Jason touched paper, heavy and creamy; drank in textures and lush dark ink and the lines of Alessandra’s name. The third one, after the thick Gothic solidity and the graceful nineteenth-century cursive, was something else again: delicate and enchanting, full of vines and loops, tantalizing as the lettering on a map in a fantasy story. “If she didn’t already love you, she will now. You didn’t have to do all this.”
“I don’t mind, and I did promise, and it’s fun.” Colby, motion coming to rest, tucked hands into pockets and put eyebrows up. “I didn’t say anything embarrassing about you, if you were wondering.” Framed by the open window, by the open suitcase, by the spill of topaz lamplight, he might’ve been a fantasy story himself: a wayward fairytale prince who’d stumbled into the twenty-fir
