“Sophie, wait. Please.” For the first time in months, she didn’t walk away. She waited until he caught up, then they walked down to the harbor, stopping to lean against a railing overlooking Beagle Channel. Foghorns sounded on the water. Finally, she looked at him out of the corner of her eye.
“You knew,” Michael said. “Mirielle said you knew, that you saw them together.”
“Yes. Did she finally tell you the truth?”
Michael nodded, his expression unreadable. “She did, although far too late for honor’s sake. But why did you not?” He took her shoulders, turned her so that she was facing him.
She caught her breath at his beautiful face so close to hers, and that breath turned into a sob.
“I couldn’t.” Her voice cracked and wobbled. “Who am I to judge Mirielle? I have a boyfriend at home, and I’ve done wrong by him too this year.” She couldn’t look away from his eyes, even when her own were blind with tears. “I couldn’t be the one to tell you.” Sophie suddenly realized she’d never seen Michael cry.
“You can tell me anything,” he said, deadly serious. “I need to know you will never lie to me. That no matter what happens, for the rest of my life, you will always be the one person who will never lie to me. Promise me.”
Sophie nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks. She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. They might be among the most brilliant young people in the world, but, she finally understood, that didn’t mean either of them knew anything about love.
She opened her mouth to try to speak again, but he brushed his fingers over her lips.
“Hush. I know. Do not blame yourself,” he whispered. “Mana mila, I have missed you terribly.” Sophie removed his finger from her lips and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her and they stood in the fog, lost in one another.
God, how I love him.
The thought floated down into her consciousness like a feather falling from a great height. It didn’t shock her. She had known it all along.
After a while, his mouth shifted to scatter kisses across her face. Then his lips came back to press against hers one last time. He took her hands in his, foreheads touching. His eyes met hers. She could see the question rising there.
What now?
Her future beyond this year, beyond GYL…what then? Michael would go to Harvard Medical School. She had a conditional acceptance at Stanford University to study international development on the opposite side of the country. And Matt, waiting patiently for her to return.
Sophie couldn’t lose Michael; she’d already spent too much of this year apart from him. But neither could she imagine him as part of her carefully planned, ambitious dreams. She had no way to control her rampaging feelings for him, no strategy to neatly cubbyhole his impulsive, explosive personality into her orderly plans to change the world. Their love would undo her.
She had to follow her own dreams. For now, at least.
For a moment, she looked back at him, her heart in her eyes. Then she shifted her gaze over his shoulder, eyes on the mist beyond. She felt a shiver of reaction pass through his body. He understood the magnitude of what had just been decided between them.
“I love you, Sophie.”
“I love you too, Mikael.”
It was the only time Sophie would hear those words from Michael in a decade.
-
The end of their year came too soon, and it hurt worse than Sophie had imagined. Saying goodbye to the people who had been family, friends, and colleagues for the last 365 days was wrenching. She’d never cried so much as she did that day, each farewell more painful than the last on the GYL campus, back where they had begun. But the most important person was nowhere to be found.
“Where’s Michael?” she asked Carter frantically.
“He’s gone,” he replied. “His parents picked him up early this morning. He didn’t want to say goodbye to you, to anyone. He doesn’t think it proper for a man to cry, especially in front of a woman.”
Heartsick, Sophie stumbled onto the shuttle bus to catch her flight back to California.
-