Chapter 35

C HAPTER 35

DAYS UNTIL THE CORONATION: ONE AND A HALF

I haven't seen the King in almost a week, and now that he's waiting outside my window in the pitch black, all I can think is: It's about damn time.

He motions for me to unlock the window, but I'm still frustrated by the days of silence.

I shrug and put a hand on my hip.

He freezes, looking unsure, then points to himself and mimes climbing down the tree. Finally, he cocks an eyebrow in question.

I shake my head too quickly, giving myself away. I unlatch the window and tug, but it doesn't budge. "Good luck getting in, because it's stuck," I call, still trying to pretend the way his eyelashes brush against his cheekbones doesn't tie me in fucking knots.

"You think that's going to stop me?" Theo's voice is muffled by glass, but I can hear the smirk in his tone. He reveals a crowbar and jams it under the window, slowly prying the old glass a few inches open. "Stand back." He tosses the crowbar onto the carpet and wrenches the window the rest of the way up. A cool burst of earthy, rain-scented air whooshes into the room.

I cross my arms. "What if I'd already been asleep? Would you have pried your way in anyway?"

"That'd be a bit dodgy, Wheeler. I wouldn't sneak into your room without your consent."

"Oh, really?"

"Of course not. I would, however, request that you be given this exact room for this exact purpose." He's perched on an overgrown tree branch, wearing sneakers, dark jeans, and a black jacket. His hair is falling over his forehead, his cheeks rough with stubble, and I wonder if it's possible to get used to the way I can't breathe when he looks at me. Every time feels like the first time.

"Victoria says it's cringey to knock on someone's window," I tell him.

He grins. "I embrace the cringe."

"A brave and noble cause that will definitely get you roasted by a teenage princess."

He grabs the window frame and leans in slightly like he's dying to come inside. "Has she been terrorizing you?"

"I can handle her, but it's confusing the way your siblings won't leave me alone."

He cocks an eyebrow. "Almost like someone told them not to?"

I think back to Henry showing up in the middle of the night, bringing me Comet, watching Doctor Who with me when I couldn't sleep. "Henry too? And Louise ?"

He shrugs. "There was a schedule."

I imagine Theo gathering his siblings and forcing them to sign up for "Wren duty" and don't know how to process it. "But I thought you were mad at me."

He blinks at me in surprise. "Why?"

"Because when you found out about Victoria's insulin, you let me wander into the dark without following me!"

"In my defense, you told me not to, and we could see you the whole time," he says.

I don't remember saying that out loud, but I was feverish and delirious. I also thought I walked alone for miles, and it was only a few hundred feet.

"Not this again. You really thought I abandoned you out there?" He sounds royally annoyed, and I'm even more confused than I was five minutes ago.

"I thought you'd never forgive me."

His head jerks back in surprise. "I never blamed you! There's no way you could have known what was in her bag."

"Then why have you been avoiding me? You never even called the hospital to see how I was doing."

"I called every day to get updates. Three times a day! And I did my best to make sure you didn't feel like you'd been abandoned." He looks pained as he closes his eyes. "If you let me in, I'll do my best to explain."

I hesitate, torn between needing to blurt out my suspicions about his parents and wanting to protect him from it all, but I can't pretend I don't want him here. When I nod, he climbs through the open window and sits on the sill. "I'm sorry I didn't call you, and that I haven't been clearer about what's been going on. I wanted to see you, but I was afraid that if I did, I wouldn't be able to stop myself."

Every nerve ending in my body is on high alert, but I hardly dare to hope. "From what?"

With a deep breath, he stands up and steps toward me. "I let you walk out of my life once without knowing how I truly felt about you, and I won't let that happen again."

I feel like we're balancing on a precipice, but I don't know which way we'll fall.

"I love you, Wren. End of sentence, no conditions. It's not ‘I love you if ' or ‘I love you but. '"

It sounds so perfect, but it's not the truth. Our relationship is the definition of conditional. We agreed that it's "I love you until." That was the deal: together until we're rescued, and not a moment more.

He crosses the room and lifts me up in one fluid motion. The button of his jeans presses against the inside of my thigh, and if I lean in even a fraction, I know he'll kiss me.

"What happened to ending this on the island?" I ask.

He lifts me up higher, his breaths turning jagged. "I've said a lot of stupid things in my life, but none as daft as that," he says in a low voice. "When they loaded you into that helicopter, I knew I'd never be able to say goodbye to you."

"But nothing has changed," I whisper as he presses a slow kiss to the underside of my jaw.

"Not yet, but I'm working on it." His voice is as raspy as the stubble scraping across my skin.

I jerk back as my pulse hammers. "What do you mean?"

He slowly releases his hold on me. "If I could find a way out of this for us, would you want me to?"

I blink in surprise, wondering if he already found out what I did, but I don't want to say anything until I'm one hundred percent sure. "How?"

"I can't explain it yet, but I've spent every minute since your doctors told me that you'd be okay trying to figure this out, and I think I've found something."

Hope is a dangerous emotion, because it makes me believe in impossible things. Theo and me together in Chicago. Him waiting for me after class with a maple latte in his hand, and no one from the Firm controlling either of us. I didn't think it would ever be possible, but maybe I was wrong, and all the things I wished for in the middle of the night can come true. Maybe we can still spin our tragedies into happy endings.

"How soon will you know?"

