let me photograph you in this light

by Authoress-in-training

"You think it's not fair to them, that you can't grow old with someone because of your 'curse.' Well, what about being fair to yourself for once in your insufferably long life?" Age of Adaline-inspired AU

2. getting old, it made us restless

When one lived as long as Baltor had, losing track of time was almost inevitable. More than once, he'd wandered so far away from civilization as to lose all track of time on a calendar, and there were a couple weeks in the 1960s that were just gone, thanks to some experimenting with all the marvelous new drugs in circulation. Besides, the mundane details of everyday life, when multiplied over infinite decades, simply weren't worth remembering in perfect detail.

All of that was to say that even by his standards, the last several months seemed to have passed in the blink of an eye.

He hadn't dated at all in this century, and while Vivian's presence meant he hadn't been completely starved for companionship, he'd forgotten how nice it was to go out in public with someone who appeared his age, to share casual displays of intimacy and affection. Bloom liked many of the same things he did—discovering new restaurants, going to the theater or to see indie films—but she'd also convinced him to try new things, like doing an escape room and catching up on years' worth of popular television. (That had earned him plenty of points with his students, who appreciated the new jokes and references based on things they actually understood.)

And of course, there was the sex: on the couch when they were too keyed up after flirting shamelessly through a dinner date to make it into the bedroom, in bed on lazy Sunday mornings where time seemed to melt like butter through their fingers, one very memorable time over the desk in his office with a scarf shoved in her mouth to muffle the sounds…

Slowly, without him even noticing, she'd snuck into his life beyond just the parts he'd meant for her to see. She showed up to one of his eight AM lectures with coffee and breakfast, spurring students to tease him about his "hot girlfriend" for weeks afterward. He'd met some of her other friends when she roped him into volunteering at an event for kitten adoption, and he even let her drag him on a double date with Sky and his royal fiancée when they came to town.

Recently, he'd acquiesced to Vivian's insistent begging and finally allowed the two of them to meet, introducing her to Bloom as "his grandmother's friend." Unsurprisingly, Vivian loved her, and was now being somewhat insufferable.

"I don't know why you're making such a big deal out of this," Baltor said, adding some more stir-fry sauce before continuing to push the vegetables around in the wok. He'd been cooking a lot more lately, with someone else to cook for, but tonight Bloom had gotten called in to cover the overnight shift at the clinic. At the last minute, he'd invited Vivian over instead, guilty of not spending as much time with her as they used to do.

"I have had other long-term lovers before," he finished, taking a sip from the bottle of Heineken next to the stove. Society had come a long way in terms of accepting women who owned their sexuality since the days of his arrangement with Simone. Not all the relationships had been the same length or depth of involvement, but there had been Chantal, Annaliese, Elizabeth, Laura, Katrina, Amy, Meredith, Roslyn…

"Lovers." Vivian rolled her eyes and gestured emphatically with her own beer. "Did any of them ever convince you to go to a popular movie? Did any of them ever get you bringing them dinner on an overnight shift? Or leave more than a toothbrush and a change of underwear in your apartment?

"With all the rest of them, it was mostly about the sex and partially that you didn't want to be alone." He opened his mouth, a knee-jerk response on the tip of his tongue, but she cut him off. "You don't need to give me some BS about how my mother was different. I know she wasn't. But Bloom is. I could tell even before I met her."

Baltor's face felt hot in ways that had nothing to do with the steam rising off the stir-fry. "What does it matter? The outcome is still the same. I can only have a couple years with her before she'll start to wonder why I'm not aging." After turning the heat down on the stove, he crossed to the other side of the kitchen to check the rice cooker in an attempt to get a little space. "As it is, I've been in San Francisco a little too long, but I didn't want to leave you."

"Don't make this about me." Vivian fixed her gaze on him in a way that made him feel slightly small. "You've stayed this long because you like it here. Because no matter how much you talk up your 'wild adventures,' deep down you are the kind of person who wants a hearth and home. You just don't think you can have that for some reason."

Baltor knew exactly what she was about to say next before the words even left her mouth.

"Have you ever thought about telling her the truth?"

He'd nearly finished his beer in one long swig before he felt capable of forming some kind of response. "Yes, because that's totally not going to make her think I'm crazy or anything."

"Hey, I handled it well enough."

"You were young, scared, and desperate not to be alone in the world. And you had that photograph your mother saved as proof to help you believe my outlandish story." He shook his head. "I can show Bloom all the pictures in the world, but she'll have no reason to believe me. More likely than not, she'll just run away screaming."

"Must you always be so pessimistic?" She clucked her tongue.

"It's called pragmatism, darling, and it's a very rational coping mechanism."

The rice cooker trilled its happy little "done" song, so he set about making up two plates with the stir-fried vegetables and honey-teriyaki marinated salmon he'd left warming in the oven. When they were seated at the table, a full plate and a new beer in front of each of them, he finally said, "Let's run with your overly optimistic scenario where she does believe me. What happens when she realizes that eventually she'll look like she could be my mother, or my grandmother? You think she'll want to stay with me then?"

"I think you've already decided she won't, and that's not being fair to either of you." Vivian set down her silverware and laid her hands flat on the table, staring him down. "This isn't really about her, although I think she's charming and lovely and one of the best things that could have ever happened to you."

Baltor opened his mouth to fire off a snappy retort, but her next words shocked him silent.

"Do you remember what you said that night in Chicago—I was about twenty-six, I think, and had just gotten fired again, so we went out and got shitfaced?"

He did, in fact, remember; most of the 1970s remained inside the too-fickle sieve of his mind, because for the first time in over half a century, he finally had someone in his corner. Vivian probably hadn't expected anything like what actually came out of her cross-country trek to find her absentee father, but as two people orphaned by the world, they'd clung fiercely to each other during the limited period of time in which they appeared close in age.

"I was terrified of how much of my life I'd already wasted working shitty jobs that didn't fulfill me. In that moment, I was convinced I'd never amount to anything, that maybe I was kidding myself to think I'd ever find some higher purpose. And then you said something I've never forgotten."

Baltor snorted. "How profound could it have been? The drunken ramblings of a centenarian fool…"

"Quite profound, actually." Vivian's eyes had an almost feverish light to them, and it made him sit up a little straighter. "You told me not to think about it in terms of time wasted, but in lessons learned from each life experience, whether good or bad. That I should be grateful I still felt pain and fear as acutely as joy and hope, because emotions are a reminder that for most people, life is short, and so you should make the most out of every minute you get. That living without fear of death for so long had made you lose touch with other essential human emotions, and that before we found each other, you were worried you might never get them back."

He did sort of remember this now, through the haze of Scotch that shrouded the night in question. (Being unable to die of liver disease made it very hard not to become a functioning alcoholic.)

"And I brought that up because over the last couple years, I could see it start to happen again. You were losing that spark, the excitement to see what the next day brought, the hope for a better future. It was almost like watching you start to fossilize."

Unexpectedly, his throat felt a little bit tight, and he blinked a few times to stave off the sudden flood of emotion.

"She's been good for you, Dad. Whether or not you ever tell her the truth or stay with her for more than a few years. I just hope that whatever option you choose, you don't lose those feelings again. Because I need to know you'll be okay when I'm gone."

---

A few days later, Baltor awoke in sheets that smelled faintly of floral shampoo instead of just generic laundry detergent. Bloom was tucked against his side, still sleeping peacefully, and even as his body started to respond to the warmth of hers curled against him, he couldn't stop thinking about his conversation with Vivian from the other night.

"Mmm, good morning sleepyhead," he murmured against the side of Bloom's neck as he saw her begin to stir, pressing a kiss to the spot just below her ear that made her shiver. She rolled over and reached for him on instinct, still blinking the sleep from her eyes as their lips met in a soft kiss.

With both of them still naked from the previous night's activities, it wasn't long before the kiss turned heated, bodies grinding together in search of friction, but Bloom pulled away before it could go beyond that.

"Nuh-uh," she chided, pressing a finger against his lips. "We'll be late."

"It'd be worth it," he argued, but put up no other resistance as she slipped from the bed. Lazy, quiet contentment suffused him as he watched her head toward the bathroom, piling her hair on top of her head almost absently, her voice a low hum of steady chatter about their plans for the day.

Though he couldn't see her anymore from his vantage point on the bed, he could hear when she turned on the shower; most San Francisco apartments were small enough and had thin enough walls that one could easily carry a conversation from different rooms. That was why, although her place was perfectly nice, they usually ended up at his, because he didn't also have two other roommates with which to share the space.

"So…I have to go to Oregon at the end of the month," Bloom called out over the sound of running water. "It's my parents' thirty-fifth anniversary, and they're making this big party, inviting like everyone they ever met or something. I'm sure it'll be super pretentious and boring."

There was a long silence, in which Baltor could almost sense her hesitation, the fact that she'd left her thought not fully finished.

Does she want me to go with her?

Immediately, he had two thoughts that were very much in conflict—yes, she probably did want that but wouldn't ask on her own, and no, he really didn't want to go. Getting involved in other parts of her life was one thing, but meeting the parents? That was the kind of thing that showed far greater commitment than he could ever offer to someone.

Then he remembered what Vivian had said on her way out the door the other night: "Remember, you're living in the present."

"Do you…want me to come with you?"

The water shut off, and Baltor held his breath in the weighted silence that followed. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Bloom came out wrapped in a towel, her hair still piled messily on her head with a small cloud of frizz framing her very shocked-looking face.

"Are you… You sure you want to do that?" she asked in a small voice.

He'd been second-guessing himself internally from the second the words left his mouth, but oddly enough, hearing the way she'd phrased the question, as though waiting for him to reject her, only bolstered his confidence.

"I'm sure," he said, making sure to hold her gaze steady.

Her mouth fell open, then curved into a wide, delighted smile that left him feeling warm and a little bit dizzy, almost punch-drunk with the knowledge of how his response had affected her.

Not a fossil after all, he thought to him a little smugly.

"We can even take my car," he added to lighten the mood, which had suddenly gone a bit heavy. "Make a road trip out of it."

