There’s something different about the way you wake up when it’s a day you don’t want to face. Even if your first thoughts upon waking are jumbled from sleep, you still know, deep down, that something is going to happen. It’s like sadness hangs in the air above you, a heavy hand that holds you down and reminds you that you will need all the strength you have to get through the day.

Even though I’m wrapped under sheets, with Viktor’s strong leg hooked over mine, the back of my head resting in the crook of his arm, I’m immediately hit with a pang of sorrow. Any other day and I would wake up blissful after these two beautiful days we’ve had with each other, the fact that I fell asleep, entangled in his arms.

But as safe as I feel with him like this, he won’t be able to protect me from the pain that will come later, a pain that will make this anticipatory one seem like nothing more than a scratch.

“God morgon,” he says to me in Swedish, his breath warm on the top of my head. There’s something so beautiful and peaceful about his voice in the mornings. Normally it’s so deep and strong and polished. Refined. As it should be. He has a lifetime of public speaking ahead of him.

But in the mornings it’s ragged, raw, groggy with sleep. It makes him seem less of a prince, more of a young man.

“How did you sleep?” he asks. “I passed right out I think.”

“I slept like a baby,” I tell him, turning over on my stomach and facing him.

Yesterday was our last day and we were so exhausted from Disneyland the day before, that we literally stayed in the hotel room and by the pool, only venturing out to Sunset to grab a meal at a trendy restaurant. The rest of the time, well, let’s just say there was a lot of sex. I am thoroughly worn out but in the best way possible.

“Good.” He gives me a soft smile, his eyes warm as he stares at me, and reaches over, gently brushing my hair off my face.

We stare at each other for a few moments, the moments you know you will remember, the moments that become scenes that become memories. To just stare openly at someone like this, to have them stare at you, to not need words to say, I like this. I like you.

I’m falling for you.

I’ve fallen for you.

Please, please don’t go.

But those might just be in my head. I close my eyes, scared for a moment that he’ll see those thoughts, that they won’t match his.

“Breakfast,” he suddenly says. “I think we need breakfast.” He sits up and I see him look at the clock. He doesn’t say anything about the time but we did sleep in a bit longer than we should have. He does have a plane to catch.

“What would you like?” he says, getting up and walking over to the desk. My eyes are draw to that tight round ass of his, looking extra taut with his slight tan lines. I wonder where he got tanned, where he tans. Being a prince in Europe, he probably spends winter in the Mediterranean, sunning on giant superyachts.

There’s so much more that I don’t know about him and there’s no more time to find out.

I think I’m going to be sick. My appetite is completely gone.

And when my appetite is gone, then you know it’s serious.

“I’ll just have toast,” I tell him.

He glances at me over his shoulder, picking up the phone. “You sure?”

I nod. “And coffee.”

“Well naturally,” he says then says into the phone. “Ah, yes, good morning. This is Vik…this is Mr. Andersson in room 219, I would like to order room service. A pot of coffee,” he looks at me and mouths cream? I nod. “With cream. Some toast with jam and all those fixings and I’ll have two soft boiled eggs and a side of bacon.”

“Soft boiled eggs?” I ask him. “Interesting choice.”

“Very common breakfast at home,” he says as he hangs up the phone. “Served alongside some crisp bread, ham, and of course, pickled herring.”

I scrunch up my nose. “No.”

“Oh yes. Quite good,” he says. “You’d grow to love it.”

I swallow the lump in my throat. I won’t have the chance to.

It’s not long before there’s a knock at the door. Viktor quickly slips on a robe and throws me one and once we’re covered, opens the door for the room attendant.

“I hope you tipped him well,” I say to him after the guy leaves, closing the door behind him.

“What am I, an animal?”

Viktor looks offended.

“No, it’s just, well in Europe you don’t tip, do you? And also no one ever tips hotel staff enough. And also, yes. You are a moose.”

He grins at that. “All of that is true, except that most of us in Europe know how tipping works over here. Do you want to sit on the balcony?” he asks, as he picks up the tray from the room service cart.

