that she had never felt more relaxed than she had on Pavlos’s island, but her body told her a different story now.
She felt herself truly, deeply relax. She felt her shoulders creep down from her ears and her spine melt against the seat.
Like her body remembered London all on its own. And was happy to be home.
Thanasis’s plane landed in the same private airfield he had always used when she’d flown with him all the time. Saskia braced herself as the plane taxied to a stop, expecting to see him now that she knew who he was to her…and then disappointed when he wasn’t there.
“You need to get a hold of yourself, madam,” she muttered to herself as she exited the plane and climbed down the steps to the tarmac.
She was beckoned into the back of a waiting town car and offered the usual refreshments, which she waved away. The car started moving and she sat back against another cozy leather seat, feeling her body relax even more. Like this car was a spa.
It was so easy, this life. The part of her that was still Selwen, who’d imagined herself a practical and deeply unfancy Welsh girl, was awed at the matter-of-fact luxury she’d already experienced.
Unlike Pavlos’s island, there was very little pressure here.
No need to perform. No need to show up at endless dinners filled with glittering enemies.
And yet she could now remember exactly how frustrated she’d become with it.
Just as she could remember the beautiful simplicity of her life as Selwen.
It had been such a quiet life. Such a good one.
Ffion had cared deeply for her and she had showed it every day.
Selwen had been able to share her own affection in return.
And it was only now, in full possession of all her faculties and memories, that she understood why this had been so important for her.
Because all the people she had loved had died, and usually while she wasn’t around. Her parents. The vicar. They’d all died while she was off doing something else and none of them had ever been replaced. She been entirely on her own in the world until she met Thanasis.
Ffion had found her. Ffion had taken care of her. Ffion had made that lost child inside of Saskia whole.
She had been the family Saskia had always wanted.
And when the time had finally come, Saskia had sat at her bedside. She’d held Ffion’s frail hand between hers and told her in every way she could that it was all right for her to go.
It’s time now, she had told her dear friend. You have places to be, Ffion. And lots of loves waiting for you, I warrant. I will be perfectly fine, this world will go on turning, and I will honor you with every breath. I promise.
Ffion hadn’t opened her eyes again. But Saskia could still remember the clasp of the hand she’d held in hers, how Ffion had gripped her just the slightest bit harder—one last goodbye—and then had slipped away.
It was a beautiful thing, Saskia thought as the town car navigated its way through the wet and crowded London streets.
It was a beautiful, terrible, and lovely thing indeed to hold space for a loved one’s death.
To honor someone who had done so much for her by witnessing her departure on her last final journey.
She wouldn’t take that back. Not for anything.
Those were sacred years, she thought as they sat in the usual London traffic.
For all that she hadn’t known who she was, she’d known that Ffion loved her.
And that had been enough. And now that she knew the context of those years, and what had come before, she knew that she’d never felt she had an opportunity to simply…
scrounge around in clothes that didn’t make the most of her looks in any of her previous incarnations.
She’d learned early on in care that she could use the fact the adults found her pretty to her advantage.
It had been the same later, at university.
It was amazing the things that people would do for her, or help her with, just for a smile.
When a person had nothing, she used the tools she had.
Then there been Thanasis, coming out of nowhere when she hadn’t even been looking for a man, or anything resembling a man, because she’d had work to do. Saskia had never been in the slightest bit of doubt that he found her ravishingly beautiful. He’d told her so all the time.
What she hadn’t known, as time went on, was whether or not that was the only thing he valued about her.
And she couldn’t really say that experiencing him as Selwen had changed that much. Or at all. Because she’d been there when he’d first clapped eyes on her in the villa’s grand hall. She’d seen the shock on his face, then the recognition, then all of that fire.
A familiar fire now, though she hadn’t understood why it had affected her the way it had then.
Still, she’d been on that beach when he’d kissed her, and he certainly hadn’t done it because of her personality, had he? He’d been kissing a memory. She had too, little as she’d realized it at the time.
So really, if she looked at it that way, they were back to square one.
The same square one that had put her on that fateful train.
The car pulled up to the private entrance of the lovely building in Chelsea, tucked away on a wide street within walking distance of the King’s Road, that she knew all too well.
But his driver left nothing to chance. He didn’t wait to see if she could find her way to the place where she’d lived for two years.
He guided her inside, up the private stair to the old flat, and when she walked inside Saskia was surprised to find the place smelled exactly the same as she remembered it.
No mustiness to indicate that it had sat just like this for five years.
Everything was exactly as she’d left it when she’d raced out the door that night, making sure to slam it with all her might behind her.
Suddenly she found that she wasn’t breathing all that well after all.
Saskia swallowed hard. She walked further inside, not even tossing her bag on the table in the foyer the way she always had when she’d lived here, because she couldn’t quite believe that this was happening.
And when she made it into the lounge, she found Thanasis standing there, waiting.
For a moment, they simply stood still on opposites sides of the room, their gazes locked together.
Saskia wanted to sob. She wanted to bawl her eyes out, sink down to her knees, and let all of the emotion that was charging around inside of her release at last.
She wanted to hold tight to Selwen and her memories of Ffion. She wanted to tell Thanasis everything that had happened since the last time she’d seen him as herself. She wanted to run to him, she wanted to run away, and she remembered everything now—
But she’d forgotten how it felt.
To be around him like this, fully aware that she loved him so much and so disastrously.
She had forgotten that it was possible to love like this. It’s like a cancer, she had shouted at him that last night. Every day, it takes over more of me, and what will be left, Thanasis? What will become of me when there’s nothing of me remaining?
You know perfectly well I don’t want that, he had replied, calmly, because he’d been playing the part of the rational, reasonable man that night.
A role they both knew he could not always claim.
You don’t know what you want, she had thrown at him. And in the meantime, while you flutter about in indecision, I am dying .
The only deaths you suffer are the little ones , Thanasis had retorted, moving closer to her right here in this room. He’d gotten his hands on her and they’d both sighed a little, because that always led to the same place. Over and over and over again, fos mou. And yet you complain?
I knew that you could make me come the moment I met you, she’d told him, tipping her chin up and perfectly happy to stay belligerent. What I didn’t know was whether a man like you could love anything. Then she’d leaned in close and bared her teeth at him. I still don’t.
He had responded to that in typical fashion, right there on the soft rug that covered part of the polished wood floor.
If she let herself think too closely about it, she could still feel the aftereffects of that wild claiming, charging through her.
Making her feel, as always, that she would fight and kill and die to keep hold of this man no matter what he did or didn’t do in return.
That was exactly why she left.
Standing here now, across from him in this hushed room filled with so many memories, she could see that he was remembering the exact same thing.
“Welcome home,” he said, in that low voice that never failed to take up residence in her bones.
She wanted to rip into him. She wanted to paint that archangel’s face of his. She wanted to toss herself into the air with the full knowledge that he would catch her when gravity took hold.
God, the things she wanted. She thought they might tear her apart.
“I apologize, Selwen,” he said after a moment, when all she did was stare back at him, her heart a rampaging beast inside her chest. “I forget that you would not remember having lived here.”
Saskia opened up her mouth to tell him that it was fine, that she did remember, that she was finally herself again now. Not Selwen. Not that poor waif of a Welsh girl who, if she had to guess, she would have said had been unknowingly grieving this. Him.