Bloom blinked a few times before barking out a nervous laugh. "I mean, I usually just fly up there…"

"You doubt the trustworthiness of my vehicle?" He pretended to be offended. "That thing is sturdier than most modern cars. The concept of 'planned obsolescence' didn't even exist when they were designing the Lincoln Continental."

"No! I just—" She cut herself off when she noticed the twinkle in his eye and reached out like she was going to smack him upside the head instead. He caught her hand and pulled her down onto his lap, causing the towel to unwrap slightly, her skin still warm and slightly damp from the shower. She made a sound of protest when he went in for the kiss but didn't make any attempt to move away.

"Come on, it'll be fun," he said when he pulled back, forehead resting against her own as he slowly snaked a hand up the length of her thigh, causing her breath to hitch. "Like when we went to Carmel last month. You had a good time then, right?"

"Oh, all right," she said finally, more than a little breathless as she stood up and straightened the towel around her body. "But you're doing most of the work. I hate driving stick."

He chuckled, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed before looking around for his boxers. "As long as there are no complaints about handling my stick, darling, we're fine."

She gave a fondly exasperated snort.

Baltor was anything but a technophobe, but as someone whose existence predated the automobile by quite a bit, he didn't understand many of the so-called "improvements" that were now standard issue on modern vehicles. He'd acquired the Continental back in the sixties, when it was the latest thing to roll off the assembly line, and though it was a veritable boat compared to the sleek little Hondas and Toyotas that littered the roads today, he found it vastly preferable in both style and driving experience.

The next few weeks seemed to pass in a blur, with the notable exception of the day he told Vivian about the trip and she nearly shattered his eardrums with her screams of excitement. Almost before he knew it, they were heading out to the storage facility in Oakland where he kept the Continental (under Vivian's name) and piling their duffel bags into the cavernous trunk.

Like she had on the trip to Carmel, Bloom grumbled about not being able to play music from her phone and then almost immediately fell asleep. He let her sleep for the first several hours, only waking her when he finally had to use the bathroom. After they grabbed some drinks and snacks at the gas station, she gamely offered to drive for a few hours, but she wasn't lying about her inability to handle a manual transmission, and he ended up taking over again very shortly.

Her parents lived in a tiny town called Happy Valley, about twenty minutes outside of the Portland area. Like most of Oregon, it appeared to be smack in the middle of a forest, and he had to rely on Bloom's sense of direction over the GPS for the last half hour or so.

"Oh look, there it is!" she exclaimed, pointing out the window to a building rising up in front of them.

He did remember what she'd said on their first date, about how she came from money, but in practice that was fairly easy to forget; almost everyone had tiny, slightly shabby apartments and took public transit in San Francisco, it was just how things were. Also, she thought nothing of wearing the same shirt three days in a row and could happily live off of $3 food truck tacos.

This house, though. At least three stories high and almost the same distance across, built into the side of a hill. The exterior was all gray-washed wood and glass—as though every room whose walls could have been made into windows, had been. Large platforms extended from the main house on all sides, providing a covered deck or balcony of sorts. At every possible point, it seemed to have been optimized for enjoying the no doubt breathtaking views of the surrounding wilderness.

It was a marvel of modern architectural capabilities, plopped down in the middle of otherwise uninhabited forest; the type of house that belonged to a person who didn't just come from money but had it in spades.

Living more or less forever made it much easier to acquire wealth—especially once he figured out the "hide something for a few decades and then sell it as an antique" trick—but one would never know his net worth from the way he lived. Mostly, he just didn't see the point in working even harder to afford certain status markers, especially not in this modern time of unparalleled abundance.

Two figures appeared on the front porch as he carefully navigated the Continental into what seemed a suitable parking spot. "Oh," Bloom said, twisting her fingers together in her lap. "They're waiting for us."

Baltor realized in that moment that she might have wanted him there for moral support, not just because it was Something People Did when they were in a relationship. "Come on, then." He slipped his hand into hers, causing her to look up with a start. "Let's go say hello."

For the first time since agreeing to go on this trip, the voice in the back of his head stopped whispering words of dissent.

"Bloom, sweetie, you made it!" The tall, bearded older man pulled Bloom into a quick hug. "We were getting nervous when we didn't hear from you. Once it gets a little darker, it's not so easy to find your way up here."

His eyes fell on Baltor, and the warm and friendly demeanor almost instantly shifted to something a bit more calculating. "You must be the boyfriend I've heard next to nothing about."

"Be nice, Dad," Bloom admonished.

"Oh, come on, you know I'm just teasing." Bloom's father held out his hand. "Owen Holloway. Nice to meet you…?"

"Morgan, and it's very nice to meet you too, sir." As expected, Owen had a very firm handshake, and almost seemed to expect Baltor to pull away first. His dark brown hair was going silver near his temples and the edges of his hairline, and his face was lined with wrinkles, but he looked no less distinguished for either of those things. This was a man used to getting exactly what he wanted when he wanted it, and Baltor could sense the distaste rolling off of him in waves.

Behind them, Bloom had her arms wrapped around a small woman with thinning reddish hair, the two of them whispering secrets to each other, or so it appeared. Baltor was just about to go over and introduce himself to Mrs. Holloway when Owen clamped a hand down on his shoulder.

"How long have you two been seeing each other, now?" he asked.

Baltor tried to hide his grimace. So now the interrogation begins. "About nine months, give or—"

The crash of broken glass cut him off mid-sentence, and was shortly followed by the sound of a very small and shocked voice saying, "Isaac?"

Baltor's blood ran cold.

That was a name he hadn't answered to in a long time.

Belatedly, he remembered Bloom had said her parents' names were Owen and Miriam, but as he looked at the older woman in front of him, he mentally subtracted the wrinkles and aging posture, painting her hair a darker shade of red and adding back youth and vitality to her face until he recognized her once more.

Amy. That day in the lab, she told me to call her Amy, but never that it was the name on her birth certificate…

"I'm sorry, you just look so much like someone I knew a long time ago." Bloom's mother seemed to have recovered from her initial shock, and now she just looked embarrassed at the outburst. "His name was Isaac Larson—"

"My uncle." The words tripped off his tongue before he was consciously aware of what he was saying. "He died a year ago."

"Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss," Miriam said sympathetically. Meanwhile Bloom was now eyeing him strangely.

"Why don't we all go inside?" Owen suggested after a moment. "Jenny's got dinner warming on the stove. I'm sure you must be starving after that drive. What kind of car is that you've got there, Morgan? Looks like it should be headed for the junkyard…"

Baltor gave a nervous laugh and let the older man shepherd them all into the house, trying not to look anyone in the eye.

---

London, 1980

Though he hadn't lived there in over a century, Baltor knew from the second he set foot in the city again that London would always be home.

So much had changed; it was cleaner, for one, and somehow even louder and busier, the trappings of modernity impossible to ignore with the telephone booths and double-decker buses and gleaming windows of corner cafes. But that didn't matter. It was still London of Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge and Big Ben, all monuments to an empire that had stood for centuries before him and would likely outlast even his cursed lifespan. The queen might be more of a figurehead than a governing monarch—though Elizabeth II did seem to have inherited Victoria's considerable fortitude—but Parliament was still held in Westminster, the polluted Thames lapping at the banks.

He liked America well enough, but it was all so new. London had history.

London was home.

Fleetingly, he wished Vivian were here; her absence felt a bit like phantom pain in a missing limb. But even as he wished to show her the place that would always feel like home to him, he knew he'd made the right decision.

She was in San Francisco right now, having accepted a job to head up fundraising efforts for a small human rights group. Though she'd begged him to come with her, he selfishly wasn't sure he could bear to be near her right now. Not when every passing year made it increasingly clear that she was moving forward in time and he was not.

He'd talked a good game, pontificated on how she needed to go have a life without her father attached at the hip, and she seemed to have bought it. Baltor had every intention of joining up with her in a decade or so—he didn't intend to totally squander the limited amount of time they had together—and then they could figure out how to navigate the public perception of an older woman with a younger man. Something he'd never thought he would have to do but was strangely excited to figure out.

In the meantime, though, he had to occupy his time somehow. He hadn't gone back to university in a few decades, and while he usually would have chosen a program in the humanities or social sciences, this time around he had falsified the credentials to do a graduate degree in human biological research.

The last several decades had ushered in the kinds of technology and innovation that would have been called "magic" in the time of his birth. Perhaps someone had finally figured out why it was he could seemingly live forever young.

That was how he found himself in one of the biology labs at King's College London, patiently examining some specimens under the microscope, when a frazzled redhead barreled into the room as though someone were chasing her. Her arms were full of books and loose paper so precariously balanced that they seemed liable to spill at any moment, yet when he offered a helping hand, she fixed her piercing green eyes on him with an acid stare.

She launched into an American-accented tirade about how she could carry her own books, thank you very much, and yes, she was in the right building, yes she knew how to use the goddamn lab equipment, she didn't need any stupid man trying to "teach her to use it" as a ruse to feeling her up, she had an undergraduate degree from Yale and that if he had a problem with a woman being in his lab classes he could go jump off London Bridge for all she cared.

By the time she came up for air, face now flushed nearly the same shade as her hair, Baltor was already halfway in love.

After clearing the air regarding his feelings toward women in science—absolutely positive—the two of them got to chatting. Her name was Amy Fleming, an American ex-pat from a wealthy family who'd planned to marry her off as a bargaining chip in a business transaction. Instead, she'd run off to Europe, hoping to buy herself a few extra years of freedom.

She was charming, vivacious, and sharp as a whip, and she never hesitated to cut someone down to size if they were being overtly sexist, even if the someone in question was one of their professors. Baltor couldn't remember the last time he'd met a woman who was so blunt and honest about what she was thinking, and it turned him on like nothing else; he'd never much enjoyed courting Victorian ladies with their wilting-flower temperaments.

