Page 3 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
“Hi.” His voice is a rumble low in my belly. I can already tell by the way he holds his silences thatthisSebastien—like my imagined one—is a man of few words. But if those words can make me feel this way, I want as many as he’ll spare.
“It’s you,” I murmur, nearly nonsensical from the impossibility of this moment. “I know you.”
Sebastien’s expression shifts in an instant, defensive walls going up behind those glacier-blue eyes. “I beg your pardon?”
Our connection snaps. I feel it physically, like a gust of wind ripping through a kite string drawn too tight. I’ve said too much.
But I’m still unable to approach this conversation rationally, so I plow on. “I know you,” I say again, as if this will somehow make him believe.
Sebastien purses his lips, brow furrowed—not confused, like I’d expect. But something else.
Upset.
“You’re confusing me for someone else,” he says.
I shake my head. I’m convinced now that it wasn’t just an airfare sale that brought me to Alaska.
“I’m Helene.” I want to reach out and touch Sebastien, to feel him solid beneath my fingers.
I offer my hand to shake instead.
But the muscles in his neck tighten, and he doesn’t offer his name, doesn’t take my hand. He gives me a tight, impersonal smile, the kind that anyone who’s ever been in a bar knows meansI’m not interested,and says, “If you’ll excuse me, I just remembered I have to take care of something at home. Forgot to put out food for my dog.”
One of his crew is within earshot and frowns at us.
Sebastien slides out of the booth past me and mumbles something inaudible to the frowning guy. The man protests, but Sebastien passes him a credit card and bumps fists with him. Without looking back at me, without acknowledging that I’m still standing here, Sebastien walks out of The Frosty Otter and then…
He’s gone.
SEBASTIEN
I flee to the parkinglot and climb into my truck, where I press my head against the steering wheel. My entire body shakes.
I know you,she said.
You’re confusing me for someone else,I replied.
I lied.
Of course I know her.
The moment I saw Helene, I tasted the faint sweetness of honeyed wine on my lips, a ghost of a kiss. It happens every time she comes back into my life, a memory lingering from the first night we met, centuries ago.
She has no idea who she is, of course. That her presence—or absence—in my life has defined my entire existence.
I may go by Sebastien now, but my name was originally Romeo.
And hers was Juliet.
“We shouldn’t behere, Romeo,” Benvolio says as we step into the masquerade. The gilded ballroom brims with masked guests—unicorns dancing with lions, knights clinking goblets with dragons, a sun strolling the edges of the party arm in arm with a moon. “May I remind you that we’re Montagues, and our families are engaged in a blood feud? If Lord Capulet discovers us in his manor, he’ll have our heads on pikes by sunrise.”
“Ah, but that’s the brilliance of a masquerade, dear cousin.” I gesture at the bronze mask upon my face, at my elegantly draped toga, and at the wings on my back. “No one knows a Montaguefrom a Capulet behind the mask of a Roman god. Besides, Rosaline will be at this ball.”
“Forget Rosaline. She’s forsworn love to devote herself to the church; you have no future with her. And your father is eager to arrange a far better marriage, one where your wife will be required to listen to and respect you.”
“And that’s supposed to be tempting? A woman forced to loveme?”
Benvolio laughs. “You are too much a romantic, Romeo. In fact, pray tell—which god are you dressed as? Might it be…Cupid?”
