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“He did. I didn’t know how else to see you. I understand,” he adds as I part my lips, “that I lied to get you here. If you tell me to go hell, I will turn around and leave. All I’m asking for is five minutes of your time. Five minutes to explain.”

As I hesitate, he pulls one hand out from behind his back to reveal a bouquet. But unlike the vases of roses that have been arriving on my doorstep like clockwork, this one features a cascade of fuchsia-colored bougainvillea blooms.

My heart twists. “You didn’t have to bring me flowers.”

“Yes, I did. Not just because I hurt you. But because I realized, as much as I’ve offered you everything my wealth can buy, I never offered you the little things. The things that mattered.”

I struggle to speak past the growing thickness in my voice. “You bought me the dress.”

“I did but even then, I chose the most expensive thing and the most expensive place. I thought that I was doing so much for others. But I’ve come to realize that doing what I thought was best was my own way of dealing with my past. Helping others without letting them get too close by making choices for them.”

I stand on a precipice. One with the fall so deep I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to claw my way out if my heart breaks again.

But just as Michail has made mistakes, so have I. I told him back in Santorini that I wish our mothers had let themselves be happier sooner. But I’m guilty of the same tactic they used to keep their hearts safe, of keeping myself locked up so tightly nothing got in. Not the bad, but not the good, either.

I love him. Love without his trust means nothing. But if I don’t extend him that same trust, then I have accepted that there is no other outcome, no possibility, but our divorce.

I’m not ready to let go of that hope just yet.

I gesture for him to join me at the table. His body slowly relaxes, as if each muscle is unknotting. He circles around the table and sits across from me. His sheer presence envelops me, tempts me.

“I told you what it was like growing up. How I started to do better managing my anger in middle school.”

“I remember.” I glance down. “I thought you were holding something back, but I didn’t want to push.”

“I was holding back.” My gaze darts back to his. “Not just because it’s painful, but because it took hurting someone and pushing her to the edge for me to correct it.”

“Your mother.”

He nods. “One day she came down to the school. I’d punched a kid in the face in the cafeteria. Something was off. I learned later Lucifer had told her he wanted to set up another meeting. But she knew he wasn’t going to come. It was just his way of making sure she was staying compliant.”

My stomach pitches up into my throat.

“She barely talked, barely even looked at me. When the principal told her I was on the verge of getting expelled, she started crying. And then she couldn’t stop.”

I try to picture Sarah—happy, sweet Sarah—so hopeless and broken.

“The principal called an ambulance after she’d been crying for nearly thirty minutes. She wasn’t talking, just crying and grunting. By the time we got to the hospital, they’d given her a sedative. It was like looking at a shadow of who she used to be.”

“I’m sorry, Michail.”

“She recovered, obviously.” His eyes are dark with regret. “But it took a week for them to release her. She lost one of her jobs. It took her months to…to be herself again. I started applying myself in school and stopped getting into fights.”

He steps back but laces his fingers through mine as he gently pulls me forward again.

“When I started controlling my actions, good things happened to our family. She stopped accepting the money from Lucifer and cut him out of her life. I started working a part-time job and brought in enough money that she was able to get her degree and become a certified teacher.

“I didn’t tell you before because it wasn’t my story to tell. Or at least that’s what I told myself. But I never talked to my mom. I told myself that if I asked her permission to share, it would just hurt her. Just like I wanted to take care of everything with giving you spending money and buying furniture for the nursery. I’venever let go of that guilt. It helped me shore up the walls I used to keep people out. I’m sorry.” The words come out as if they’d been wrenched from his soul. “I hurt you, so many times, and I am sorry.”

I smooth out an imaginary wrinkle in my skirt, focusing on that so he can’t see the tears in my eyes. “Thank you.”

He stands and comes back to my side of the table. I swallow hard as he extends a hand to me.

“Dance with me.”

The same words he said to me in Santorini. I feel like I’m pitching headfirst over a cliff. Am I an idiot for daring to think that Michail could really change? That this could be something like what I dreamed about all those months ago?

I think back to that moment in my room in the penthouse when I reached for the wedding dress. The instant I realized just how much I had missed out on by living in my mother’s footsteps. How much more I could let slip through my fingers in pursuit of keeping my heart intact.