42. Amalia
Iwatch as Julia waits impatiently for me to say something, to give her some kind of explanation, but my mind is blocked.
I can’t hear my own thoughts. Something in my chest stings painfully, and I don’t know what to do or what to say.
“I let my guard down for a few minutes and didn’t sense him come at me with the syringe.”
When she raises her eyes to mine, I see they’re full of tears, and I want to sink through the floor because I hate seeing her like this.
“You could have died, you could have been assaulted, we might not have found you. So explain to me why I shouldn’t go out there and put holes in the man who put you in danger, right now.”
I know what could have happened to me. But I can’t blame him, not after seeing his desperation. He was willing to take on the Italian mafia just to get me out of there.
God, he stepped in front of a bullet for me.
My eyes are burning and I want to sleep for at least twenty hours, but when I look out the window and see Silas talking with Maksim, my heart starts beating far too fast again.
Julia comes and wraps her arms around me, and for a few seconds I wish Lupe were here too. A week ago she left for Vermont, where she’s starting college.
“He’s quite handsome,” she tells me, and even though I can’t see her face, I know she’s smiling.
Because he is handsome. He’s grumpy. He’s still the most interesting man in the world, and he came for me.
“Why didn’t you tell me anything about him?” my older sister asks, and I draw in a slow breath.
I can feel the curiosity in her voice but also the doubt. Arms crossed over my chest, I answer her.
“Because he broke my heart the very day everything went down with Lupe and Aleksandr.”
For a minute I feel her turning it over, measuring her words, but in the end she asks, “Do you love him?”
Almost instantly I want to say yes, but my brain pulls me up short. I know what I feel for him, but there were plenty of opportunities for him to tell me something, at least half the truth.
Julia turns me toward her, taking my face in her hands.
“You won’t always find the answer here, coneja.” She touches my forehead gently.
“And what do I do if this,” I tap my temples three times, the way Silas always does, “doesn’t give me the same answer as this?” I press my hand three times over my heart.
Her expression is gentle when she answers.
“This,” she also taps my temple three times, “isn’t built to answer questions about love, Amalia. Let me ask you something. If he’d been seriously hurt today, how would you feel right now?”
Inconsolable. Destroyed. Lost.
And with tears in my eyes, I look at my older sister as though I’ve just had the greatest revelation.
“I love him.”
“It was fairly obvious from the way you were staring at his injured shoulder as if he were about to go in for brain surgery. Sometimes people like you, who have too much of this,” she touches my head again, “don’t know how to absorb what’s happening in here too.
” She moves her hand to my heart. “Go and end his misery. From the way he keeps tapping that watch of his, I think he knows exactly how many seconds we’ve been inside talking.
Oh, and tell him that if he ever raises a gun at my man again, I’m perfectly capable of burying a body on my own. ”
I shake my head with a smile on my face, and my eyes find Silas, who is tapping steadily at the watch on his wrist.
When I walk out into the back garden, he’s alone. When the door closes behind me, he turns immediately.
With his hands in his pockets, shirt slightly open so I can see the bandage at his shoulder, and those rolled-up sleeves that do things to me, he asks, “What percentage do you believe in me when I tell you that was the truth?”
I think about it for a second then answer.
“One hundred percent.”
A visible relaxation moves through his body as he continues, and I take another step toward him.
“What percentage have you forgiven me?”
It takes me a moment to give him an answer, not because I haven’t forgiven him, but because his former lack of trust still hurts.
“Eighty-seven point two five percent,” I answer, and at that, a smile spreads across his entire face.
“All right, only twelve point seven five percent left to recover. I can work with that. What percentage do you want me to leave?”
And even though the smile is still there, I see the way his muscles have tensed at the possibility that I’d want him gone.
I let him simmer for a moment, but when I look again at the bandage from the bullet that was meant for me, I know I can’t hold the answer back.
“Zero percent. Actually, negative infinity, just to be safe.”
He moves toward me, and as his hands settle at the base of my neck, his eyes move over my bun, my glasses, my nose, like he can’t believe he gets to see them again.
“Ask me what percentage I missed you,” he murmurs far too close to my lips for me to remember what he asked me in the first place.
It’s been over ninety days since I kissed him. Ninety days of dreaming about what it would feel like to have him hold me this close again, to have him look at me with that same expression of wonder that’s on his face right now.
“What percentage did you miss me?” Without meaning to, I wet my lips.
The sound that escapes him is somewhere between a breath and a growl. He closes the distance slowly until his lips brush mine, and my heart wants to beat out of my chest.
“One thousand percent. Beyond any limit toward infinity you could ever imagine.”
His lips press over mine, and a feeling of pure euphoria takes over my entire body. My hands move instinctively over his, and I know there are tears in my eyes, because I recognize the taste of him, mint and tea and musk.
I don’t know how long I kiss him, I don’t know when I pause to breathe, but I hear him say quietly, “I don’t have a formula for this, but Amalia, for every single one of those mathematicians you always have on the tip of your tongue, will you be mine?”
I look at this man dressed entirely in black, with his aristocratic bearing, his vintage watch, so perfect in my eyes, and I answer.
“One hundred percent, yes!”
He doesn’t manage to say anything else before I take hold of his neck and pull him back to me, and my mind goes quiet.