That’s his revelation. I get tunnel vision. My mind and body freeze and I’m positive the ice I’ve tried so hard to crumble with him slowly returns to my eyes when I back up.

“Really,” I finally say. “I would think I’d remember this,” I wave my hand toward his sculpted body, “but it never crossed my mind … even though there has been something familiar about you.” My voice breaks. “I thought it was because you’re the first man I’m comfortable with.”

I can’t look at him.

“I look a lot different than I did back then—I kept growing until I was at least twenty-one and the hair is—” He trails off and tugs on his hair. He reaches out to touch my arm but I back further away.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “Why didn’t you tell me from the very beginning? You must think I’m so disgusting that I don’t even remember.”

“Never—I’ve never thought you were disgusting. I should’ve told you immediately, but I didn’t want you to look at me differently. I know it was wrong. I’ve felt awful about that night. You left in a hurry, crying, and I have always wanted to find you and tell you I’m so sorry. I wasn’t sure what I did, if I hurt you, or scared you, or both.”

I look at him then, cataloging every feature. He fidgets but stays quiet as I stare at him.

“When did you say? Six years ago?” I hate the tremor in my voice.

He nods.

“Were we in a room over an old carriage house a couple of blocks down from Maison D’amour?”

“Yes.”

I nod and look away again. I’m quiet for a long time. It’s dark, but the lights of the houses nearby shimmer against the water. The waves are soothing, despite my torment. I feel his eyes on me every few seconds, but I ignore him. I look at the water and wish a wave would come and wipe me out. I could go under and never come back up.

He shifts closer when I finally speak.

“I remember—only because that was the first and last time I ever cried during a job.” I glance at him and tension lines his face, even in the faint light. “There was no question, ever, what I’d be doing with my life. I’d accepted it long before then, but I wanted to graduate first. Alexis decided school was getting in the way, so she took over my education. She gave me to Nico and he kept coming back. So hope burrowed its way in. I dreamed he’d take me out of there, that he’d love me the way I loved him. That morning was a reality check, when Alexis told me Nico thought I was ready … not to go live with him happily ever after, but to start my career. I hadn’t realized until then that it was the only reason he’d been with me—she said he was her best lover, so she thought he should be the one to teach me. I’d start a full schedule the next day, and Nico would stay on the books until the end of the week … which didn’t end up being true, but I didn’t know it at the time. I was so hurt and angry, but I also wanted to do it on my own terms, so I went out and stood there until … I guess it was you … came up. I can’t believe that was you. To be honest, you could look exactly the same and I don’t think I’d remember … I was so out of it.” I take a deep breath and force myself to say the rest. “I do remember that day, though. I was trying to make peace with this being my life. I hadn’t been with anyone but Nico. I remember how nervous I was. And I do remember you were young and kind, and that … broke my heart. Made me see what my life could be like. I mean, even though you were paying for my time…” I laugh and it gets caught in my throat. He puts his hand on my arm and I don’t push it off. “I tried to pretend we were just a normal teenage couple that couldn’t keep our hands off each other.” I shake my head.

My eyes narrow as I look up at him. “So that’s why you’re doing all this?” I exhale a long whoosh of air. “It finally makes sense. You’ve got this misguided guilt in that do-gooder heart of yours. It’s really unnecessary. You didn’t hurt me. At all. You can let it go now.” Now my laugh sounds harsh, but if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry. “We should get back in the car and annul this marriage right now. You’ve gone above your duty.”

“Duty is the last thing I think about with you, Lili,” he cuts in. “I care about you—it’d make you run if you knew how much. And yes, I’ve had a lot of guilt thinking I hurt you. I was a mess back then and barely sober when we were together. I’m a different person now. I’ve never stopped trying to find you, but what our relationship is becoming has nothing to do with guilt. I’ve felt terrible for not telling you, but I’ve been so focused on what’s happening between us, I kept avoiding bringing the past up. I’d give anything to go back and ask you on a date that day instead of sleeping with you.”

“It wouldn’t have done any good. I was in too deep.”

He tilts my chin up, so I’ll look at him. “I want to right every wrong that’s ever been done to you. Not because of obligation, but because my heart burns for you, Lili—you’ve given it a reason to start beating. Marrying you today was the first time anything has felt completely right in my life.”

I shiver and he wraps his arms around me. My eyes don’t waver from his. I put my hands on his face and the tension fades.

“Forgive me, please?” he asks.

“I think I could forgive you for just about anything. I still think you feel like you owe me something. You don’t, but I’m selfish enough to take it anyway.” I kiss his chin before lightly sucking his bottom lip.

It feels so good, but he’s hesitant to kiss me back. His tongue swipes across my top lip and my brain goes blank.

“Promise me you won’t ever do anything with me because you feel you have to. That would kill me,” he says against my mouth.

“I promise,” I whisper. “You promise the same.”

“Easiest promise I’ve ever made,” he says.

This time when our lips touch, there’s no past. Only this moment. My veins feel infused with blood and flames. I’m grounded and swimming upstream all in one breath. I tremble and grip his wrists. He holds onto my face like I’m his only chance of survival. His lips are my redemption, laying claim on something in me that hasn’t been alive until now. A sob escapes my throat and he pulls back, studying my eyes.

“Don’t stop. Please.” One of my tears falls on his finger and he kisses my wet cheek.

“Nothing has to happen tonight,” he says, pushing my hair back.

