He looked down and took a bite of pizza, the gestures and expressions boyish now. It was strange; sometimes he seemed so young. Sometimes he seemed about a thousand years old. And she could relate, because sometimes that was exactly how she felt, too. Too young, too old and never just right.
“What did you have on the first one?”
“The pizza?”
“Yeah,” she said, her stomach tight. “I’m sure you remember.”
The left corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Yeah. Pepperoni. Black olives. It was New York style. Of course, at the time I’d only dreamed of New York. I live there now. The pizza’s much better than this.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I know. I spent at least half my childhood there. Most of my adult life. I’ve been fortunate to travel a lot from an early age.”
“I barely left the Kouklakis compound until I was fourteen.”
“What?”
“There was...nowhere else to go. And they didn’t really want anyone talking to us. Questioning us. There weren’t very many children. The ones that were there had to be careful. Careful to try and go unnoticed by anyone who might want to use us, people who came for parties and things. Careful about what we said. The wrong words could set the police down on Nikola and that would have been unforgivable. Death for certain.”
“He would have killed...children?”
“He would never have gotten his own hands that dirty. But he would have used someone else’s. I always knew that my life was in a tenuous place as long as I was there. I always knew.” He took another bite of pizza. “But I got free. I got pizza. It has a happy ending, yes?”
“Does it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s not over yet. Right now we’re just sitting here eating pizza. It’s not going to fade to black or anything.”
“True.”
“There are a lot of potential outcomes for all of this. And I’m not sure if any of them are wildly happy.”
He grunted, a short, frustrated sound seated in the back of his throat. “Because you’re looking for something I can’t give you. You could be happy if you just—”
“If I what?”
“—compromised. You were willing to do it for Ajax and you didn’t even want him. You weren’t having his baby. Well, you are having my baby, and you do want me, so I don’t see any reason that you shouldn’t want to marry me instead of him. What changed?”
She looked down. “I think I did. Or maybe I didn’t change, maybe I just became more afraid of what might happen if I kept living my life as someone else, someone safe, and less afraid of what might happen if I made an effort to find some happiness.”
“I think I made you pretty happy for extended periods of time in bed,” he said.
She coughed. “Well, there’s that.”
“I want you, Rachel.”
“What...now?” She looked around them, at the blue-tinged air slowly falling darker as the sun sank below the horizon line.