“Well, okay. Maybe we could hang out. At some point. Eventually.”

Never had such stilted, half-hearted words sounded sweeter to Nik’s ears. “I would love that. I would really fucking love that.”

“Okay. Cool. Um… I have to go.”

“Alright, sweetheart.” Fuck. He hadn’t meant to say that.

But she didn’t mention it. “Bye, Nik.”

“Goodbye.”

When the call ended, Nik celebrated harder in his suit and tie, in front of baffled pedestrians, than he ever had for any goal.

* * *

Two weeks later, Nikolas Christou found himself sitting in a restaurant with the love of his life.

She looked amazing, he assumed. He wasn’t completely sure. He couldn’t see her very well, what with the stars in his eyes. But he heard her just fine, when she asked suddenly, “Have you had sex since I last saw you?”

Nik frowned, the stars falling away with a blink. And, yes, she did look amazing—even though she was eyeing him suspiciously. Her hair was shorter with ice blue streaks, her lips shone with that gloss he loved so much, and her curves were clad in a tiny, lime-green dress. She stood out like a beacon in a fancy restaurant full of plain people in plainer clothes.

“No,” Nik said finally. “Of course I haven’t.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

He shrugged. “You left me. I never left you.”

She shook her head and laughed softly, turning her gaze to the menu. “How very Nik of you.”

“What?”

“You know what you want out of life, don’t you?”

He hadn’t, actually. Not until he met her.

Aria’s gaze softened, her mouth twisting slightly. “I’m sorry. It just kind of hit me, when I saw you, that you might have… I don’t know.”

Nik smiled. He wanted to grin like a five-year-old and dance on the table because, apparently, she was hypothetically jealous. But he limited himself to that smile and said, “Turns out I’m great at saying no when I have a reason.”

“I’m a reason?”

“Aria. I love you.”

The tip of her tongue slid out to nudge at her lip ring. She held his gaze for a second before her eyes fluttered away like butterflies, too fast to catch. “Why am I staring at wine? Fuck wine. I need food.”

He laughed. He teased her. She teased him right back. And just like that, it was as if nothing had happened, as if he’d never fucked up and she’d never left, and they were just… them. Together. The way they were meant to be.

Through the starter and the main course, they managed to skirt around the elephant in the room. It was like a dance, as if the melody of their laughter and the beat of their back-and-forth kept them on track, showing their feet where to go.

But then, just after they ordered dessert, Aria’s mouth tightened. Her whiskey eyes became shadowed, her shoulders rigid, and he knew before she said a word that they were about to talk. To Talk, actually. Capital T.

He’d been waiting for this—for the chance to discuss what had happened between them, to really apologise, to explain what had been going through his head. But he was dreading it, too, because she’d said that she wanted to tell him something. And he had a feeling that this something might be responsible for the haunted look that came over her every so often. He had a feeling that someone had hurt her.

And that he’d made it worse.

“I told you, at one point, that I wasn’t really dating,” she said. Her words held the tone of a lengthy speech, an introduction rather than a casual comment, so he nodded wordlessly, not wanting to interrupt. “Well…” She huffed out a long, slow breath. And then, all at once, a rapid stream of words fell from her lips. “Well, I decided to avoid men because I can’t trust myself with relationships, because I just, you know, I’m in them just to be in them, which is fine until it starts to hurt people, and it started to hurt people, because I dated this one guy last year and he turned out to be a murderous stalker and he kidnapped Jen and she nearly died and he blew his own hand off and—”

Nik held up a hand. “Stop.”