Long nights in the lab and quizzing each other on microbiology terms in the student lounge turned into grabbing drinks at the pub after evening class and movie nights at her apartment while the rain battered against the windows. But although the combination of modern science and changing societal values had finally liberated women's sexuality, he valued Amy's friendship too much to risk losing it. Instead, he resigned himself to stealing glances at the curve of her neck while she was engrossed in the microscope, fantasizing about the day he might be bold enough to finally press her up against the counter and kiss her senseless.

Things went on that way until Halloween, when one of her friends threw a loud, raucous party and she somehow convinced him to attend. Though Amy wasn't usually much of a drinker, it wasn't long before she was almost falling-down drunk, with Baltor the only somewhat responsible person around to make sure she didn't harm herself.

He helped her find a spare bedroom to lie down and got her a glass of dubious-looking water from the tap, only for her to leap up and throw herself at him with a wet, messy kiss that tasted of cheap pinot noir. For a few, fleeting seconds, his heart raced—before she pulled away to vomit over the side of the bed, dashing him back to unfortunate reality.

Amy ended up passing out on her friend's bed shortly afterward, which left Baltor to sleep uncomfortably on the floor to make sure nothing happened to her in the middle of the night. The next morning, she could scarcely look him in the eye until they were ensconced in a booth at their favorite greasy diner, steaming mugs of strong black coffee in hand. She apologized profusely for getting so drunk and acting ridiculous, cheeks flushed a pale pink the entire time. Then, right as the waitress reappeared with their food, she muttered something under her breath about "blowing my only shot to kiss you when I was so drunk that I barely remember it."

Of course, he couldn't let that one go, pressing her with questions until the food had grown cold and they'd both admitted to finding the other attractive since day one but being too timid and then afraid of ruining the friendship to act on their desire. But it still took several long, painfully silent moments and a few false starts for them to agree that so long as they were both single with no desire to settle down, there was no reason why they couldn't.

Baltor left the waitress an obscenely enormous tip in his haste to get back to his apartment, where they spent the rest of the day in bed.

Eventually, Amy confided in him while they were still tangled in messy sheets, she did intend to go back to the States, which would mean allowing her parents to pick her future husband and inevitably spend her life raising children instead of doing the research that fueled her soul. Until then, though, she intended to live her life to the fullest, and do as many things her parents would disapprove of as was possible.

Weeks turned into months, time slipping through his fingers like grains of sand in an hourglass, as they studied and kissed and drank and laughed and fucked their way through the graduate program. It might have been the most uncomplicated relationship he'd ever been involved in.

But he really should have known better than to think he could have something that easy forever.

---

"Dad?" The soft, barely discernible note of concern in Vivian's voice made his breath catch in his throat. "Is everything all right?"

Baltor wrapped the hand not holding his phone around the balcony railing and leaned forward, all the weight going onto his hand until the knuckles had turned white with the strength of his grip. "I just ran into someone I knew years ago, who knew me by another name. Someone I'd…dated."

"Ooh, that sounds super awkward." Ever the astute one, Vivian didn't waste a second before realizing, "Wait a minute, aren't you with Bloom's family for the weekend?"

Not knowing how to admit to the precarious house of cards upon which he currently stood, Baltor exhaled, watching his breath appear in front of him like a plume of white smoke. It might have only been early September, but they were pretty far up in the mountains, and the air was surprisingly chilly.

She clucked her tongue. "Don't tell me you slept with her sister."

"Worse," he croaked finally. "It was her mother."

Vivian was almost never at a loss for words, so the silence spoke volumes.

"Obviously, this was a long time ago," he rushed to explain. "We met in London, in the eighties. God, I can't believe it's really her… When she recognized me, I panicked and said that Isaac, my old alias, was my uncle."

He could hear Vivian's hiss of dismay, and that was all he needed to know about whether she remembered the Amy fiasco.

"Do they look alike?" she asked finally. "Bloom and her mom?"

"I mean, a little bit, but I've seen literally hundreds of millions of faces in my lifetime…" He let out a heavy sigh. "See, this is exactly why I don't get involved with anyone beyond a casual fling. Maybe without the rules, I would have run into this kind of thing ten times over already."

"Stop being irrational for one second." Vivian's voice was like the crack of a whip, but strangely enough, it was exactly what he needed. "You said you told them Isaac was your uncle?"

"Yes."

"Well, there you go. Resemblance explained. I doubt anyone will ask you too many questions, especially not Amy, or whatever her name really is. She got married, after all, and had a family. It's not like she carried a torch for 'Isaac' all these years."

Baltor let out a noncommittal hum, thinking about the way Miriam had looked at him, like he was a ghost and a Christmas present and her worst nightmare all bundled into one. "Yeah, a family that hates me except for Bloom."

To be fair, Bloom had warned him that her family wasn't very good with new people; "too many attempts at corporate espionage over the years," she'd explained with a shaky attempt at laughter. But the underlying mood had never really recovered after the bit on the porch, making dinner a tense, uncomfortable affair.

While Bloom's sister Daphne, a platinum-blond former model, spent the entirety of the meal tapping long, manicured talons on her smartphone and glaring daggers at Baltor across the table, Miriam remained distant and withdrawn, taking tiny, bird-like bites and staring out the window. Which left Bloom and Owen to make stilted conversation while the latter gulped his wine and tossed out thinly veiled insults every other comment.

The food, at least, was nothing short of incredible, thanks to Jenny, the Holloways' personal chef and housekeeper. It was no hardship to keep his mouth occupied with filet mignon in a garlic mustard sauce, roasted broccoli, and twice-baked potatoes. Far more pleasant than trying to navigate the awkward Holloway family dynamics, which had clearly been exacerbated but not created by his presence.

Frankly, even without the shock of the Amy revelation, Baltor was seriously doubting how he was going to make it through the long weekend.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of red hair from the other side of the glass door. "Bloom's coming out here. I have to go." He ended the call without waiting for Vivian to say goodbye, which would almost certainly earn him a follow-on text full of angry emojis.

"Who was that?" Bloom asked, stepping out onto the balcony. In each hand, she held a steaming mug, one of which she held out toward Baltor.

"Just Vivian, checking that we made it here safely." He took a sip of what appeared to be hot cocoa, accepting the slight burn on his tongue as penance for lying. Then he took another sip and realized that wasn't the only burn he noticed. "Is there bourbon in this?"

She chuckled, the corners of her mouth turning upward. "Figured you'd need a pick-me-up after dealing with my crazy family."

"I teach undergraduates, remember? There's not a whole lot that can faze me anymore." He chuckled and took a longer drink of the cocoa, letting it warm him from the inside out.

Bloom laughed, but he could see the naked relief in her eyes that she couldn't quite camouflage. "Still, I know they're kind of a lot. Well, my dad and Daphne are, at least. Mom's usually better at making people feel at home. She must have been really shaken up to hear about your uncle. How weird is that, that they knew each other?"

His stomach tightened with fear. "It's a small world," he said finally.

She tilted her head to the side and looked up at him with inquisitive eyes. "I didn't know you had an uncle who died recently. Actually, this whole thing made me realize I don't really know a whole lot about you."

Baltor had to shift away from her gaze, even as he knew how incriminating that would look. "You know more about me than almost anyone else." It wasn't even a lie.

"But you never talk about your family. I don't know anything about your childhood, or about your parents, if they're dead or alive, if you have any siblings… And like, a part of me totally gets it, but I just…I just think it's kind of weird that you never talk about them. Any of them. Ever."

The words hung there for a moment, in the chilly night air, as Baltor wracked his brains for a reasonable explanation.

Finally, Bloom heaved a long sigh. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to… Come on, I have something to show you."

He would have thought that meant heading back inside, but instead she led him around the side of the house and down a flight of stairs. A few feet from the edge of the deck, like a last safe refuge before the miles of untamed forest all around them, stood a little wooden gazebo with what appeared to be a hot tub inside, if the steam rippling off the top was any indication. As they got closer, he could see a little side table that held folded towels, a large insulated thermos, and a half-empty bottle of Maker's Mark.

For some reason, the realization hit him like a ton of bricks—she'd planned this, a nice relaxing evening for the two of them. It was the nicest thing someone had done for him in a long time.

But he snapped out of his thoughts when her hands reached for the button on her jeans. "Uh…Bloom? This looks amazing and all, but you know, a little warning would've been nice. I didn't bring a swimsuit."

Impish amusement danced in her eyes. "Who said anything about swimsuits?"

Baltor nearly swallowed his tongue when she stepped out of her jeans, revealing miles of smooth, creamy leg and a scrap of royal blue lace between her thighs. Any and all words of protest died a rapid death as she pulled her sweater up over her head, tossed it aside, and sauntered over to the steaming tub, clad only in a lingerie set that seemed designed to drive him absolutely insane.

"Well?" she said from inside the hot tub, looking over her bare shoulder and biting her bottom lip suggestively. "You getting in?"

Somewhat clumsily, he stripped out of his own clothes, trying not to think about her eyes on him, how he'd never undressed in front of a lover without it being an immediate pretense to sex. Thankfully, she stopped watching him so intently once he got into the water, which was pure bliss—the temperature just short of scalding, the pressure from the jets working to unravel every kink in his shoulders and back.

Baltor accepted a refill of his drink, took a long swallow, then set the mug on the edge of the hot tub, sinking a little further down into the water so he could rest his head against the side of the tub. With the bourbon settling in his stomach and the warmth from the water seeping into his bones, he felt relaxed and peaceful in a way he hadn't known was possible.

Maybe that was what loosened his tongue.

"I don't really talk about my family because I've been on my own for what feels like as long as I can remember."

His eyes slipped closed almost reflexively as he contemplated this part of his past, which felt so far away as to have been lived by an entirely different person. "I was mostly raised by my grandmother and her two sisters, who were pretty shitty people and even worse caretakers. My mother died giving birth to me, and my father wasn't really around much while I was growing up. He also died when I was pretty young, and then I inherited his…estate, and a lot of responsibilities I never really wanted.

"At first, I told myself I would do things better, that I would fix what they'd broken by only caring about themselves, but of course it wasn't so simple." Acidic shame curdled in his stomach along with the rush of memories from the night of the fire. "That accident I told you about on our first date? I survived something I probably shouldn't have, but my…significant other wasn't so lucky." Exhaling heavily, he finished, "At the time, it felt like my only option was to run, to leave it all behind and never look back."

