Chapter 15: Truth in the Blue

The space between them stretched like held breath. Juno studied Leo's face in the dying light—the stubble darker than she remembered, exhaustion carved into the lines around his eyes. His camera hung forgotten against his chest, just a weight now instead of a shield.

"You came," she said, and hated how small her voice sounded.

"I didn't know if I was too late." Leo's words carried the dust of ferry rides and missed connections, of asking strangers if they'd seen a woman with a silk scarf and sad eyes.

Neither moved. The cliff held them like a stage set, all dramatic lighting and impossible views, but Juno felt rooted to this exact spot of crumbling stone.

"How long have you been on the island?"

"Three hours. Maybe four." He shifted his backpack higher on his shoulder. "I asked at every hostel until someone remembered your laugh."

Her throat tightened. "What did they say about it?"

"That it was worth remembering."

The café clung to the cliff face like a barnacle, its blue tables scattered across a terrace that jutted over nothing but air and Aegean. Leo chose the table farthest from other tourists, where the wind carried only salt and the distant sound of boats returning to harbor.

They sat across from each other. No menus. No pretense of needing food.

"I ordered us water," the waiter said, appearing with two glasses beaded with condensation. He glanced between them—the tension so thick it probably had its own weather system—and retreated without taking an order.

Juno wrapped her hands around her glass. "You look like hell."

"Feel like it too." Leo's mouth quirked. "Apparently chasing someone across three countries isn't great for the complexion."

"Three countries?"

"I checked Florence first. Thought maybe you'd gone home." He picked at the label on his water glass. "Carmen finally told me about the postcard."

Juno's pulse kicked. The stolen sunset card she'd never written on, never sent. "What postcard?"

"The blank one. She found it in your room after you left Prague. Figured out where you'd gone based on..." He gestured vaguely at the caldera stretched before them. "This."

"Carmen broke into my room?"

"Carmen cares about you. We both do." Leo leaned forward, elbows on the table. "I've rewritten what I'd say to you about a hundred times. On the train, on the ferry, walking up that goddamn hill."

"Then say the unwritten version."

He was quiet so long she thought he might not answer. Around them, other tourists chattered in a dozen languages, but their table felt wrapped in silence.

"I'm scared of staying," he said finally. "Not because I don't want to. But because I don't know how."

The honesty hit her chest like cold water. "You think I do?"

"Don't you? You seemed so sure in Prague. About leaving, about what I was—"

"I'm never sure about anything." She pressed her palms flat against the table. "Every time something feels real, I flinch. I convince myself it's temporary. Or I am."

Leo's eyes searched her face. "And with me?"

"Especially with me." The words scraped her throat. "In Barcelona, when you kissed me on the beach? I spent the whole next day planning how I'd disappear. What excuse I'd use."

"But you didn't."

"No. But I kept planning."

They walked without destination through Santorini's maze of white-washed buildings and blue-domed churches. The streets twisted back on themselves, leading everywhere and nowhere, forcing visitors to surrender to the island's ancient logic.

Juno's boots echoed against stone worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. Beside her, Leo moved with the loose-limbed grace she'd watched him deploy in train stations and crowded plazas, adapting to whatever space claimed him.

"I thought if I left first, it would hurt less," she said as they passed a doorway painted the exact blue of his eyes.

"Did it?"

"No. It didn't." She stopped walking. "Did it hurt less for you? When Lucie ended things?"

Leo's stride faltered. "Who told you about—"

"You did. Prague. You were drunk and angry and you said her name like it still had teeth."

He scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Lucie broke up with me because I couldn't commit to the next step. Wouldn't move in together, wouldn't talk about marriage, wouldn't even admit we were serious." He leaned against a wall painted the color of sunlight. "She was right to leave."

"But you followed me."

"Because you're not asking me to be someone I'm not. You're just asking me to show up."

Juno felt something crack open in her chest. "I'm asking you to stay."

"I know." His voice was rough. "That's what scares me."

The chapel appeared like a secret between two buildings, barely wide enough for its wooden door and tiny bell tower. Juno pushed inside without thinking, drawn by the cool darkness and smell of old incense.

Candles flickered in red glass holders, casting restless shadows on walls lined with offerings—photographs, prayer cards, scraps of paper covered in desperate handwriting. Leo followed her, his presence solid and warm in the cramped space.

"My nonna would light candles for impossible things," he said quietly. "Dead relatives, sick neighbors, her grandson who couldn't stay in one place long enough to fall in love."

Juno touched a prayer card yellowed with age. "Did it work?"

"Depends how you define impossible."

He pulled a euro from his pocket and dropped it in the offering box. The candle he lit cast his face in gold and shadow, all sharp angles and soft mouth.

"I'm not asking you to believe in forever," he said, watching the flame steady itself. "Just... in the next step."

Juno stared at the light until it blurred. When Leo's hand found hers, she didn't pull away.

"What's the next step?"

"We stop running from each other."

The overlook commanded the entire western face of the island, a stone platform that jutted into space like the bow of a ship. Below them, the Aegean stretched to the horizon, its surface hammered gold by the setting sun.

Other tourists clustered at the railing, phones raised to capture light that couldn't be contained. Juno and Leo found space at the far edge, where the wind caught loose hair and scattered conversations.

"What happens when summer ends?" Juno asked. The question had been building in her chest for weeks, heavy as stones.

"We choose again."

"Every day?"

"Especially the hard ones." Leo turned to face her fully. "I can't promise I won't want to run. But I can promise I'll tell you when I do."

"And if I run first?"

"Then I'll follow you. Again." His smile was crooked, tired, real. "I'm getting good at it."

The sun touched the horizon, bleeding orange and pink across the sky like watercolor on wet paper. Around them, voices hushed in unconscious reverence for beauty that demanded witness.

"You were never just a story, Juno Sinclair."

"And you weren't just a detour."

They stood close enough that she could count his eyelashes, close enough to see herself reflected in his pupils. The distance between them had collapsed into something measured in heartbeats instead of miles.

"I don't know how to do this," she whispered.

"Neither do I." He lifted his free hand to touch her cheek. "But I'd like to figure it out. With you."

The sun disappeared, leaving them silhouetted against a sky painted in deepening purples. Stars began to appear—ancient light that had traveled impossible distances to find them here, on this cliff, in this moment that tasted like salt and possibility.

Juno reached for him.

Later, when the tourists had drifted back to their hotels and the night settled around them like a blanket, they sat side by side on the stone wall with their feet dangling over nothing.

Juno's journal lay open on her lap, pen poised over a fresh page. Beside her, Leo sketched in the margins of his notebook, capturing the curve of her wrist in quick, sure strokes.

They didn't speak. For once, silence felt like enough.

The island stretched around them, patient and eternal, holding space for all the words they hadn't said yet. There would be time for those later—for plans and promises and the thousand small conversations that built a life between two people.

For now, there was just this: the salt-sweet air, the whisper of waves against distant rocks, and the warm solid presence of someone who'd chosen to stay.

Juno wrote:

We found each other on an island that teaches patience. Maybe that was always the point—not to rush toward forever, but to learn how to be here. Now. Together.

She closed the journal and leaned into Leo's warmth. His arm came around her shoulders, steady as gravity.

"Ready to go back?" he asked.

"In a minute." She watched the stars multiply in the darkening sky. "I want to remember this."

"The view?"

"The choice." She tilted her head to look at him. "The moment we both decided to arrive."

Leo's smile was soft as starlight. "Then we stay as long as you need."

And they did.