His jaw shifts. “Where are you going?”

“Mount Etna, I was thinking. Heard it’s lovely there, this time of the year. Come on, Conor, I’m going to my room. Where do you think I…” Oh. But of course. “I won’t call up the guy.”

He seems to be grinding his teeth.

“I told you, I have no interest in…” I shake my head. “Listen, I thought you’d just spent the afternoon making sweet life-affirming love to Avery. And then you were trying to tell me what I couldn’t do, and…I just wanted to get a reaction from you. Not-Hans is here on vacation with his girlfriend. He just pretended to flirt with me.”

“He didn’t.”

“Pretty sure. I was there.”

“Maya, he wasn’t pretending. I guarantee you that every boy your age wants you. Men my age want you. Wherever you go, every-fucking-body is looking at you.”

I laugh, because he’s a lunatic. I love it. “Say they do? I don’t care. Not-Hans is not my type. He’s at least two decades away from a colonoscopy.”

His glare is venomous.

“Don’t be bitter, Conor. You still have all of your natural hair.” I pat his hand and try to free myself, but he doesn’t let go. Which is…interesting. “I thought you were tired?” His face says a lot of things, and I can’t begin to understand them. “And that you didn’t want me here?”

Silence. In the soft golden light, he’s unreadable.

“It’s funny. Ten months ago, you tried to eject me from your life, but you never once managed to say that you didn’t want me. And tonight…” A flick of my free wrist. “All you need to say is that your days have been better without me in them, and that I should leave you alone. And I will never bother you again.”

He lets go of me. His face shutters. “Some lies are too big. Even for me.”

“Then stop being so terrified of me—”

“I’m not afraid of you. I am afraid of myself, and of the person I become when I’m around you.” He leans over me, crowds me, his eyes a cold burn into mine. “I have never wanted anything as desperately, as ungovernably, as persistently as I want you. Not a single goddamn thing. Not my dead mother back. Not revenge. Not the well-being of the people I love. Not professional success, not even my own happiness. Absolutely nothing has consumed me as mercilessly as you have.”

My throat constricts, bitter. “So ten months ago you pushed me away, and never thought of me again.”

“Is that what you think? That ten months ago I woke up, had a difficult conversation, ripped the Band-Aid, and spent the rest of my life reaping the fruits of my bravery?” He shifts deeper into me. His lips brush against my ear, like he cannot bear to hold my eyes as he speaks. “For ten months, day after day, I woke up and fought my most base instinct, which was to call you—no, to come to you. Every day since that phone call, I spent remaking the choice to free you of my presence in your life, so that you could have a better one. Make no mistake, Maya: we may not have spoken or seen each other, but for the last ten months my relationship with you was the most labor-intensive and all-encompassing presence in my life.”