Steeling himself with a deep breath, he lifted his head and turned to face her.

"Oh, Morgan." Bloom moved a little closer until she could reach out and cup his cheek in her palm, staring deeply into his eyes. Her expression was filled with sympathy, but thankfully not pity. "I'm so sorry. Thank you for sharing that with me."

For some reason, that made him squirm. "I do understand what it means that you wanted me to meet your family, crazy and all. I hope you can appreciate now why I don't talk about mine, and that it has nothing to do with you or how I feel about you."

"I get it now. I do. Believe me, I know a thing or two about misplaced parental expectations." Idly, she dragged her other hand over the surface of the water, creating little ripples.

"Your dad seems…intense." Privately, he thought that description was being rather charitable to Owen, who seemed to have made a point to antagonize Baltor from the moment they'd laid eyes on each other. Of course, he couldn't resist getting in a jab about the "unpredictability" of academia as a career over dinner, but Baltor was more shocked at some of the things he'd said to his own daughter.

She snorted. "That was pretty tame for him, actually. You should've heard the uproar when I told them I was going to get my vet tech cert instead of going to medical school or a PhD program." Deepening her voice, she intoned, "You have a biology degree from UC Berkeley! How can you possibly want to spend your days up to your elbows in dog shit?"

He couldn't help but chuckle at her imitation of Owen's voice, which was pretty spot-on. "Has he always been like that?" he asked carefully.

Bloom sighed, shifting her body away from him. It took him a moment to realize what she wanted to do, but then he opened his arms so she could settle in between them, her back against his chest, legs pressed against each other on the bench.

"You mean, overprotective, judge-y as fuck, and thinks he knows what will make me happy better than I do?" Her tone grew soft and contemplative as she continued, "I was such a Daddy's little girl as a kid—he was so happy that I loved science the way he and Mom do, the way Daphne never did. I really did love all the science fairs and the summer camps, and I liked college bio well enough. But when I decided I wanted to help people and animals on a more personal level, rather than spend my entire life in a lab where I might never even see results from my work…that was it. I was out of his good graces forever, while Daphne's suddenly the golden child now that she runs operations for the Seattle office."

Her tone dripped with bitterness when talking about her sister. Baltor gave her shoulder a soft squeeze of reassurance. "I'm sorry," he offered, not knowing what else to say."

Bloom shrugged. "Do I wish things could be different? Of course. But I realized a long time ago that I'm never going to change who he is and how he thinks. The only way I'll ever be good enough for him is if I sacrifice my own hopes and dreams to become the person that he wants me to be. I'm not willing to do that, so instead, we both have to live with the disappointment."

Like he had the morning after their first date, Baltor found himself wondering how she'd gotten to be so wise in her scant few years. She also reminded him more than a little bit of Amy—or rather, the impetuous, outspoken young woman he'd known almost forty years ago, not the shell of a woman he'd met today.

Almost as though she could read his mind, she continued, "Mom seems to get it, at least. We were always close, but even more so the last few years. She'll never stand up for me in front of him, but it's something, at least."

He didn't know how to respond to that, so he reached for the mug of spiked cocoa and passed it down to her. "Family's the worst."

"I'll drink to that." And she did, taking a long swallow before she handed it back to him with barely anything left in the mug. Baltor finished it off, grimacing a bit as he tried to hide his body's reaction to Bloom's perky, lace-clad ass wiggling in his lap.

"You know, we don't have to spend tomorrow with my family if you don't want to," she said. "We can drive out to Portland and explore. I know you said you've never been, and it's a beautiful city."

"Really?" It was somewhat hard to pay attention to the words out of her mouth and not the way she was shifting once again to face him while remaining in his lap, their lower bodies aligning in tempting ways. "D-didn't you come here to see them?"

"Eh, they're used to it," she said with a shrug before draping her arms around his neck, leaning forward until their noses touched. Her eyes held all sorts of indecent promises, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore the way her wet, half-naked body felt against his own. "It means a lot to me that you came here."

She was all but begging him to kiss her, so Baltor leaned down and did just that, his tongue sweeping into her mouth to taste the lingering bourbon and chocolate. Bloom met his passion with equal fervor, her fingers threading through his hair, clutching at the back of his head. His hands gripped her waist, then her ass, as their hips rocked together in tandem. Only two pieces of flimsy wet fabric separated them from being fully connected, and in that moment, Baltor couldn't think of any reason not to push them aside and close that final gap.

But when he dared to slip a finger underneath the lacy band of her underwear, Bloom pulled away.

"So…I really don't feel like explaining to my parents why they need to clean their hot tub." Her lips were kiss-bruised, eyes wide and dark as she tilted her chin and suggested, "Upstairs?"

"Y-yeah," he stuttered out, his head feeling like it was full of cotton.

Shivering and laughing as the cold air hit their skin, they climbed out of the tub and bundled up in the waiting towels, barely stopping to grab their discarded clothes before taking off in a highly uncoordinated half-stumble, half-chase upstairs.

Inside the warmth and safety of her bedroom, their towels hastily discarded at the door, Baltor came up behind her and pressed little kisses into her neck, his hands settling on her bare waist, catching her open mouth in a deep, searching kiss when she turned her head toward his. Bloom laughed, fingers tracing up his arms and over his shoulders until she had the leverage to tug him down on top of her. They landed on the bed with a soft thump, her on her back with him braced above her, his hips slotted in between her legs, still kissing like their lives depended on it.

From there, it was easy to lose himself in the taste of her lips and the feel of her soft skin under his fingers, the scent of her hair and the sweet little gasps she made when he found a particularly sensitive spot. It was slow and sensual, the way she tilted her hips up to meet him as he drove his forward, their bodies slick with sweat, coming together again and again. He hitched her knee up a little higher, changing the angle just a bit, and she let out a strangled sound of pleasure, her hands flying up to grasp at the headboard.

They reached the peak within seconds of each other, her legs wrapped around his waist, his mouth pressed to her neck to muffle a groan; every shift of her body under his, every twitch of her hips drew out the pleasure until he was left feeling wrung-out and desperate. Still struggling to catch his breath, as though he'd just run a marathon, Baltor got up to deal with the condom, taking a quick moment to use the toilet as well.

The air still smelled of sex and sweat as he lowered himself to the bed, which creaked slightly under his weight. A tiny part of him had the wherewithal to hope this room was far enough away from any other members of the Holloway family who might still be awake. Instinctively, he reached out for Bloom, who'd rolled onto her side, a warm, satiated lump underneath the blankets.

"Mmm." She sighed, sounding more than half asleep already. "Love you."

Baltor went rigid, the remnants of his post-orgasm glow quickly replaced by a cold, paralyzing fear.

Love you. Love you. Love you.

The words echoed through his head like a gong.

---

London, 1983

Baltor handed over the cash for a ticket and descended into the underground station, just another body in the crowds as central London's office buildings and shops emptied out for the day. After enduring the thirty-minute train ride pressed up against the teeming mass of sweaty, weary office drones, emerging back onto street level was a literal breath of fresh air, even if it was beginning to drizzle a bit.

Spring in England was cold, wet, and windy, but at least the snow had finally stopped. This morning, he'd even spied a few daffodils starting to poke their heads aboveground. If the rain let up for a bit over the weekend, as forecasted, perhaps he could take Amy to the park for a picnic.

On the way to the flat, he stopped at the fish and chips shop around the corner to pick up some dinner; he didn't particularly feel like cooking tonight, and Thursdays were Amy's longest days, with an afternoon lab followed by office hours for her section of bio 101. The greengrocer next door had discounted their remaining floral bouquets, and on impulse, Baltor picked up a small bunch of primroses with sweet alyssum—a simple gift, but one that he knew would make an immense impact on the receiver.

Even after all this time, the fact that he had someone to come home to still didn't seem fully real some days.

He'd only lasted a year in the biology program before realizing that science and technology still hadn't advanced sufficiently to explain his condition. With that in mind, even the prospect of shared labs with Amy couldn't make him find enough enthusiasm to continue studying human physiology and organic chemistry. Instead, he'd transferred into the literature course at King's College and picked up a job at an antique bookstore across town, mostly to avoid raising undue suspicion about his finances.

Amy, of course, was still living off her parents' money and had thrown herself into a PhD as soon as she'd finished her master's, picking up hours as a TA for undergrads and assisting another professor with his grant-funded project to explore the human genome. It left her wrung out and exhausted by the end of most days, but her eyes always lit up when she talked about her research, and even though much of it was still Greek to him, he never minded listening to her talk about the thing she so clearly adored.

Wiping his boots on the mat, he dug through his pockets for the house key, the sweet floral perfume mingling with the grease and salt of the chips. The pink-spotted umbrella and rainboots in the front hall told him Amy was already home, so he called out, "Love? Mind giving me a hand?"

It was just over six months now that they'd decided to move in together—what had seemed like the logical thing to do when Amy's former landlord decided he was selling her beautiful Chelsea townhouse. The size and overall spartan sensibilities of their little flat didn't bother Baltor, who'd lived in far stranger places, but no matter what she said, he knew it wouldn't have been Amy's preference. She'd done her best to make it homey, though, with framed photos and scented candles and little trinkets she'd picked up from the artists' stalls at Covent Garden.

He hadn't shared a home with a woman since his ill-fated marriage over a century ago, and though he'd prepared himself for the worst, he was genuinely surprised by just how comfortable he was with the whole thing.

Careful not to smush the flowers or the takeaway bag, he slipped off his overcoat and hung it on a hook. "Darling? Are you there?" he called out, heading deeper into the apartment.

He found her standing in the middle of the kitchen—more of a kitchenette, really, with a tiny strip of counter and barely enough room for one person to move between the refrigerator, stove, and sink. She was pale as a ghost, her knuckles equally white with the force of the grip she had on the edge of the counter, while her eyes had a glazed over, listless look to them.