I look through the curtains at the bright sunshine, hear the faint splash of people in the pool right below.

I shake my head. “I’d rather eat in here.”

Out there I know I’d be sharing him with the world. We have hours, minutes, left with each other and I can’t bear to not have him all to myself in this beautiful dark world we’ve created in this hotel room.

“Me too,” he says, wincing at the beam of white light coming in through the curtains. “I think I’ve had enough of the California sunshine.”

But have you had enough of me?

He places the tray in front of me and gets on the bed, both of us sitting cross-legged on the messy sheets. He pours me a cup of coffee, then adds a splash of cream.

“That enough?” he asks.

This isn’t enough.

But I nod. “Yes, thank you.” I clear my throat as he hands me my cup and pours himself one, black. “You don’t put cream in yours?” I ask.

His head shakes. “No. We drink it black in Sweden. Puts hair on our chest.” He pounds a fist against his pecs in a mocking gesture. “Apparently it works.”

Viktor does have hair on his chest but it’s the perfect amount, just enough to make him look like some Nordic Viking god, not so much that looks like a caveman.

We both fall silent and sip our coffees and the room seems to hum with this energy of all the things we aren’t saying to each other, of all the goodbyes that loom on the horizon.

“What is it?” he asks me after studying my face for a good minute.

I give a small shrug. “I was just thinking.”

“I can tell,” he says. He brings his brows together until a deep line forms between them and runs his finger along it. “You get this.”

“It’s called resting bitch face here in America,” I tell him.

“I’ve heard about this face,” he muses. “Sounds too harsh for you.”

“What would you call it then?”

He takes an easy sip of his coffee and seems to think about it. “Thinking sexy face.”

“Sexy face?” I laugh. “How is that sexy?”

“Because it’s sexy when you’re all mean looking. Makes me think I did something wrong and you’re going to punish me.”

I roll my eyes. “Stop.”

“It’s true. But I think all your faces are sexy. Especially the ones when you’re calling out my name. Your mouth drops open like a ripe peach. It reminds me of other places. You know what we call a peach in Swedish? Persika. I’m very much in love with your sweet persika.”

I’m blushing. Oh yeah, I’m blushing, probably the shade of a persika. I think he even called me min lilla persika the other night.

But…

Did he just use the L word? It was just to describe a body part–or two–but even so.

I look at him with big eyes but he only smiles at me. If he said something he didn’t mean to, he’s not showing it.

I swallow. “Is that so?” I manage to say.

He leans forward, and with one swift move, pulls the sash around my robe so it opens and my breasts are exposed, and since I’m sitting cross-legged, my persika.

His eyes rest between my legs and I can practically see his mouth watering which makes me wet in return. “If you take a picture it will last longer,” I try to joke, feeling so bare and exposed. Vulnerable. Yet there’s no fear in being this way with Viktor. It’s natural.

“That must be a saying,” he murmurs, his eyes trailing up my stomach now to my breasts and I swear my skin burns in their wake. He moves the tray to the side. “I would love to take many pictures.”

I stiffen at the thought and he smiles gently at the worry on my face. “I’m also taking pictures in my mind. They will be there forever. You know how couples carve their name in the bark of a tree? The sight of you, the smell of you, the sound of you, the taste of you, it’s all etched in my head. It won’t be smoothed away with time.”

My heart swells in my chest, pressing against my ribs.

I won’t be smoothed away.

I won’t be forgotten.

“You know I can’t get enough and I won’t get enough of you,” he tells me, taking the cup of coffee from my hands and setting it down on the tray. “Not with the time we have left, not with all the time left in the world. But I will take my time now, enjoying every inch of your sweet skin while I can.” He then picks up the small pitcher of cream. “Lie back.”

I raise my brows, stare at the cream. What?

“Why?”

He gives me a look that says, just do it, and so I do. I’ll do anything he tells me to.

Apparently even if it involves cream.

He breaks into a carnal grin and takes his time slowly tilting the pitcher, so the cream splashes out delicately onto my breasts.

I gasp.

“Is it cold?” he asks, amused.

