Barely five minutes into my crying jag, Raphael knocks on my door again.

“Did you forget something?” I ask as I open it.

He steps inside. “You’re right about me not knowing your parents. Maybe they are the kind of people who’d stop loving you.”

I stare at him, a little woozy from the crying.

“But I won’t, Mia.” He draws closer and wipes my cheeks with the pads of his fingers. “I won’t stop loving you.”

The enormity of his words stuns me.

My mouth falls open, and I eye him as if he just confessed to being an android sent from the future to save the human race.

“You look slightly surprised,” he says with a soft chuckle.

“Last weekend on Ninossos,” I say once I find my bearings, “you were talking about our new arrangement. And now you… love me?”

He nods.

“You haven’t loved anyone before,” I say. “How do you know what that feels like?”

“I love my brothers,” he counters. “I love my mother. I even loved my good-for-nothing father. How’s that for a yardstick?”

“It’s different. They’re your family.”

He smiles. “Not that different, actually. Just like with them, I want to give you everything. I want to give you me.”

I snort at his total lack of false modesty.

“Gee, that sounded pompous,” he says. “Let me try again. I want to put an end to ‘Mia versus the world’ and replace it with ‘Mia and Raphael versus the world.’ ”

It’s scary how much I like the sound of it.

“I’ve lost my appetite for food,” he says. “Seriously. That has never happened before. I can’t focus on work, I think about you all the time. It’s like paragliding. There’s this crazy lightness and joy in every bone and muscle of my body.”

My head begins to spin as I soak up his words, and I’m getting drowsier by the second.

“What do these symptoms tell you, Doctor Stoll?”

“I’m not a doctor yet,” I say, feeling incongruously playful. “Even if I stay and get my PhD, I won’t be a medical doctor. So I’m afraid I can’t diagnose you.”

“Then assess my state from an objective historical perspective.”

“Hmm.” I bunch my eyebrows. “I’d say your condition has aggravated since our office fling. But… won’t you miss being with other women?”

“No,” he says without a moment’s hesitation.

“Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am of how much I need you in my life.” He looks the most sober I’ve ever seen him. “You see, I used to think I was just like Papa, even though Seb kept telling me I wasn’t. But he was right. I’m not.”

“What are you saying?”

“My womanizing… I’ve figured it out. I didn’t do it because I couldn’t help it, or because I was insecure. I did it because…” He hesitates. “You’re going to laugh.”

“Try me.”

“Without admitting it to myself, I was looking for a… soulmate.”

That word is so incongruous coming from Raphael that I can’t help smiling.

“Ludicrous but true.” His mouth curls up. “When you fled to Martinique… er, correction—when you dumped me and fled to Martinique, I had three one-night stands in two weeks.”

My smile fades a little. “That’s a lot.”

“It was pathetic. I felt pathetic. So I went to Nepal for a month. Officially, it was to visit Maman, but in truth, I was hoping for some kind of miraculous healing.”

I hang on his every word.

He shrugs. “At the end of that month, I still missed you so much my chest hurt.”

So did mine.

“After I returned to Paris,” he continues, “I met a woman. She was pretty, kind, and smart.”

I give him a quizzical look.

“It lasted a week.” He stares at me.

I stare back.

Raphael encases my face with his hands. “You’re the only woman with whom the longer it lasts, the longer I want it to last. Please, say you’ll stay.”

I open my mouth then close it again.

God, it’s tempting to say yes.

“I’m not offering marriage, OK?” He runs his hands over my face and through my cropped hair. “I won’t do that unless I’m one hundred percent sure I can be a family man beyond reproach. Just so you know before you decide.”

“I’ll stay,” I whisper.

“What?”

“I’ll stay,” I say louder.

I’m neck-deep in shit, and yet I grin as a crazy lightness and joy fill every bone and muscle of my body.