He grinned, and for the first time in a long time, the smile reached all the way to his eyes.
We rounded the end of the pond, skirting a cluster of ducks shoving each other for scraps of discarded bread.
“You’d really leave London for me? Isn’t it kind of…home?”
He stopped and sat on a park bench, dropping his elbows to his knees while his eyes filed through thoughts. “London is where I landed after I left Croatia,” he said finally. “And it’s been a great place to live and work. I’ve never had any reason to leave. But…it’s not home.” He looked up at me, blue eyes piercing through any shred of armor I had. “You are.”
For a second, all the oxygen left my brain. I stared at him, not blinking, not moving, just trying to process the sentence he’d detonated into the morning. I sat down, hard, on the bench next to him. The chill from the worn slats shot straight through my jeans.
“Do you mean that?” The words were raw, like I’d ripped them from somewhere tender.
He angled his body toward me, face uncluttered, nothing but truth in it. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”
I could have laughed, but all that came out was a thin thread of air. “I’m going to butcher this, but…” I rolled my shoulders, rifling for the phrase, dusting off the foreign syllables, tongue clumsy with nerves. “Voh-leem-tay. Did I get it right?”
His head snapped toward me. In one motion, he reached across the bench, hooked his arm around my ribs, and hauled me onto his lap.
“Close enough.”
Then he kissed me.
My mouth was full of him, of the cold, the sun, the faint metallic taste of panic and relief. He crowded out every thought, every contingency plan, every last remnant of fear and logic. I clung to his jacket, the muscle of his thigh tensed under me, his arms a vise around my back. I kissed him so hard my teeth knocked on his, and he laughed into my mouth.
We sat there, fused together, until the wind picked up and cut through the seams of my jacket. I pulled back, air rasping out of my lungs, and looked at his face—open, unflinching, and for the first time since I’d met him, completely at rest.
Luka leaned in, breath soft as a promise, and pressed his forehead to mine. “Volim te, Alex,” he said, and the sound of it—the language, the exhale, the unblinking directness—hit me as hard as anything ever had. “I love you.”
I shut my eyes, let the words sink in.
And for once, I didn’t try to fill the silence.
epilogue
The ocean breathed against the shore in long, salt-slick exhales, cool and tangy, carrying the faint mineral bite of kelp and sun-warmed stone. I closed my laptop with a decisive click and shot to my feet, a laugh tearing out of me before I could stop it.
“Yes!” The word rang bright and sharp in my chest, fizzing under my skin as the wind tugged at my hair and snapped the linen curtain behind me like a sail catching course. Below, the water rolled and flashed in sheets of blue and silver, endless and unconcerned, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, the horizon didn’t feel like something I was running toward—but something I was already standing inside.
Luka stepped onto the balcony, cuffed linen trousers flapping with the wind. He set a fresh cup of coffee on the table, the steam unraveling in the breeze.
“Good meeting, I take it?”
“Better than good. I’ve been after that contract for a month—the boutique event planner out of Valencia looking to expand. I think I just bought us another year of this.” I swept my hand out at the surf, the sloping roofline of the terrace, the pale slant ofearly morning over whitewashed stucco. “Which, at this rate, is about all I ever wanted.”
Luka grinned, then tipped my jaw up with one thumb, brushing his lips over mine. He tasted like espresso and the last traces of sleep. “Well done,mila.” When he pulled back, the approval in his eyes was quiet, proud, unguarded in a way he still didn’t let the rest of the world see. Which was fine. Some things I liked to keep all for myself.
I took a long sip of my coffee and leaned back on the balcony rail, letting the sun glaze my skin. “Should I feel guilty that I never think about the old job anymore?”
He shook his head, a soft snort of amusement. “That was over a year ago. Why on earth would you?”
I laughed. “I was very good at guilt. And at chasing things I didn’t actually want.”
He reached for my hand, threading his fingers through mine. “And now?”
“Now I chase invoice payments from boutique cheese shops and microbreweries,” I said, feigning solemnity. “But I get to do it from a beach house in Portugal. Winning.”
I took another long drink of my coffee—rich and bold—and smiled. No matter how late he stayed up working, Luka always got up to make my coffee first thing.
I set my cup down and braced my elbows on the sun-warmed balustrade. “How was work last night?”