“No.” I just think most people would gasp in this situation. I stare at him curiously. “What are you doing?”

“Going to have breakfast with you.”

“With me or on me?”

“Both.”

He pours a bit more, biting his lip.

“Fuck. Your skin is just like the cream. You have no idea how hard I am right now.”

“I might.” My hands reach around below, grabbing at his robe and tugging at it, trying to expose him, to feel him, but he shifts just so that I can’t touch him.

“I like to torture myself,” he explains before running his hand between my breasts and slowly licking the cream off of his finger, his long tongue riding up the side, his eyes never leaving mine.

“I think you might be torturing me while you’re at it,” I tell him, my hands going into his thick hair and giving the strands a pull.

His eyes close with a groan and he starts massaging the cream over my breasts, my nipples hardening into tight little peaks, so sensitive that every time he brushes over them I want to scream.

This man, this man, he’s undoing me.

There will be nothing left of me when he’s done.

Nothing left of me when he’s gone.

He lowers his head, his stubble scraping along my skin and bringing me back around to the here and the now.

All I have is here and now.

His mouth dips down to suck my nipples into his warm mouth, making my back arch. “Fuck,” he moans, the vibrations running through me until I am so fucking wet. “You’re so perfect.”

His hands spread the cream down over my stomach and between my legs, dragging the wetness over my clit.

My grip tightens in his hair and I gasp again, my hips bucking up automatically, desperate for friction, for purchase. “Come inside me, please.” The words nearly choke on my tongue.

“I’ve only started feasting,” he says, sliding his finger inside, his thumb rubbing my clit. I clench around him, hard, until he pulls his finger out. “Do you see the way you taste to me,” he says, licking his finger again.

Jesus.

“Better now,” he says. “You make it sweeter. And yet it will be sweeter still.”

He reaches over and grabs the small jar of honey that came with the toast, unscrewing the cap and dipping his finger in. He brings his finger to my lips, rubs the honey over them before sticking his finger into my mouth. I can taste myself, taste the sweet honey. Most of all I can see the lust in his eyes, the raw, sensual desire he has for me.

No one will ever look at me like this again.

I shut my eyes, trying to drown out that voice.

“What’s wrong?’ he asks.

“Nothing,” I tell him, opening my eyes. He looks so concerned, he might break. “I’m just…”

Trying to hold on to the moments we have together.

Trying to ignore what’s about to happen.

Trying, trying, trying.

“Make me come,” I tell him, my voice coming out ragged. “I want you inside me, I want you to make me come.”

Rip me from my mind. Make your body salvage my body. Damage me until I can’t think, until there’s nothing left to feel but you.

“I want to paint you with honey,” he says, moving back to paint squiggly lines of honey down my breasts and stomach. “I want to paint you with my tongue. I want to take my time.”

We don’t have time!

You have a plane to catch.

A country to return to.

But I manage not to say it because I don’t want to ruin the last time we have together.

The last time.

“Take your time,” I say quietly, lying further back into the sheets, closing my eyes.

I can feel him hesitate before he slowly, teasingly, licks the honey off of me.

Off my breasts, my collarbone, my stomach, my hips, my inner thighs.

My body tenses with each pass of his warm, hot tongue. It’s so decadent and rich the way he devours me, like I really am a feast to him.

He settles between my legs, his fingers pressing into my thighs, pushing them further apart.

“Now that you’re all clean,” he says, “I’m going to get you dirty again.”

My eyes fly open.

His robe is discarded behind him and his massive body is prowling between my legs like a big cat stalking its prey.

I would never get tired of this sight, of his bare, hard body hovering over mine.

The ease in which his hands work me, like I’m an instrument being tuned.

The way that he pushes inside me, always with this breathless gasp that turns into a moan that turns into sweet nothings that shake with his want.

The sounds of his skin slapping against mine, the feel of his sweat dripping on me as he works me so fucking hard, his face creased with the effort of it all.

The moment he brings me to that razor edge and I willfully fly over it.