“Please let it happen,” I ask, standing on my tiptoes to get even closer to his mouth. “I need to know what it can be like…”

“We have plenty of time…”

I stop his words with my mouth. The air between us crackles. I pull his hair until his lips are right where I want them and he kisses me senseless. He picks me up and carries me inside, never breaking the kiss. Up the stairs, to a bedroom we haven’t seen yet. I’m placed on the huge bed piled with pillows. He stops and stares at me.

If he always looks at me with such adoration, I might eventually believe in this. I wait for the feeling I always get before sex—the spaced-out zone I go inside my head and where I stay until it’s over. It never comes.

My mind and body are tuned in and I don’t want to forget anything. I put my hand on his chest, hoping to let him know, somehow, that this is new for me. That in spite of everything I’ve done, I’ve never felt like this, never been treated this way.

I hope he sees it in my eyes and feels it in my touch because I can’t form the words. My emotions are spilling out.

I sit up while he undoes the buttons on my dress and carefully pulls it over my head. I unbutton his vest and shirt and set them aside. It’s hard to tear my eyes away from his ripped chest, but he tilts my chin up to meet his eyes.

“Are you still here with me?” he asks.

“Completely,” I whisper.

His fingers splay out on my neck and make their way to the clasp on my bra. When he unhooks it, his eyes remain on mine and his fingers brush against my nipple, making it instantly tighten. Back and forth, his touch is feather-soft. I shiver.

“I have to tell you one more thing and then I’m going to love you,” he says.

Another shiver. “Okay.”

“We’re starting out with a clean slate. Both of us. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But in our home, in our bed, it’s just you and me for as long as you want me.” He places his hand on my heart. “No more yesterdays. Only right now and the future. Together.”

There are things he should know, but I want to believe in what he’s saying. I need to think the past can be crushed with something brand new. My smile is wobbly and my voice shakes as I repeat: “Just you and me.”

He nods and leans me back on the pillows while he takes in my body. And then begins the assault of my senses. He slowly, methodically, awakens every single nerve ending in my body. His eyes, his lips, his tongue, and teeth … his fingers … worship me. He takes his sweet time. I lean up on my elbows, fascinated, and watch his tongue follow a trail down my skin, until the things he does with his mouth make my head fall back on the pillow, while I thrash beneath him. The tension in me builds until I shatter and cover my hands over my face, embarrassed by how much I let go.

He works his way back up and lifts my hand off my eyes. “Are you shy?” he asks, smiling.

“Mmm” is all I can hum.

“You’re perfect.”

I shake my head. So far from perfect.

“Let me show you,” he whispers.

He takes my arm and holds it out, kissing down to my wrist and then fingers. Then with his fingers and mine, he trails our fingers down my skin, making me feverish when we cover all the best places.

He hears my body perfectly, taking every intake of breath, ever whimper, as his cue. I couldn’t fake it with him if I tried. Just when I think I’m spent, he does something else to send me over the edge again. He teases and tortures, until I can’t take another second.

“Please,” I cry.

He knows what I want.

With one long, hard stroke, I’m shattered. Tears roll back into my hair as I moan his name over and over, like a prayer. He holds still for a moment, while we adjust to being fused together, and then we find the rhythm that only our bodies can hear. Sweat glistens on us both, making us slick. Desperate. I can’t break away from his eyes, and I don’t want to.

He twitches inside me. “One more time, for me.”

I clench around him, never wanting to let him go, and we ride it out until we’re both gone.

* * *

I sleep a dreamless sleep and wake up in the night reaching for him again. Neither of us speaks, but volumes are said, restoring pieces of myself I never knew were lost.

* * *

An odd feeling settles over me the next morning when Soti is in the bathroom. Allowing myself to get so caught up in someone is foreign to me. The loss of control makes me itchy. Every day I know so much more, but how can I really know him after so little time? I’m not sure what to expect next. Everything is upside down.

At Maison D’amour, when a session was over, I immediately escaped to shower, while the guy quickly disposed of the condom, got out of there, and was escorted to the door by Jonell or one of the other girls. I never had to see them afterwards. Nico was the exception to that rule, but besides seeing how many hard and fast screws we could fit in a session, most of our conversations revolved around his work at the hotel.

I stretch out under the covers and listen to the waves outside. My skin heats all over again, thinking about the way Soti paid such attention to my body. I’ve already broken so many of my own rules. In all the years we were together, I gave Nico hundreds of blow jobs, but I can only remember a few times when he returned the favor. He’s the only one I’ve allowed to have that liberty with my body.

Such is the life of a whore, I guess.

Ex-whore.

I don’t want to think about Nico, but it’s hard not to compare the only consistent relationship I had to what I feel with Soti. Can this be my life now? Being someone’s wife, especially the wife of a man like him? It isn’t something I’ve ever considered. Girls like me know better than to dream about guys like him. Even with his imperfections, he’s perfect to me. I got caught up in the romance of the wedding and then experiencing sex with him—in such a different realm of what I know—I can’t figure out how to catalog it.

The thought flits across my brain that maybe what has been part of the generations before me could change, just like that—snap—with one split decision to trust the right person. One split decision to make a right choice instead of a thousand wrong ones.

But no, life isn’t that simple … is it?

My mind is going too fast. I can’t breathe. It isn’t healthy for me to think this way. Some of the things Soti said made everything feel so real—I’m in the dream state of wishing it really were—that’s what they mean by afterglow. I can’t forget that this marriage is a ruse. I need to just appreciate his help, stay in the moment, and enjoy him for as long as he puts up with me. He thinks he wants me now, but he’ll get tired of me eventually, and when he does, I’ll be glad I kept my heart intact.