Page 74 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
“Amélie and Matteo lived it up at Versailles,” I say. “Clara and Felix got to savor falling slowly in love. And Cosmina and Marius had a wickedly good time experimenting with all her witchy potions and spells, even if they didn’t work.”
“Yes, but none of them—”
“Ended well? I know…Still, a sad ending doesn’t undo all the happiness that came before it, right?”
Sebastien runs his hand through his hair as he considers this. He shakes his head.
But then he sighs heavily and does the thing where he creases the space between his brows when he’s about to give in to me.
“I’d rather have seven hours with you than seven hundred years without,” he says. “But it doesn’t mean I stop wanting more. Or that I have the right to make that choice for you.”
I touch his arm. “Maybe we’ll have more this time. Just because two years has been the limit before doesn’t mean it will be the limit again. And thingsaredifferent this time.”
He gives me a small smile, tinged with sad skepticism. “Juliet’s always been the optimist of the pair.”
“Romeo was optimistic, too. He thought they could run away from their families and elope.”
“Romeowasoptimistic. Until time wore him down.”
There again is that weight on Sebastien’s shoulders, the burden of centuries lived and countless Juliets come, then cruelly gone.
I stroke Sebastien’s face. “I guess I’ll have to be optimistic enough for both of us, then.”
“Helene—”
“It’s my choice. My decision.” And right now, I don’t want towallow in the shadows of our supposed curse. I press my mouth to his.
After a moment’s hesitation, Sebastien gives in, and the sense of inevitability rushes out in a torrent. Our tongues meet, hot and hungry. My lips scrape against the slight stubble on his skin, but I don’t care if it hurts, I want to be closer, and closer still. His mouth tastes like honeyed wine again, and I am drunk on this man who has possibly loved me his entire, eternal life, and who, through my vignettes, I’ve loved for almost all of mine.
“Helene—”
“Shh.”
“I only wanted to say—”
“Don’t.”
So he doesn’t. Instead, Sebastien lays me down on the bed. He kisses me, and our clothes come off and our bodies find each other, slowly at first, like the night meeting dawn. And then tempestuously, like fire meeting water, years of fantasized encounters finally freed from the constraints of imagination into reality.
And then we are a detonation of pent-up desire, and time itself ruptures and all the stars in the galaxy burst free. I am Helene and he is Sebastien. But I am also all the names that came before—I am Isabella on a beach, consummating my marriage to Lucciano in the sand. I am Meg in a greenhouse, making love to Charles among rows of crimson zinnias and purple verbena. I am Brigitta, Ines, Mary Jo, and Amélie. He is Albrecht, Simão, Nolan, and Matteo.
And in that single, fiery moment of detonated stars when time ceases to exist, I know for certain:
He is Romeo, and I am Juliet.
SEBASTIEN
Afterward, I do not stoplooking at her.
I do not think about the sorrow that will come.
Instead, all I do is hold her in my arms, feel her slowly melt intosleep, her body soft and warm on mine, her breath like dragonflies’ wings on my skin.
I kiss the top of her head, gently, and she murmurs something that sounds like a smile.
She is here again. Finally.
And she is mine, she is mine, she is mine.