"Amy?" After hastily dropping the bags and bouquet on the counter, he snapped his fingers in front of her face until she finally blinked, coming out of her trance-like state.

"I-I—" Even as she let go of the counter's edge, color starting to return to her cheeks, she still didn't seem capable of stringing together sentences. Instead, she staggered over to the kitchen table and sank down into the closest chair, her movements mechanical and jerky like a wind-up doll.

By now, Baltor was genuinely concerned, but he tried to keep his voice light as he asked, "Is everything all right, love? What happened?"

It took her several long moments and deep gulps of air before she was able to compose herself. "I've just had a call from my parents."

Well, that explained some of the odd behavior. In the nearly three years that he'd known Amy, he could count on one hand the number of times she'd talked about her parents. As far as he could tell, the Flemings cared more about their social standing and the health of their stock portfolio than their daughter's happiness; good riddance if they didn't want anything to do with Amy.

"They're in London, and they want to come and see me." Before he could fully process that, she added, "And made a not so veiled threat about me not being able to pay next semester's tuition bill if I don't."

Baltor slid into the opposite chair and reached out to gather her hands in his own. Holding her gaze intently, he said, "So go, then. Have a meal with the bastards, order the most expensive thing on the menu and make them pay for it. Then come back here and we'll get smashed until you forget the entire thing even happened."

He'd counted on at least getting a small smile from her, but Amy's expression stayed grave. "They were talking about having me home for Christmas and all the 'eligible bachelors' I'll be able to meet at their charity gala."

"I…oh." Now her total shutdown made some more sense.

Abruptly, Amy got to her feet and started pacing back and forth along the length of their narrow living room. "I can't believe they're really doing it. I guess I figured they would eventually give up trying to make me into a good little housewife. I mean, it's been three years since I left. I'm in the middle of my goddamn PhD!"

"You know, you could just…not go," he suggested, immediately regretting it when she stopped dead in her tracks and glared at him. Most of the time, Amy was as chill and even-tempered as anything, but every now and then, the fiery temper commonly associated with her flaming red hair reared its ugly head.

"They're my parents. I can't just ignore them. Even if they are insane to think they can offer me up like a lamb to the slaughter to some dimwitted douchebag son of my dad's—"

She stopped pacing, her mouth hanging slightly open as she came to some sort of realization. Baltor's stomach dropped as she turned to face him, and he knew what she was going to say before the words left her mouth.

"They can't marry me off if I'm already taken."

He knew exactly how inappropriate it would sound, but in the moment, all he could think of was to crack a joke: "Why, sweetheart, was that a proposal I just heard?"

As predicted, Amy all but growled in frustration. "Be serious for just one minute." She went back to pacing, an almost manic light in her eyes. "This could work. You come with me tomorrow and they see I'm not an available pawn for them to use in whatever stupid game they're playing now. They'll have to back off. Maybe if we're lucky, they'll be so disgusted I foiled their plans that they forget about me for another three years."

Baltor cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably in the chair. "Just to be clear, you want me to pretend to be your…what? Your fiancé? Your boyfriend?"

She whirled on him again, and now the mania had been replaced with an eerily cold stillness. "Well I rather thought our relationship wasn't pretend."

"You know I didn't mean—"

"What did you mean, then?" Amy's jade green eyes bore into him in her trademark cutting glare, while her face was now approximately the same shade as her hair. "Tell me, Isaac. Tell me how it is that we've been exclusively screwing each other for over two years, we live together, and yet you think telling my parents we're in a serious, committed relationship would be 'pretending.' What exactly did you think we've been doing all this time?"

He knew there was no right answer here, but he couldn't just say nothing. "When this started, we were just having fun. I still remember you as the crazy American girl who berated me for thinking women couldn't belong in a lab, and how passionate you were about your research. How much disdain you had for your parents' plan to turn you into a housewife."

"I didn't want to marry one of the sanctimonious pricks my parents would set me up with because they'd never let me continue my research. I want a career, and I also want a family." She paused for a moment, bottom lip wobbling a bit, and when she spoke next, it was with the voice of a woman who seemed to know she was about to break her own heart. "And I…I wanted them with you."

Baltor took a few slow, deep breaths. "I know how this must sound, and I'm truly sorry for the timing of it all, but I don't… that's not something I can give you, Amy."

"Can't? Or won't?"

The words hung in the air for a long, tense moment, almost like a challenge.

Finally, Amy sighed. "Look. I'm not going to pretend to understand why you just said what you did, but I don't believe you meant it. I don't believe that the last two years have been some elaborate lie and that all you really cared about was getting me into bed. I just don't. I'm sorry that you had such a terrible childhood, and for whatever happened with your ex that's made you think you're incapable of loving anyone again."

It took all of his strength not to react visibly. Amy was the first lover with whom he had ever shared any information about his past, and for her to use that information against him now, as some kind of cheap psychoanalysis, felt like a kick in the teeth.

"I love you, Isaac, and I want to build a future with you. And maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think you love me, too. Even though we've never said those three little words until now, it's evident in all the little things you do for me. You're just scared—of what, I don't know. But you don't have to be." She held his gaze unflinchingly, taking a step closer as she reached out to cup his cheek. "I want to fight for you, for us, because I think you're worth it, but I can't do it alone."

Abruptly, she turned on her heel and headed toward the door. Baltor stared at the space where she had been, dumbfounded, for a few seconds, until his mind seemed to catch up to what had just happened.

He found her in the front hall, pulling on her rainboots and grabbing her coat off the hook. "Where are you going?" he asked, panic creeping into his voice unbidden. But it was dark, the rain coming down in earnest now, and he didn't like the idea of her going out into the streets of London at this time of night.

"I'm going to spend the night at Tessa's. I just…I can't stay here right now." Tessa was her friend from labs who lived only a few blocks up the road, which made something inside his chest relax a little bit, but that was short-lived as he remembered the bigger problem at hand.

"Amy, I…"

"Shh." She pressed a finger to his lips, before replacing them with her own in a brief, chaste kiss. Her scent flooded his nose—lavender soap mixed with the bitterness of bleach and chemicals from the lab—and lingered even when she stepped away.

"I know you're scared. But if you're the man I think you are, you'll meet me tomorrow for dinner with my parents. Seven o'clock, at the Ritz Carlton." She turned toward the door, stopped and looked back at him once more, clearly about to say something else, but ultimately chose to walk out without another word.

Clearly, despite her willingness to walk away right now, she still believed he would be there tomorrow.

Which made it even harder to do what he knew he had to do.

He wrote two letters that night—one to Vivian, saying only that he'd run into some trouble and would be going off the grid for a bit, and not to worry about him, that he'd come back to her when it was safe. Of course, she was sure to give him hell for this once she found out, but with the current speed of intercontinental mail delivery, that wouldn't be for a long time.

The second one, left for Amy on their bed, said only: "I'm sorry I can't be who you need me to be."

Then he bought a one-way ticket to Paris and spent the better part of a week drinking himself into a stupor each night, trying to forget the betrayed look in Amy's eyes when he hadn't said "I love you" back.

---

The one downside of a house with more windows than solid walls was that it made sleeping in nearly impossible. Or perhaps it was Baltor's guilty conscience that roused him with the sun, after he'd spent most of the night tossing and turning following the "I love you" bomb.

The culprit and cause of his sleepless night was still out cold, curled on her side faced away from him and letting out soft, kitten-like snores. With the sheets draped loosely around her waist, the upper half of her body was on full display—the dip of her neck and the delicate curve of her collarbone, the light freckles that littered her shoulders like a dusting of gold. Her coppery lashes fluttered, but her breathing remained slow and deep even as he climbed out of the bed, and he couldn't help but smile.

Especially after a night of passion like they'd indulged in, Bloom was known to sleep until almost noon if left unbothered. While he didn't intend to let her off quite that easily today, there was no reason not to let her doze just a little while longer.

After shrugging on sweatpants and a T-shirt, he headed down the stairs on a path toward the Holloways' industrial-sized kitchen, if his sense of direction was correct. But all thoughts of scrounging up something to bring back to Bloom vanished when he saw the woman sitting at the kitchen table, her silhouette illuminated against the light flooding in through the house's signature floor to ceiling windows.

"Good morning, Morgan," Miriam said serenely, teacup hovering near her mouth as she craned her neck to look at him.

"G-good morning, Mrs. Holloway," he stuttered out. "I wasn't expecting anyone else to be awake."

"Knowing my daughter, I suppose you wouldn't. There were a few times when Owen had to literally drag her out of bed so she wouldn't be late to school." She laughed as she set down the teacup, adding, "And call me Miriam, please. My mother-in-law's been dead for over a decade, but I still want to look for her whenever I hear someone say Mrs. Holloway."

That sounds like something Amy would say, Baltor thought to himself, a grin creeping onto his lips unbidden. He made a point to look away once he noticed it, which was when he spotted the food laid out on the kitchen island—coffee, tea, and orange juice, a big bowl of fresh fruit, yogurt, granola, hard-boiled eggs, a basket full of assorted bagels, small bowls of cream cheese and butter, and a platter containing smoked salmon, cucumber, tomato, and red onion.

"Is there another party I don't know about?"

Miriam gave a wry half-smile. "Not exactly. But Owen and Daphne went down to the health club about an hour ago, and if I know my husband, he'll find a few friends playing tennis and bring them back for brunch, so I thought, better to be prepared than to spend the entire morning in the kitchen." After drinking deeply from her tea, she cast a glance over the island and added, "I guess I sort of got carried away, didn't I? It's just been so long since I had my whole family under the same roof again. Please, eat."

There didn't seem to be any way out of this without seeming rude—she would know he was lying if he claimed Bloom was waiting for him—so Baltor considered the spread before him, eventually settling on half an onion bagel with cream cheese and salmon, as well as some fruit—large chunks of bright yellow pineapple, juicy green and orange melon, and berries.

Unlike last night, when he'd pointedly avoided looking in her direction whenever possible, now it was hard not to see Amy in the way she held herself, in the familiar scent of lavender laced with something like pine and rainwater rather than the acidic tang of bleach. Her watchful eyes followed him across the room as he dropped an Earl Grey teabag into a mug and then filled it from the carafe of hot water.