"Before the coronation," he says.

"That's in less than forty-eight hours." It doesn't feel like enough time.

"I'll make it work." Theo grins. "Now let's get out of here."

"Where are we going?"

"On our first date, Wheeler." He winks, and his smile is brighter than I've ever seen it.

I feel dizzy with hope as I swipe on mascara and lip gloss and change into a miniskirt and a tight turtleneck sweater in the bathroom. When I come out, Theo groans and drags a hand over his face.

"Not good?" I raise an eyebrow, baiting him, because I know I look good. For maybe the first time ever in all the time we've spent together, I'm not a mess.

"Too good, and you know it."

He climbs back out onto the tree branch, I follow him, and soon we're shimmying down the tree and running like criminals across the garden, pretending that two bodyguards aren't waiting patiently for us outside the gate. He could easily open it, but instead he hoists me over the metal bars, and thank fully this time I don't twist my ankle when I land on the damp sidewalk next to a cream-colored Vespa. Theo buckles a helmet strap under my chin, and then puts one on himself. I take a seat behind him and wrap my arms snugly around his torso, and he kicks the moped to life. My arms tighten as a surge of adrenaline shoots through me, and I feel a sickening lurch as I flash back to the plane plummeting into water.

"You all right back there?"

"Yes. Maybe. I don't know." We haven't moved yet. "I'm just remembering the crash."

"We don't have to do this."

"Just don't go too fast, okay?"

He laughs. "This thing is incapable of going fast. Hold on, and yell in my ear if you want to stop." The Vespa lurches forward and I squeeze all the air out of his lungs. After a few seconds my stomach settles, and I open my eyes.

"Oh." I exhale softly.

At night, London sparkles. Theo points out buildings and landmarks as we cruise past, and it feels both magical and impossibly real at the same time. A perfect date with the boy I haven't been able to stop thinking about since we met.

There were so many moments— all the moments we've spent together until tonight—when I didn't think a night like this was in the stars for us. I press my cheek against his shoulder and memorize the feel of my heartbeat against his back. Fate might have us in her crosshairs, but in this moment, everything feels possible.

Theo stops the Vespa on a wharf by the bank of the Thames, in front of the glittering Tower Bridge. I unbuckle my helmet and wipe the tears from my cheeks, unsure if they're the product of windburn or the cacophony of emotions in my chest.

Theo catches a wayward tear with his thumb. "Was this a bad idea?"

I shake my head, the emotion in my throat making it difficult to speak. "It almost made me feel like we could be normal." I push myself onto my toes to kiss him but stop short. I look around the dark wharf. "Are we going to be seen?"

Theo removes his helmet and replaces it with a baseball hat from his back pocket. "Everyone thinks I'm at the party right now, but if anyone gets too close, my guards will take care of it."

We watch lights dance on the water and talk until our bodies are stiff from sitting on pavement, and then I get on the driver's seat of the Vespa and make a few jerky trips up and down the empty boardwalk while Theo tries (and fails) not to laugh at me.

When I give up and admit defeat, he kisses me for a long time and whispers, "Do you want to get out of here?" and I've never agreed to anything faster. We drive back to Clarence House and climb back up the tree and to the open window. He hesitates, but I grab him by the lapels and pull him in through the open window.

"Tonight's been my favorite night in a very, very long time," I say.

He draws back, his eyes lit with excitement. "I forgot to tell you the news. I got the final, official word today: we're not married."

My hands drop from his jacket. "Oh." There's a sudden pit in my stomach. "Are you sure?"

"We triple-checked. There's a process to getting legally married in Greece that includes a bunch of paperwork and fees and registering the marriage within forty days at one of their offices. You're officially free to make all your own choices without worrying about me or the Firm or anyone else."

"Well, that's… that's, um, obviously that's—" My stomach is in knots, and not the good kind. I reach for the missing chain around my neck that I got so used to wearing.

This is good news, I tell myself.

This should be good news.

I imagine Mom, Dad, and Brooke exchanging a triple high five across the pond as Brooke makes a crack about not starting freshman year as a divorcée.

I've been waiting for this answer for weeks, but it doesn't feel like I thought it would.

"What does this mean for us?"

Theo nudges my chin up. "Do you trust me?" he asks.

I don't hesitate. "I always have."

"We're going to make our future on our own terms, Wheeler," he promises with a light in his ocean-blue eyes that I've never, ever seen. Not when we washed up on the shores of Amorgos, and not when we stood under the stars and said I do.

Whatever he's doing, whenever he's ready to tell me, it's going to work.

"What are you thinking?" Theo asks as he runs his fingers through my hair, his hand cupping the back of my neck.

It's hard to think about anything when he's this close, but I go with the simplest truth. "That I love you, and I'm so glad the world didn't end."

He laughs, and I cut him off with a slow kiss, pushing his jacket off his arms and letting it fall to the floor. He presses his body to mine, and I shiver as he walks us through the room until the backs of my knees hit the bed and I fall back onto it. He falls on top of me, careful not to land on my sore arm, brushing a featherlight kiss over my shoulder. I nudge his arms over his head and pull his shirt off and then he does the same, staring at me like he can't believe I'm real.

"I never thought I'd be this lucky twice," he whispers in the dark. The rest of our clothes come off one piece at a time, and then I'm caught in his eyes and tangled in his arms, and life has never felt so exactly, perfectly right.