Page 109 of The Moon & His Tides

It was written in the heartbreak dawning over his features, turning the gold of his eyes to wet sand, heavy and dark.

Shaking my head felt like moving ten tons of bricks, but I must have been successful because he winced, run through by the simple movement.

“I won’t beg you,” he warned, so proud even now, shoulders strong, chin tipped up at that haughty angle he’d adapted from my wife. “I shouldn’t have to. You promised me one day we’dlive in our impossible universe, but until then, we’d be together however the hell we could inthisone. And at the first sign of trouble, you bail on it?”

I blinked at him, the words and emotions I’d felt so acutely when I’d seen the picture purged from my body when I’d vomited. Now, I was just a hollow aching shell.

“I will love you ineveryuniverse,” he told me fiercely, a declaration of war as much as it was one of love. That he was willing to fight for me when I was not. That he was brave and filled with enough conviction to hone it into armor against all the judgements of the world.

For one crystalline second, it made me waver.

If he could bear the strain, couldn’t I?

If he set the example, I could follow because it meant I wouldn’t have to lose him to the fear and hatred around us.

But then Savannah appeared behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s go upstairs.”

As was our habit, we followed her. There was sick on my shoes, but there was no one at the back entrance to notice, and the service elevator took us up to a floor that had obviously been cleared for us.

The click of the lock opening under the key card in Savannah’s hand seemed to echo through the empty place.

None of us spoke.

Not even when we filtered into the gorgeous room and took up positions away from each other. But no matter how far apart we were, we remained three points of the same triangle.

“Adam wants me out,” Sebastian told my wife combatively, daring her to agree. “He thinks it’s the only way. Tell him how absurd that is.”

I closed my eyes, turning my head away.

Because Iknewwhat she would say.

Sebastian didn’t because he’d always have rose-colored glasses on when it came to my wife. I’d watched her put them on him and kept quiet.

Because I wanted to look at her that way, too, despite evidence that illustrated her otherwise.

“It’s probably for the best,” she said softly, almost inaudibly.

I felt Sebastian’s shock like a nuclear blast, rocking me back on my heels so I had to brace myself against the fireplace mantel.

“Scusi?” he breathed, reverting to Italian in his surprise.

“Just for a while,” she amended. “You shouldn’t be seen with him. But we can put you up somewhere, and you and I can still make time… it’s just dangerous for this to continue with Adam. For… a while, at least.”

“For a while,” he repeated with a rough laugh that scored through me.

It didn’t sound a thing like him.

“Vaffanculo!You Brits love your ambiguity,” he insulted. “What the fuck does that mean? You put me up in some hotel like a cheap mistress until I can come home again?”

Home.

Through the glacial ice that had formed over my soul in the last half hour, I heard a great creakingcrackin my ears, and a second of searing pain lashed through my chest.

He thought of us as home.

And we were taking that from him.