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If Elizabeth realized Nadia and Mateo were together, she ht make him believe that he’d always loved Elizabeth Could Nadia bear that? Once again she remembered Elizabeth’s words to her: You’ve loved and lost, haven’t you?

And Mateo had said the only thing keeping hi it was the fact that Elizabeth hadn’t deceived him in this one, last, terrible way

Nadia pulled back Mateo blinked, obviously caught off guard

"Nadia!" Cole’s voice sang from downstairs "Are you home yet?"

That broke the sudden aardness, and both of theh from embarrass"

"Apparently" But even though they were s, she could feel the uncertainty still between them

Mateo wasn’t sure how he’d expected this whole weird day to end, but it definitely hadn’t involved LEGOs

"These are big-boy LEGOs," Cole said proudly "Not the stupid ones for little babies Dad let o"

"I can see that Is this the Millenniu?"

"Yeah Or it can be a castle"

Really it sort of looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, even if it had Chewbacca in it Mateo figured it didn’tmore LEGOs on

He sat with Cole in thehih on the phone with Verlaine Apparently Cole’s friend had gotten sick, which

Which was definitely not what he wanted to be doing right now He wanted to be back in that attic, with Nadia’s hand in his--back in that moment so he could find out exactly how she felt about hiot in the way someti Cole busy; he was a fun little kid Also, maybe Mateo ay too old for LEGOs, but that didn’t mean he didn’t sort of like them still

And, just as obviously, Nadia needed to talk to Verlaine almost as much as she’d needed to talk to him