Page 102 of Wished

The force of his words rolls over me and I take a step toward him. Then another.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t want you trapped in a wish where I made you love me. I wanted to give you a choice.”

Max grips my arms, pulls me close, and then says, “That last wish, it wasn’t yours. It was mine. I wished on the parure. I wanted to know what it was like to love without reservation. To fling myself off a cliff into open air?—”

“You ...” I stare at him, uncomprehending. “You wished ... That was your wish?”

When he was desperately in love with me? When his love for me was as wide and as deep as the ocean? That was his wish?

Max smiles at me. “It turns out loving without reservation didn’t feel any different than how I already felt. I just made myself forget this other life for a bit.”

“I thought you’d hate me,” I say, shaking my head. “I thought you forgot me. I thought...”

“I’ve been looking for you since the second I woke up and you weren’t there. I called your boss—no answer for weeks now. I sat outside your building for days like some crazed stalker ... I’ve been going out of my mind. You disappeared.”

He pulls me against him and I take in his heat. The air around us shimmers, and I feel warm and delicious. I rest my cheek against his chest and he lets out a shuddering sigh, then he rubs his hands down my back, along my arms, touching me everywhere as if he’s reassuring himself I’m real.

“I looked for the letter. It wasn’t there. I knocked on your door?—”

“After a week of waiting I dug it up. I burned the damn thing myself.” He stares down at me, his eyes as dark as a starry night.

I reach up and run my hand over the thick stubble on his jaw.

“I’m glad,” I say.

He smiles. “I wish you’d knocked on my door again. It would’ve saved me three weeks of believing I’d lost my mind, but wishing desperately that you’d come back and try to steal my necklace again?—”

“I never—” My words are cut off by Max’s grin.

“I know,” he says. “That doesn’t mean I couldn’t wish it.”

“But Madame Blinken said you told her to call the police?—”

“No.” He closes his eyes then opens them, realizing. “That was before. I told her before. I forgot. If I’d known you were knocking on my door, I would’ve run to answer it. Anna ... I wished for you.”

I shake my head, suddenly worried we’re two people who don’t know anything about each other at all.

“How much of it was real?” I ask him.

The feeling between us is still there. The rightness, the resonance. But what was real, and what wasn’t?

Max reaches out and brushes his hand over my cheek. A warm tingle rushes over my skin.

“We’re not married,” I say. “We don’t have seven years behind us. We don’t have a history. We just have ...”

“Love?” Max asks.

“Remember I told you I fell in love with you at first sight?”

Max nods, his hand brushing over me comfortingly. “And I said I’d give up anything to spend even a single night with you.”

“But how do we know it’s real?”

“I suppose we could try it and see,” Max says, watching me with that happy, hopeful expression. He rubs his thumb over my lips, leaving a shimmery tingling in its wake. “Did that feel real?”

I nod, darting my tongue over my lips.

The evening is shifting to night and the air is cooling. I tuck myself closer into Max’s heat, breathing in the soft leather of his jacket.

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