“Look, you can’t just say things like that, Cyrus.” The words burst out of my mouth before I can stop them. I wave my hands about in the air, my composure shattering. “You can’t, unless you’re absolutely certain you want to be with someone and you’re in love with them—”

“I am.”

The world freezes.

My heart, the willow trees, the green waters in the canals, the sparrows perched on the tiled roofs. All of it stops right there and then, and the only thing that restarts is the fierce, uneven pulse in my ears, thudding harder and harder, building into a deafening roar.

“You’re in love with me?” I whisper. “Since when?”

His smile is wry. “Only the past seven years.”

And I think about the people who first discovered that the earth was not at the center of the universe, that you would not fall off if you sailed too far across the ocean, that fires could be built from kindling to give us light and warmth, that stars would live and die just as we do. The initial shock of the revelation, and the aftershock as everything they’d once thought to be true was destroyed and rearranged. “I … This whole time?” I ask him, almost afraid to believe it.

“Of course,” he says, watching me intently, his dark eyes serious, his hair tousled and soft around the sharp lines of his face. “There’s never been anybody else for me. There never will be.”

I’m not sure how any of this is happening. I’m not even sure I’m breathing.

“I can stop talking about it if that’s what you want,” he goes on. “I can promise to never bring this up again. But I meant it when I said that I can be whatever you want me to be: whether that’s an enemy for you to curse and hold a grudge against for the rest of your life; a friend you can trust to accompany you anywhere and drive you safely back home, the one you can call at any hour of the night and tell all your secrets to; or the person you fall for, who will always wear a jacket so you don’t have to bring yours, who will be the first to find you when you’re lost and alone, who will remind you how heart-wrenchingly, unfathomably beautiful you are even on days when you don’t feel it. The only thing I ask is that we don’t ever become strangers, because I really—” He breaks off. Clenches his jaw, fighting against some ineffable emotion. “I don’t think I could bear it, Leah. I don’t think my heart would be able to survive it.”