Page 109 of Fated

“Mm-hmm,” I nod and Max pulls his hand back. “Why aren’t you?”

He shrugs, settles back again, and pulls me to his side. I rest against his warmth. “Sparks are overrated. Fire and passion are overrated. I don’t want the kind of love that makes you crazy or makes you feel like you’ll die if you can’t be together. I don’t want to be so consumed by love that I’m crazed with it. By all accounts, that’s what my parents had before my brother and I came along. I don’t want that. Who would want that? I don’t.”

I lean my head against his shoulder. “You might someday. You might regret not finding it.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “The way I love you, it’s like sipping from a bottle of wine holding hands under a purple sky.” He tips his chin toward the sky. “It isn’t sparks or flames. It’s the cool breeze of lying under the stars. With my friend. With the person I trust. That’s what’s important to me. But if you want sparks, I’ll try to give you sparks.”

I study Max’s face—the firm line of his jaw, his hawkish, determined look.

“It’s not something you can force,” I say, thinking back to how the second Aaron touches me sparks light up. They’re just there. They just are.

“Maybe. Maybe they don’t even exist.”

“They do in my dream.”

He laughs. “Well, that’s why it’s a dream. Dreams and movies, the land of sparks.”

“You think you should try again? Another ten times? I have to be honest, I didn’t feel anything.”

“Right,” he says, taking it in stride, “I know. Neither did I.”

“Well!”

He smiles over at me. “It was a bit like kissing a friend, not a lover.”

“I am a friend.”

“But if you want sparks, well, the space program—what did it cost them to get to the moon? Twenty-five billion? I’m not that wealthy, but I am quite rich.”

“Quite rich” doesn’t cover it. Max’s fortune puts Abry to shame.

“I’ll spend mountains of money, I’ll take the time, and I’ll find a way to give you sparks. That way, when I propose, you’ll say yes.”

I think about this. “If you propose and I love you as more than a friend, and there are sparks, I’ll say yes.”

He grins then—a happy, contented smile that spreads over his familiar face—and reaches out to me, inviting me to smile back.

“I don’t know why you want to marry someone like me. I think I’m falling for a dream man.”

“Yes,” Max says. “But when you realize he isn’t real, then you’ll settle for me. I’m perfectly fine being your second choice.”

I laugh and shove him, and then he gathers me in his arms and we end up laughing and rolling to the grass and lying on our backs staring up at the starry night sky.

And if I realize that while we lie there the hours are passing and the night is ticking away, well ... it only hurts a little bit.

37

It’safter midnight by the time I settle under the whispering sheets and warmth of my lavender-scented duvet. I thanked Annemarie for watching Mila, peeked in Mila’s room, found her sleeping soundly, and then dropped a kiss on her head.

Now I’m clutching the cool gold watch in my hand, its ticking loud in the quiet stillness of my bedroom. Outside the wavy lines of my bedroom window the stars are bright and glowing. My eyelids flutter, my eyes are heavy, and I’m warm and relaxed.

Max didn’t kiss me good night. Instead he took my hand and asked me to consider the benefits of a calm, balmy kind of love. Then, with a wry smile, he added, “With sparks.”

I agreed to go with him to an evening outdoor concert next weekend, and then with a wink he told me it’d be in Paris.

I smile, settling into the darkness, and let my eyes drift closed. Maybe Max is right. Maybe turbulent, flaming, sparking love is only found in dreams. And maybe, as he suspects, that kind of love always comes to an abrupt end.

I don’t know. But I suspect I’ll find out.

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