Ash put his hand over the cover. “You’re not going to die drunk and alone, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I was thinking that even Evelyn Waugh knew the best things don’t last. Nothing gold can stay and all that.”

“Wrong book, little prince.”

I pulled the book out from under Ash’s hand and tossed it on the end table. I couldn’t talk about this with him. I couldn’t look him in the face and lie, not tonight. If he pressed me, I was going to cave and tell him everything, that I wanted him for the rest of my life, I wanted the white picket fence, I’d even move to the country for him. “I should get some sleep,” I said, flicking off the cheap bedside lamp.

Ash stood. “This conversation isn’t done,” he told me, and left.

I went to sleep almost hoping it wasn’t.

A few days passed. There was a lull in activity that matched the weather—not really sunny and not really stormy, not really cold and not really hot—a cool gray womb devoid of anything interesting or noteworthy. For some it was a welcome break. For others, after the intense highs of incessant combat, it was unbearable boredom.

So when Ash asked me out to walk along the valley, I assumed he was bored and desperate to be outdoors and not bent over maps and emails in his office.

We went, taking our weapons with us as a precaution. The fog had already lifted for the day, beaten down by the waves of summer rain that drifted down from the heavy clouds overhead. The occasional shaft of sunshine pierced those clouds, sending shots of gold across the deeply green valley, making the clouds seem darker in comparison. Despite everything, my heart hummed at the sight, a combination of the Olympics and the stark beauty of the Scottish Highlands.

“It always seems different up here,” I said, staring out over the valley. “Not like there’s no war, but that war is such a small part of the world. Such a small part of living. Like there’s going to be a time later in my life where I’m just happy.”

I didn’t notice what he was doing until I stopped talking to glance over at him—a smile on my face acknowledging how absurdly I was talking—and then I stopped.

I could feel the smile slide off my face, feel my heart rise right into my throat.

Ash knelt beside me, facing me, a small black box in his hand.

No, I thought wildly, desperately.

“No,” I said, just as wildly, just as desperately.

“Embry, I’ve been in love with you for seven years. I’m never going to stop being in love with you.”

Don’t make me do this, I wanted to beg. Don’t make me have to say no.

“No,” I said.

“I’m a better man with you and because of you. I want to be the only one who gets to squeeze and bruise you. I want to be the only one to hear you sigh in your sleep. I want mine to be the face you see when you wake up.”

Tears burned, something balled in my throat and made it impossible to swallow or speak, but I still croaked out a weak, “No.”

“Stop saying no and listen to me,” he said with a smile. “Who cares about our careers? We’ll find new ones. If we have to live in Canada to adopt children, then we’ll move to Canada. I’ll do anything to be with you, give up anything.”

I hated him in that moment. Hated him for being so beautiful and pretty, so noble looking in that ancient valley. Hated how selfless he was, how much he loved me, how little he cared about his own future. It made it so much harder to say no. Because my very blood sang at the idea of saying yes.

“Ash, you can’t give up these things. Your career. You just can’t.”

He looked up at me. He was a painting on his knee like that, a storybook prince, aside from the assault rifle slung over his shoulder. “How many times have I risked my life to save yours? How many times have I proven that I would sacrifice anything for you? Sacrifice everything? What’s a job when I have you? What’s a place to live? If I have you, I have everything I need.”

That one word. Sacrifice. It stuck in my head, spinning madly around like a record, his voice, Merlin’s voice, my voice. Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice.

I could say yes. I could let him put a ring on my finger and then we could fuck up here with the valley below us and the clouds above. We could finish this war and then find a place where it was legal to marry and do it. Build a life for ourselves, a gorgeous, wicked life of green eyes and whispered curses into the dark night air.

I could say yes.

I wanted to say yes.

I wanted to tell Ash that loving him was like a scar, like a disease, it would always be there, I’d never be cured of it, and I didn’t want to be. I wanted to tell him that I’d never met someone as courageous or as smart or as compassionate or as deliciously, dangerously red-blooded as him, and that I never would and that I never wanted to try.

I wanted to tell him I’d be his. I’d belong to him. His possession, for as long as he’d have me.

Sacrifice.

I didn’t tell him any of those things, though.

Instead, I told him one word.

“No.”

21

Greer

after

The first day at home is long.

The second day is even longer. That’s the day I finally force myself to meet with my chief of staff—a fierce brunette named Linette—and attend to the rest of my things being moved from the townhouse to the White House. I walk through the townhouse one last time, my home for only a year, and then I call Grandpa Leo while the Secret Service agents wait outside.