The world spins before I tumble, shaking and twirling through spasms that put me upside down and up again. I’m wild, I’m crazed, I’m disoriented, I’m spent, I’m…

This is…

As the intensity of the orgasm wanes, the intensity of my emotions slam over me like a wave.

This is it.

I keep my eyes closed, fighting back the tears. I hate that I’ve cried with him already this trip when I opened up about my parents, I don’t want to cry again, not during sex, not now.

But the hot, damp knot in my chest grows and grows until I have to gasp for breath.

I’m not sure Viktor notices. He’s coming too, groaning and grunting and swearing in my ear, those feverish sounds that I love so much.

“Maggie,” he whispers through a ragged breath, kissing me roughly on the lips. “Maggie, I…” he breaks off and exhales so hard the bed shakes. “This, just this,” he says. He wraps his arms around me, holding me tight.

Time seems to slow with our heartbeats.

The sweat on my skin cools.

Someone outside, so far away, jumps into the pool with a splash.

I want to lie here forever.

“Maggie,” Viktor whispers to me. “I am so sorry but I have to go. We have to get going.”

I nod. Forever isn’t enough. “Of course.”

I practically drag myself out of bed. No point in makeup when I know I’m going to cry it all away. I put on the same clothes as yesterday, brush my teeth, slick on some deodorant, pull my hair back in a ponytail and I’m ready to go.

I take one last look at the hotel room and realize that it changed me. The person who stepped in here, nervous, anxious, on Thursday night is not the same person who is walking out of here on Sunday morning.

We get his car from the valet, the blue finish sparkling under the sun, and after a few wrong turns and wanting to strangle the Waze app, we get on the right freeway heading to LAX.

There is so much tension between us, so much worry and sadness, that I don’t even have the words to talk. I’m afraid to, afraid to say the wrong thing, to say something that will make it harder for both of us.

The thing is, as much as Viktor whispered sweet nothings to me this morning, as much as he’s told me how hard it will be for him to say goodbye, I don’t think he can possibly feel the way I do. I’m even surprised I feel the way I do. I’m a rational person. I use logic. I’ve had enough of life slapping me upside the head to have a jaded and cynical outlook on it. I err toward the negative rather than the positive.

I don’t believe in love at first sight, in soul mates, in happily ever afters.

But with Viktor…he makes my soul feel brand new. Not something tired and weathered and trampled upon. I feel as if just being with him has scraped off all the rust, letting a part of me, all of me, shine. Maybe for the first time he’s helped me discover who I really am.

Maybe there is no logic in love.

Maybe you just have to let it in when you see it, when you feel it.

Maybe you just need to believe in it.

On paper, it looks like I barely know this man and therefore I couldn’t possibly love this man. But I’ll burn that damn piece of paper to ash.

I do love him. My heart knows it, I know it, and even if I pretend otherwise, even if I tell myself it’s impossible, it won’t change a damn thing.

I look at Viktor, at his hand on the steering wheel, the glint of his watch, the way his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, the tan of his skin. He’s wearing his sunglasses, the wind coming in through the half open window and mussing up his hair. His eyes are on the road as far as I can tell and every so often he worries his bottom lip between his teeth.

Then he looks at me. “Taking a picture with your mind?”

I nod. Clear my throat. “Listen, uh, I can’t remember. Am I taking like an Uber you arranged back to Tehachapi or is it a shuttle or…?”

He frowns at me. “Uber?”

“You know, a cab.”

“I know what an Uber is. Why would it take you back home?”

“Because you said you arranged for my transportation back. Is it a Greyhound? I seriously don’t mind.”

A smile spreads across his face. “Maggie, Maggie.” He shakes his head. “Miss America. Min sota lilla persika.”

“What?”

“You’re taking the car back.”

I stare at him. Blink.

“Huh?”

“The car,” he says, smacking the dashboard. “She’s yours.”

“What?”

No way.

No fucking way!

“What did you think I was doing with the car?”

I shrug, trying to find the words but it’s coming out all flustered. “I don’t know. Selling it?”

“I don’t need the money. And you could use an extra car. And if you don’t like it, sell it. Keep the money. Just make sure Pike does the sale so that you know what it’s worth.”