"A man of refined taste, I see," she commented, a hint of approval in her voice. "Wherever did my daughter find you?"

"I found her, actually, at the vet's office—knew she was something special when she made friends with my hell-beast cat in under thirty seconds."

When he could no longer spend any more time stalling over the food, he bit the bullet and slid into the seat directly across from Miriam. A long-installed sense of decorum prompted him to say, "Thank you again for inviting me to stay the weekend. You have a lovely home."

"You mean this old place?" She shrugged, lips curling upward at the corners for a brief moment before she composed her expression back into one of studied blankness. "I would have been happy with a little condo near the coast where I could watch the sun over the ocean every morning, but Owen fell in love with this place as soon as he saw it. Never mind that it's far too big for just the two of us."

There were about half a dozen choice comments about Owen on the tip of his tongue, but ultimately, Baltor went with, "Yes, well, that does sound like the man I met last night."

He thought his reply was as diplomatic as one could get, but Miriam's face went sad and contemplative. "I'm so sorry. I'd like to say we're usually a little better about not airing our dirty laundry in front of company, but some sort of squabble seems inevitable with all of these strong-willed, stubborn personalities under one roof." She looked down at her tea as she added, "I mostly stay out of it these days, because I'd rather have my girls at home, even if they're fighting, than go years at a time without seeing them again."

That was the second time she'd said something to that effect this morning, and he couldn't hold back his curiosity any longer. "Excuse me for asking, but when Bloom told me about this weekend, she made it sound like you and your husband throw parties like this all the time."

Miriam sighed, fingers curling around her teacup as if for support. "We do. But ever since she went off to college, she's avoided as many of them as she possibly can. That bedroom you're staying in—we've owned this house for seven years, and she's used it less than half a dozen times."

It was like something clicked into place, all the little hints and clues of the last several weeks piling up to reveal the bigger picture—the nonchalance in Bloom's voice when she'd asked him to accompany her, which even at the time he'd suspected was an act; the inkling of the truth when they first got to Oregon and her hands shook getting out of the car; and, of course, last night's sleepy surprise.

Baltor was thankful he was already sitting down, or his knees might have buckled. Even more unexpected was the warm feeling that blossomed in his chest at the realization of what it meant that she found him adequate protection and stability to walk into this viper's nest willingly.

L-word feelings?

He batted the thought away like a buzzing fly, blinking as he realized Miriam was still speaking.

"All that's ever mattered to me is that my girls are happy, no matter if the lives they've made for themselves are what I would have chosen for them." She laid her palms on the table and held his gaze steady, the jade-green eyes of his former lover peering back at him from an old woman's face. "From what I saw last night, you make my daughter happy. That alone means you will always be welcome in my home."

"Thank you," he said finally.

After a long, quiet moment broken up only by the clink of silverware and muffled sounds of chewing, Miriam broke the silence again.

"Morgan?" When he looked up, she hesitated, then asked, "What did…er, how did your uncle die?"

Luckily, he'd anticipated getting this question at some point over the long weekend. "Coroner's report said it was a pulmonary embolism. He died in his sleep—painlessly, we assume."

Miriam blinked rapidly; it looked like her eyes were wet, but he couldn't be sure. "Thank you," she said finally, her voice a mere whisper. "You really do look so much like him, you know."

"Can I ask you something now?" Perhaps this was pressing his luck if he didn't want his secret to unravel, but he was genuinely curious to see how she would respond. "How exactly did you know him?"

There was a pregnant pause before she finally replied, "I was a bit of a rebel in my twenties and ran off to the UK for grad school against my parents' wishes. That's where I met Isaac. We were classmates…friends…eventually a bit more than friends." The airy, forced casualness in her voice told Baltor everything he needed to know about her lingering feelings for "Isaac", and some things he'd already figured out about her marriage.

His stomach contracted with something that felt an awful lot like the guilt he thought he'd drowned in too much liquor decades ago.

"Sometimes it feels like a dream, those years I spent in London. I always wondered what happened to him. If maybe…" Abruptly, she shook her head and sat up a little straighter, her eyes now clear and alert. "Anyway, I suppose all dreams end eventually, don't they?"

Baltor hummed in assent and sipped his tea, not knowing what else to say. Part of him was grateful to have this form of closure, but most of him regretted opening the Pandora's box of his past. There were undeniable signs of the Amy he'd known, but time had worn down her sharper edges and fiery spirit into something gentler, softer…smaller.

This woman could have cured cancer, or something equally as miraculous, if left to continue her research. Instead, she'd spent the last thirty-five years planning parties and sitting around waiting for her husband to notice her.

But then there was the love she all but radiated—for her family, for her daughters. After so many decades alone, the thought of finding fulfillment that way was almost unimaginable to Baltor, but he couldn't deny that she seemed at peace with her life.

And if he hadn't left Amy in London, there was a very good chance that the woman asleep upstairs, the first person Baltor had thought he might want to say the L-word back to, never would have existed.

Feeling more unsettled than when he'd first sat down, Baltor ate the last bite of his bagel, then pushed back his chair. "I should probably get back to Bloom. Maybe if I bring food, she won't bite my head off for waking her."

Miriam chuckled. "Of course. Try a cinnamon raisin bagel, that should do the trick."

"Thanks for the tip." Out of courtesy, he reached for Miriam's empty plate when he rose to clear his own, only for her to let out a quiet gasp.

"Oh, that looks like it hurt." Her fingers reached toward the very distinct W-shaped scar on the back of his right hand, and out of instinct, he flinched and pulled away.

"Childhood accident," he lied, quickly stepping away to avoid her prying eyes.

One of his less intelligent decisions, allowing Amy to talk him into sneaking back into the lab after hours to run an experiment. That night ended with her swearing profusely as she stitched up the wound, furious that he refused to go to a hospital. She'd blamed herself for weeks—both for the idea that had led to the clinical microscope falling onto him and for her own "hacksaw sewing job"—until he finally told her to shut up about it already, he didn't care about the scar.

The fact that it had remained all of these years, faded but still distinct, was yet another quirk of his improbably anatomy he'd never been able to understand.

"I see." But there was something like suspicion in her voice, and he busied himself preparing Bloom's bagel and coffee, his skin itching with the need to get away from this conversation.

When he left Miriam, she was still staring out the window, seemingly lost in thought.

---

Somehow, he managed to get through the rest of the weekend without spending any more time alone with Miriam. Bloom wasn't thrilled to be woken up, but her ire cooled when she saw he'd brought coffee, and then they spent most of the day in bed, snuggling and binge-watching a sci-fi drama she'd been begging him to watch with her.

When he caught sight of her in that navy backless dress that clung to every curve as though it had been painted on, Baltor almost begged her to stay back, but somehow found the strength to resist. The vaunted anniversary party was just as stuffy and boring as Bloom had predicted, but after half an hour of polite socializing, they spent the rest of the night huddled in the corner with a couple trays of pilfered appetizers, swiping fresh flutes of champagne every time a waiter passed by and drunkenly mocking her parents' friends. That meant they were both well and truly tipsy when they made it home at one in the morning and he finally got to peel her out of the sinfully tempting dress.

They'd planned to go to Portland together the next day, but instead, Daphne had barged into their room at an unsightly early hour and commandeered Bloom for a "girls' day." So instead, Baltor went to the city by himself and ended up spending most of the day in a little used bookstore with a fat gray cat who reminded him of Lucy.

The sun was just starting to sink below the horizon by the time he made it back to the Holloway house, having stopped for gas on the way up. Feeling inexplicably light, as though his feet didn't touch the ground, he bounded up the two flights of stairs to Bloom's bedroom, already calling out to her as he rounded the corner. "Do you think your parents will mind if we skip out on them for dinner tonight? There's this little Turkish place I found in Portland that looks—"

He stopped short when he finally saw what she was doing—sitting crisscross in the middle of the bed, her laptop in front of her and piles of paper scattered all around her. When she looked up, her eyes were wide as dinner plates, the color drained from her face as though she'd just seen something terrible.

"Tell me something," she said slowly, her eerie gaze fixed onto his own. "Was any of it true?"

Baltor's stomach churned with foreboding. Without understanding why, he held his arms up with palms facing forward, the sign of a non-combatant. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I'm sure if we just—"

"My mom was in a very talkative mood today. Something"—she gave him a withering look—"must have jogged her memory, because all she wanted to talk about was the years she spent in London in her early twenties. When she apparently dated your uncle."

The way she shoved the photograph in his face was so much like the way Vivian had once done the same exact thing that it was like a knife in the gut. Or perhaps it was the sight of himself standing next to a much younger, smiling Amy who, despite her truly terrible 80s hairdo and shoulder-padded sweater, was a thousand times happier and more carefree than her current self could have ever dreamed.

Clearly, Bloom didn't share his thoughts, because she dropped the photograph like a hot potato and picked up one of the many pieces of paper on the bed. "Vivian Bowman? That was the name of your friend I met a few weeks ago, right? You said she was a friend of your grandmother's."

At first the question seemed out of left field, until he really looked at what she held—what appeared to be printout of a newspaper article, some kind of profile on Vivian after a successful fundraiser. And there he was, standing just behind her in the background of the headline image, right under the fine print that dated the article to August of 1999.

"Funny thing. Since you just told me the other night how your grandmother was a terrible person." Bloom's eyes bored holes into him, her shoulders drawn back in a tight, defensive stance.

Still holding his hands up, Baltor took one careful step toward the bed, then another. "I can explain—"

"I sure hope you can." Her nails tapped a staccato rhythm against the laptop as her eyes bored into him. "When I first started digging, I thought I was going to find out you'd lied about your age or something. But this is way weirder and way more convoluted than you just being some kind of creep who gets off on sleeping with younger women."

His blood turned to ice water as he realized the papers on the bed were all photographs of him throughout the years. She'd found the fateful photo of him and Laura that had led Vivian to him all those years ago. A blurry image of him among a university graduating class in what looked the early 1900s. Even what must have been a digital scan of a portrait from 1851—the one he'd commissioned for his wedding to Katherine.

