Jean took two steps forward to wrap her arms around Lucien's middle and rest her head on his chest. She felt his steady heartbeat under her cheek and took a deep cleansing breath, breathing him into her soul. "Thank you," she murmured. There were no other words for it. This man who loved her so well, so deeply, so fully, how could she have ever thought to turn him away? How could she have ever doubted him? Never once since the moment they fell into each other's arms and kissed passionately in the drive mere seconds after Mei Lin drove away had Lucien given her cause to doubt him. He was stubborn and foolish and rash and reckless, but oh how he loved her.

"Jeanie?"

She smiled and suddenly felt warm all over. Whenever he used that sweet little nickname for her, Jean couldn't help but feel young and soft and sweet. It was something she hadn't felt in so very long, not now that everything else in her life served only to remind her how old and weary and tired she was. "Yes, Lucien?" she replied quietly.

"I was wondering if I might confide something in you?"

His request took her by surprise. In all the turmoil she'd been tortured by, she had neglected to give thought to him. She had assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that he was doing perfectly well. After all, when it came to matters such as this, he had always seemed so confident, so sure of everything between them. She had been the reticent one, never him.

Lucien didn't get a response to his request. But the way Jean stiffened in his arms meant she was listening. "I didn't do very well when Mei Lin was here. I escaped as best I could, I focused on police cases and on the intrigue from Hannam and the rest, and I pushed aside everything else because I didn't know what to do about it, but I see now that it was a horrible mistake."

Jean pulled back from him slightly to look up at his face. "What do you mean?"

"I think if I had let myself think about it at the time, I might not have survived. But seeing Mei Lin—my wife—and seeing only a stranger, seeing a life that was dead and buried even when she and I somehow weren't…it broke my heart, Jean," he confessed.

He paused for a moment and Jean reached up the put her hand on his cheek. Lucien closed his eyes and let her touch calm him. It wasn't easy for him to tell her these things, to admit the dark parts of his heart aloud. But she deserved to know. And he deserved the opportunity to unburden himself.

Lucien continued, "I felt so horribly guilty, worrying that I wanted to cast Mei Lin aside because I was so irrevocably in love with you and then terrified that I would lose you to the propriety of the situation. I never wanted you to feel like 'the other woman' or like you didn't have a place in my life with her there. And I know you did," he said quickly, cutting off her interjection. "I'm sorry for every moment of that. But I'm even more sorry that I didn't tell you how conflicted I was, how much it hurt me to see her there and think only of the way we used to be and the screaming terror of our last moments together. Seeing Mei Lin was a miracle. But it was a curse for us both. We came to understand that, and that's why she was so happy to leave and let us live our life. Because I belong here, Jean. In this house. And most importantly, I belong here with you."

Jean felt herself at something of a loss. Her hand left his cheek as her mind whirled. Her traitorous mouth was too quick for her thoughts. "How?" she breathed. Lucien looked at her curiously. She elaborated, "How can you love me so much?"

And at that, Lucien smiled. He took her face in his hands and gave her one single soft kiss. "You saved my soul," he told her. "You pushed me to be more than I was, to think of others and to climb out of the selfish pit of my own despair. You gave me strength and a sense of purpose. You gave me a home when I thought I'd never find one again, particularly not here." The words came to Lucien's mind and died on his lips, for he knew that to say what he'd just realized might be too much.

Clever Jean, though, saw his hesitation. "Please don't hold back from me," she murmured.

Tears filled Lucien's eyes and his voice cracked as he gave his final heartfelt confession. "I thought my life was punishment, and I thought my heart would never heal. And I don't think I really wanted it to. I wanted to suffer for the way I'd failed as a father and as a husband and as a man. And when I met you and shared this house with you and allowed you to worm your way under my skin, I found the part of me that I didn't know I was missing. I was a broken man, and you showed me how to be whole. I lived an entire life before I met you, Jean, and have lived an entirely different one since we've been together, and it is the greatest joy I have ever known to be able to hold you in my arms and tell you how much I love you."

A mighty sob wracked Jean's whole body. For in that moment, everything finally clicked into place for her. Lucien's beautiful words had put it all in perspective. The life she had lived with Christopher had been small and limited, but what of it? She had been happy and she had loved him, but that life was gone. It wasn't better or worse than the life she had now. It was just as it was for Lucien and Mei Lin in Singapore. All that had come before had created the people they became, had brought them to this moment, standing together in the late night quiet in Lucien's study. But as Lucien had told her that falling in love had shown him how to become whole, so had Lucien opened Jean's whole world as she fell in love with him. Lucien had seen something in her that no one else ever had, and he had encouraged her and included her and let her be his partner, and Jean had felt valued and finally seen for the first time in her life. Christopher had known Jean since childhood and knew her family and knew everything about her. But he had not known her very heart and soul as Lucien did now.

Words from an old book popped into her head that described this powerful realization better than anything Jean could have ever come up with herself: whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same.

No more words came after that. Both Jean and Lucien cried in their catharsis. And so simultaneously that neither knew who moved first, the pair of them crashed together and kissed one another with everything they had.