“Viktor…I can’t possibly accept this car.”

He’s nonchalant. “It’s a gift and I want you to have it. In fact, I need you to have it.”

“I…I don’t know Viktor….”

His car. His sexy, beautiful, incredibly rare car. I couldn’t possibly take it. And I would look like an idiot driving around town in it.

“Sell it,” he implores me. “I know what you’re thinking. Sell it and you’ll make your family very happy. You’ll have money in their savings, money for college, money to get that damn toilet of yours fixed. You deserve it. You all do.”

“Viktor, it’s too much.”

“No,” he says, his voice taking on a harder edge. “It’s not too much. It’s not even enough but it’s the best that I can do without…” he sighs. “Please Maggie.”

I rub my lips together while I try and wrestle with the knot in my stomach. I need my pride to take a hike again, I need to believe what he’s saying. “Are you sure?”

“Always more,” he says. “Never less.”

Oh, Jesus.

“You’re unreal,” I whisper. “How did I get so lucky to find you? All the people in that hotel I could have walked in on and I walked in on you.”

“All the maids that could have walked in on me, I’m sure glad it was you and not Juanita.”

I let out a sour laugh.

“I am joking of course,” he says quickly. “Perhaps now isn’t the time for it.”

“There’s always time to laugh,” I tell him but he’s kind of right. I feel all humor drain out of me the closer we get to the airport.

He parks the car in the short-term lot, gets his suitcase out of the trunk and places the keys in my palm, folding my fingers over it. “Yours.”

I grip the keys with all my might. I’m starting to think I might have to build a shrine to him. Viktor the moose and this car and the Splash Mountain picture. And lavender. Lots and lots of lavender.

I follow him into the terminal, stand by him anxiously as he gets his ticket and drops off his bag and the whole time I feel the seconds slipping away from us.

Why is time so cruel?

Why can’t we just hold it in our hands and keep it for ourselves and never let it let us go?

The walk over to the security line is brutal. I feel like I’m being led to a sentencing.

It shouldn’t be so hard, I tell myself. You’re just overemotional.

But I can’t rationalize my way out of this one.

We stop in front of the the agent who is scanning boarding passes and I know I can’t go past any further.

“Well,” he says, turning to me, grabbing my hand.

I shake my head because no, no. This isn’t it.

“This is it,” he says. He squeezes my hand and gazes down at me with such tenderness that my knees are moments from buckling. I’m barely keeping upright.

“I hope you have a good flight,” I manage to say, my voice starting to break.

“Maggie,” he whispers, running his thumb over my lip, his eyes searching mine, so beautifully pure and blue and warm. This man is so warm, his heart, his soul, his everything. “Come with me.”

God.

My heart almost explodes.

“Viktor…”

“You could come with me,” he says, swallowing hard. A look of desperation comes over him. “You could come with me. To Sweden. We could be together. Just for a week. You could do it. We could do this.”

No.

“Please don’t ask me,” I plead, the tears brimming in my eyes, making it hard to see. “Please don’t ask me.”

Because if he asks me, if he tries to convince me anymore, I’m so afraid I might say yes. This man means so much to me that I’d be willing to throw everything I have away, just for the chance to be by his side, even if just for a few more days.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he says, clearing his throat. “I can’t say goodbye. I’m not ready.”

“Viktor, please,” I cry out softly.

I see him break right before my eyes.

Then he’s grabbing me, pulling me into his chest, putting his arms around me so tight and then I’m breaking too, shattering and splintering and it’s only his strength that’s keeping me together.

“I will come back for you.” He kisses the top of my head, pressing his lips hard. “Just you try and stop me.”

He then let’s go and steps back and I nearly fall to my knees.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t feel my heart beat.

I can’t feel anything but the loss of him walking away.

“I will come back for you,” he says again, his jaw tight. His eyes don’t leave mine, even as he hands his ticket to the guard to be scanned.

Then he has to turn and walk away, swallowed by the line.

Then he’s gone.

He’s gone.