He hadn't thought any images from that time period had survived.

"Where…how did you find these?" he asked finally.

"A friend of mine developed a facial matching algorithm—basically, it runs your photo against a database of historical images to find people who, based on the percentage of features matched, could be your relative. She ended up selling it to one of those ancestry DNA test companies and made a mint." Bloom slammed her laptop shut with enough force to displace a few of the paper printouts. "When I gave her a picture of you, she said she's never seen anyone get so many matches and all with such high accuracy. You damn near broke her software."

Abruptly, she gathered up handfuls of the printouts and scattered them all to the ground, as though she couldn't stand to have them near her. "I don't know what to believe anymore. None of this makes any sense. How can there be photos of someone who looks exactly like you going all the way back to the 1800s?"

Because I'm actually 197 years old.

"Do you have a bunch of historical doppelgangers or something? Some dark family secret? Is this the reason why you never talk about your parents?"

Yes. Yes. Yes.

"I just… I need to know what's going on here. I need the truth."

His thoughts were racing too quickly to come up with any kind of spin. There had been some close calls over the years, trying to protect his secret, but no one had ever threatened to unravel his entire life like this.

Like the angel on his shoulder that she so frequently was, Vivian's voice echoed in his head: "I think you've already decided she won't believe you, and that's not being fair to either of you."

Baltor took a deep breath, hands balled into fists by his sides to steady himself. "You're right. I haven't been fully honest. All I ask is that you listen with an open mind, because it's going to sound unbelievable, but I promise, what I'm about to tell you is more truth than I've told nearly anyone."

Bloom nodded slowly, looking up at him with wide, open eyes as she tucked her legs underneath her.

"My name—or at least, the one I was born with—isn't Morgan Daniels. It's Lord Baltor Edward Thomas." He paused for a moment to gauge her reaction, but her face was blank, impassive, so he kept going. "I was born in Victorian-era England. When I was twenty-nine, I almost drowned, but then I was struck by lightning and it brought me back to life. Ever since then, it's like I stopped aging. I can get injured, I still bleed and scar, but I'm pretty sure I can't die."

The words came faster and faster now, like a storm brewing inside of him, and he found himself looking to the side instead of into her eyes, afraid of what he might see—that it might make him want to stop speaking before he could get it all out.

"I have these…these powers, like I can control lightning or something. A few months after I discovered them, I accidentally set my house on fire while I was asleep. That was the first time I had to reinvent myself. Every few years, I have to move or change my identity, or both. At first, I was dedicated to trying to understand my condition, hoping that maybe there was a cure, but now I'm pretty sure there's nothing out there that can help me or even explain how this is possible." The photo of the newspaper article from 1999 caught his eye, and he added, "Vivian's actually my daughter, not—"

"Stop. Just stop!"

Stopped mid-sentence, Baltor's mouth hung slightly open, baffled by the vehemence contained in those three little words.

"What the hell is this?" Bloom demanded. "Are you having a psychotic break?"

He gaped, mouth opening and closing a few times, unable to form words. All this time he'd assumed her silence was because she was trying to process everything, not because she thought him a madman.

She slid off the edge of the bed and came to stand in front of him. "Do you think I'm an idiot or something? Why can't you just tell me the truth?"

"This is the truth!" Realizing that both of their voices had crept steadily up in volume, he made a conscious effort to lower his own, since the last thing they needed was for one of her family members to come barging in right now. "It's a truth I've never told anyone, because it could get me locked up or tortured, but I'm telling you now because you asked for the truth, and because I lo—"

"Don't." Her eyes glinted with rage, teeth bared in a snarl. "Don't you dare say that right now, when I know you can't mean it. When it's just another trick in your bag to get me to ignore whatever you're trying to hide."

She might as well have put his heart into a meat grinder.

"God, I'm such an idiot. The other night in the hot tub, I thought we were finally getting somewhere, that you'd actually learned how to open up—but clearly not, if you can stand here with a straight face and expect me to swallow this load of utter bullshit. I almost don't know what's worse: whatever this secret is that you're so desperate to keep, or the fact that you're clearly some sort of a pathological liar."

She doesn't believe you. The thought echoed in his head like ice cubes rattling in an empty glass.

Of course she doesn't. Who would?

Thankfully, he couldn't wallow for too long in his own self-pity, because after a moment he realized she'd put on shoes and a jacket and was now heading out the door.

"Wait. Bloom!" he called after her, past the point of caring whether her family heard them as he chased her down the stairs. "Where are you going?" There was an almost manic energy surrounding her that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, like the handful of seconds right before lightning found its target.

She whirled around only a few feet from the front door, her eyes like twin sapphires blazing with righteous indignation. "I don't know. Out. I can't be here right now."

The door slammed shut with a resoundingly heavy thud. Then, bizarrely, he heard the rumble of the Continental's engine firing up.

What? How did she…?

Baltor fumbled in his pocket for the keys, only to remember how he'd tossed him casually onto the bed upon getting back. She must have picked them up at some point while they were yelling at each other.

The crushing sense of defeat over their fight and her ugly words quickly turned into ice-cold fear when he thought about her out on the Oregon roads, anger-crazed and not thinking straight, behind the wheel of a car she'd never quite mastered driving. But without a vehicle of his own, he had no hope of being able to go after her.

One morning when he was ten years old, his father had taken him down to the stables after breakfast, saying it was high time he learned to ride. Nervous and desperate to impress the father he rarely got to see, he'd somehow ended up spooking the horse and it panicked; started rearing and kicking out, eyes rolling. That was how he felt right now, like he simultaneously wanted to strike out at someone who wasn't even there—to get out, as Bloom had all but screamed at him a second ago—but that his feet were glued to the floor, the world continuing to narrow around him.

Panic attack, you're having a panic attack, his mind supplied none too helpfully, because that still didn't do anything about the way his chest kept getting tighter and tighter, how his heart was pounding so quickly he could almost feel it in his teeth…

"Morgan?"

The gentle touch of a hand on his shoulder was enough to ground him, but of course, as he discovered when he turned around, it belonged to the last person he would've wanted to see right now.

"Is everything all right?" Miriam asked, blinking up at him with wide, guileless eyes. "I thought I heard screaming."

She clearly wasn't going to go away without some kind of answer, but when he opened his mouth, his body suddenly seemed to remember the intensity of the fight-or-flight response it had just mounted, and his knees gave way like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Somehow, he managed to stagger over to the nearby couch in time, sinking down and barely resisting the urge to put his head between his knees.

"Bloom and I, we…had a fight," he admitted after a moment. "A bad one. She called me a lot of nasty names—I deserved most of them, mind you—and she took my car and took off. I don't know where she went and I…I'm scared she's going to do something dumb or get herself hurt." This kind of mindless rambling was so fervently against his innately British sense of propriety, he was surprised he hadn't spontaneously burst into flames.

The jingle of keys made him look up.

"She likes to be near water when she's upset." A keychain dripped from Miriam's outstretched hand. "There's a beach about fifteen minutes from here. I would try there first."

"Is this… Why are you helping me?" Baltor asked.

Her eyes were surprisingly kind as she held his gaze steady. "Because you look like you're on death's door right now, which means even if this is your fault, you didn't mean to hurt her. And I've never seen her happier than I have this weekend, so you must be doing something right."

Fuck, I love her. It barreled into him with all the subtlety of a freight train. I love her, and I have to tell her.

As though she could read his mind, Miriam's lips curved upward in a smile. "Go. Find her and apologize. Then bring my daughter home."

Miriam's sleek, state-of-the-art Range Rover was a far cry from his trusty Continental, but after a few false starts, he managed to get down the hill with both the car and his nerves still intact. The initial sprinkling of raindrops across the windshield grew into a full-on downpour after only a few minutes, requiring him to turn the wipers on at full blast just to be able to see. It only made him more concerned about Bloom out there, driving mad and under a rapidly darkening sky in such crappy weather.

At least she knows this area, he reminded himself, stepping down somewhat heavily on the breaks as a sharp turn came up seemingly out of nowhere.

Wait a minute. Was that…?

The same eerie, sixth sense reaction that he'd felt upon waking up to find Chatsworth Park in flames bore down on him now, and he pulled Miriam's car in a tight U-turn. He'd dismissed that dark shape just off the side of the road as just a downed tree, but upon closer inspection…

Cold fear licked up his spine as he got out of the Range Rover.

That was indeed his Continental, looking a little dinged up after being driven into the trunk of a very large tree, but thankfully the damage seemed to be cosmetic, not structural. And in the driver's seat, slumped over the wheel…

No.

Baltor fumbled with the handle of the car door for a moment, then gave up and smashed the window with his fist. Paying no mind to the glittering, tiny shards of glass all around them, he opened the door from the inside and hauled Bloom's limp, unresponsive body out of the front seat.

Two fingers pressed to her neck revealed a faint, almost nonexistent pulse.

Not gone yet. She can't be gone.

The rain was still coming down heavily, soaking them both to the skin almost immediately, but Baltor couldn't feel a thing besides his own fear. Frantically, he began chest compressions, although it had been several decades since he took that CPR course. After the first attempts yielded no measurable results, he became even more desperate.

"Wake up!" he begged in between compressions. "Please. I'm sorry I lied to you. I'm so sorry. I'll do anything. I need you. I love you. Please, wake up."

He kept going like that, pleading and pumping, until a thunderous boom rocked the sky.

One, two… he counted mentally, only making it that far before the hissing crackle of nearby lightning had the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck standing on end.

With new confirmation that the storm was close, he redoubled his efforts, pressing down for three counts and then bending over to push air into her lungs. Still, her lips remained pursed and pale, her eyelids closed.

A new surge of determination poured through him, and the next time he brought his hands down over her heart, his fingertips were suspiciously warm.

Boom went the thunder again, echoing overhead.

"Please!"

---

They say that lightning never strikes the same place twice. But in 2020, there was a second miracle.

---

"Please, wake up. I need you. I love you…"

Over the sounds of the rain battering against the trees and his own desperate begging, he almost missed the sweetest sound of all—Bloom's gasp as she breathed in again for the first time.

"Ngh…" Her eyelashes fluttered, then blinked open, tongue darting out to wet her lips as she looked around in confusion.

Relief flooded through him, sharp and hot. "Oh, thank God." Upon realizing she was still sprawled out on the ground, he moved to help her to sit up against the side of the car, stealthily searching her eyes for any signs of cloudiness or confusion. "Does anything feel broken? How many fingers am I holding up?"

"You don't…have to…It's okay. I'm…" She coughed and sputtered, chest rattling and shoulders bowing inward in a way that made him wince, before finally finishing, "I'm sorry I crashed your car."

Baltor exhaled sharply. "I don't care about the fucking car. How do you feel?"

She blinked a few times before looking down at her hands as though in shock. "Actually, I feel…wonderful."

That seemed very odd thing coming from someone who'd been a car accident and likely had a concussion, but then he took a moment to really examine her. Despite looking like a corpse only minutes earlier, she now had a little extra vitality—a flush to her cheeks, a new sparkle in her eyes—almost like there was a little bit more life or light inside her than had been there before.

That's odd.

The rain had slowed to a gentle pitter-patter. His mind was racing at a hundred miles a minute, trying to figure out if they should just go back to the Holloway house or if Bloom needed to go to a hospital, when he felt a tug on his sleeve.

"Did you…" She hesitated. "Did you mean it?"

It took him a second too long to realize what she was talking about.

"Yes. God, yes. I'm sorry that I tried to use those words to end a fight, and for yelling at you at all when you were just reacting to my secret." Cupping his hands around her face, he looked deeply into her eyes. "I love you, Bloom. I haven't said those words to anyone in a very long time, and it scared me at first when I realized it. But I do. I love you. And I'm so sorry I didn't tell you sooner."

She smiled softly, placing one of her hands over his own to gently rub a thumb over the back of his knuckles. "When the Continental went off the road, the only thing I could think about was that I never told you how I felt. And no," she added before he could say it, "sex-drunk and half asleep doesn't count."

His lips curved upward in a slight smile.

"I know it's going to be a while—probably a really long while—before I'm able to fully process everything, but almost dying really put things into perspective for me. Whether your name is Morgan, or Baltor, or Isaac, or whatever—I don't care. I just know that I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, in whatever form that takes."

Baltor didn't know how to respond to that with words, so instead he leaned in, pouring every ounce of his emotion into what ended up being a rather chaste, closed-mouth kiss. After pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead for good measure, he dropped his hands down to her lap.

"Let's get you checked out, get out of these wet clothes, and then get some dinner. I'll tell you whatever you want to know—or we don't have to talk about my past at all, if that's what you want."

"That sounds kind of perfect."

He got to his feet, then reached down for her hand, only to jolt backward in surprise as a sensation almost like that of an electric shock rippled through him. A second later, he realized that it also felt…familiar?

Bloom scrambled unsteadily to her feet, then stared down at her hands as though afraid of them. "What was that?" she asked, her voice tinged with more than a healthy dose of fear.

His mouth fell open as all the pieces clicked into place.

Baltor took a couple deep, steadying breaths before he spoke, a rush of joyous delight unspooling through him. His most longed-for and longstanding secret wish, something he'd thought for so long was impossible, seemed to finally be coming true…

With all of the thoughts now racing through his mind, it took everything he had to attempt to sound even keeled.

"Bloom, sweetheart, I think you might be like me now."

---

San Francisco, 2032

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the loss of a truly remarkable woman…"

Over the course of his extraordinarily long life, he'd seen hundreds of people die. None of them had ever made him feel like this—as though there was an elephant sitting on his chest.

The date and time hadn't been heavily publicized, but dozens of San Francisco residents had nonetheless shown up to pay their respects. If it were possible for Baltor to step outside of his own grief for a moment, his heart would have overflowed with fatherly pride, thinking of all the lives she'd touched in her time on earth.

A far cry from the sad, drunk girl who'd once sat on the floor of a dirty Chicago bar and worried that her life would never have any greater purpose.

Just the thought brought fresh tears forward to his eyes, even though that night was otherwise a happy memory. Baltor swallowed thickly around what felt like a lump of cement in the back of his throat.

Eighty-seven years was a truly wonderful life for most people—but a mere drop in the bucket for him.

A slender, delicate hand slipped into his own, locking their fingers together, and he couldn't help but smile as he looked over at the hand's owner. Since the day of the accident, they'd been so in tune with each other it was almost like she could read his mind.

"She would have hated being the center of attention like this," he finally said in a stilted voice, furiously blinking the tears out of his eyes.

Bloom smiled softly and squeezed his hand tighter. The diamond ring on her fourth finger flashed in the weak winter sunlight, its gold band a complement to the one he himself wore.

He remembered it like it was yesterday—the day he first slipped that ring onto her finger—though it had been over twelve years ago, a few months after the car crash that had upended both of their lives. They'd planned the wedding in a week, neither of them keen on making a big deal out of it; her white lace dress came from a thrift store, and she'd carried a bouquet of daisies picked off the side of the road on the way to the beach where they'd had the ceremony. Vivian had been their only witness, and they'd all gone to get tacos afterward.

He'd never pictured himself getting married again, after the first time ended in literal flames—but then, he'd never thought it possible to find someone he cared about this much, as though it was impossible for his body to hold all of that love. Not marrying Bloom would've been the ridiculous thing.

And the greatest miracle of all—she looked every bit as young and beautiful as the day he'd first seen her in Dr. Dennis's office.

The funeral service was mercifully brief, and Bloom held tightly onto his hand the entire time. Afterward, they slipped out the back of the church, not inclined to mingle with any of the other attendees.

The sky was gray and overcast, chill breeze nipping at exposed skin as was typical for San Francisco this time of year. Baltor shivered and pulled his coat up, marveling, as he often did, at how quickly one's body forgot how to tolerate climates to which it had once been acclimated.

"I miss her too, you know," Bloom said, her voice soft and contemplative.

She and Vivian had been thick as thieves by the end; sometimes, the pair of them had even thrown him out for an afternoon when he and Bloom came down from Berkeley, where they'd moved shortly after the wedding since "Morgan Daniels" had been at SF State for long enough to start drawing some suspicions. He took up a post teaching literature at UC Berkeley, Bloom got a job running an animal rescue charity, and they'd spent the last twelve years in domestic bliss the likes of which he used to think was off-limits for someone like him.

Baltor slipped an arm around her shoulders and dropped a kiss on her forehead, causing her to look up. "This is what you signed up for, my love. An eternity of watching the people you love age and die, over and over again… Sort of makes that whole no-attachments thing sound good, doesn't it?"

"Oh, not this again." She clucked her tongue. "That was a terrible way to live and you know it. Vivian never let you get away with it, and she told me—" Her breath hitched, and she took a moment to compose herself before starting again, "She told me once that she was glad I'd be here to take care of you once she couldn't anymore."

He shook his head, but he couldn't even be upset. Trust Vivian to get the last word even from beyond the grave.

"Why am I not surprised you two were conspiring against me?" he said with a chuckle, looping his arm through hers to steer her in the direction of the car. Not the Continental—though the damage from the crash was minor, the bad memories were too strong for both of them.

They were nearly at the car when Bloom looked over at him and asked, "So we'll do it next week, then? Where do you want to go first?"

He'd promised in their wedding vows to show her the world, and while they'd done a fair bit of traveling since then—London, Paris, Rio—there was always this fear of straying too far from San Francisco for too long. Vivian would have never asked them to put their plans on hold for her, but neither of them would have dreamed of going too far away in case the unthinkable happened.

"The choice is yours, my love." He hesitated, then asked, "And you're sure you don't want to tell them the truth? Not even your mom?"

A few years ago, once they were as certain as they could be that Bloom had inherited his curse, he'd sat her down and explained what it meant in practical terms. That they would have to move every few years, continually take on new identities, knowing that any close attachment formed with another person meant they would ultimately have to watch them age and die. And in continuing the tradition that had helped him leave his first life behind so seamlessly, they'd decided to fake their own deaths once they were ready to leave San Francisco behind for good—or at least a few decades.

"It's easier this way. Daphne and Dad would never believe it, and as for Mom…" She trailed off for a moment before finishing, "Besides. You're my family now."

All he could do in response was pull her in close and kiss her—a slow side of lips and tongue, full of feeling. "I love you so much," he said, more than a little breathless.

Bloom beamed, her cheeks rosy from the cold. "I was sleepwalking my way through life until I met you. You woke me up. Yes, it's not what I imagined, but there's no one I'd rather spend the rest of my now-very long life with but you."

For the first time ever, he wondered if perhaps what he'd always considered a curse was in fact a blessing in disguise; that it was all necessary to bring him forward in time to this very moment, and this remarkable woman.

Because his future now held something he'd never thought possible—someone he loved to stay by his side, forever and always.

---

Author's Note: "Part 2 should be up in a few weeks," she said…over a year ago. Heh. I'm sorry. I wouldn't blame anyone who thought I really did die this time, given what's going on in the world.

To make a long story as short as I am capable of (which, um, have you seen the word count on this baby? I don't really do "short"), last year I got a new job which had a terrible commute, so I started writing again on the train, and that's when I cranked out part 1. Then I got sick of the commute and moved closer to work (to San Francisco, actually), and then I got really, really busy at work, and then…well…then 2020 happened. And then last month I moved again, this time to another state. (I'm still employed! This was a good thing! No need to worry about me, fam!)

I don't want to make any more promises I can't keep, so I won't try to predict when my next fic may come out, but I do want you all to know that I don't intend to take another 5-year break from writing. I've missed this little community so much, missed the cathartic outlet that writing fanfic used to be for me.

Since I didn't say this last time: Thank you so much to everyone who welcomed me back with such kind words and immense love. I see every one of you and I'm so grateful for you.

xoxo,

Authoress