Page 89 of Hearts of Resistance
Alex’s fingers thrummed across her skin. It had been so long since they’d been intimate, so long since she’d felt his fingertips on her, smelt his skin and tasted his mouth. Yet here they were, as if nothing had changed. She whispered to him some of the things she’d done, things she’d never share with anyone else, and his smile warmed her when she finished.
‘You’re quite the girl, huh?’ Alex said. ‘When I lay awake at night, wondering when I’d be found, I imagined you undercover, doing that type of work. I knew they’d never manage to stop you.’ Alex’s words were soft. ‘The Gestapo was so close to me sometimes I was sure I could feel them breathing down my neck, I’d wake with chills in the night. And yet there you were, working right beneath their noses without a second thought.’
He was wrong of course; she’d had many second thoughts, but then she’d always thought of what her mother had died for, what Alex’s family had been persecuted for, and she’d kept on going. She’d had to. And now she was fortunate to be able to talk to him about what she’d done, because he’d known the risks she was taking and the network she was part of long before she’d formally joined the Resistance.
‘Would you consider moving to Sweden with me?’ Alex asked.
Sophia kissed his chest and then wriggled further up to kiss his lips. ‘What’s it like there?’
‘Beautiful,’ he said simply. ‘It will be a beautiful place to live and raise our children. We’ll grow old there and make a new life for ourselves, a life we can be proud of in a country that has done her best to be kind to us.’
‘Children?’ she asked, trying to sound surprised. ‘Here I was thinking we were simply lovers.’
‘Very funny,’ he said, grabbing her hands and pressing a long, lingering kiss to her fingers, stirring feelings long forgotten within her. ‘There had better not be any other boyfriends you’re stringing along.’
‘Not one,’ she said truthfully. ‘I shamelessly flirted my way out of many a bad situation, but I never gave part of myself to another. I promise you that.’
His smile was crooked, and it broke her heart to see how thin his face was, as if someone had sucked all the stuffing out of it, his cheekbones pointed and face gaunt. He was still handsome, but she was looking forward to fattening him up a little.
She didn’t want to know what he’d done, who he might have been with. It was better to be oblivious, because they’d been parted a long time and the only thing that mattered now was the future.
‘I still can’t believe you survived,’ she murmured. ‘It’s a miracle.’
‘All my people,’ Alex said, shaking his head and staring away from her. ‘I don’t even know how many are left from Germany. The things they did to them, the deaths, the gas chambers, working them in those camps with no food until they starved or collapsed from exhaustion.’
‘It’s over,’ she told him. ‘We’ll never forget what they did, what they took from you and the part of my soul I had to give to survive, but it’s over. It’s time for us to rebuild our lives, wherever you need that to be. So long as we’re together, we’ll make it.’
‘So will you marry me?’
‘Yes,’ Sophia said without hesitation. ‘I think we should find someone to marry us at once, tomorrow even. What do you say?’
‘I say that I can’t wait for you to be my wife.’ Alex’s voice was husky and she felt emotion clawing at her throat. ‘I’ve waited all this time to say that. All these years.’
‘I’d do it all again,’ she whispered through her tears. ‘To save you, to do what I did, I’d do it all again if I had to, just to get to this moment.’
He looked deep into her eyes. ‘I don’t have anything to give you, Sophia. Nothing.’
‘I only need you,’ she whispered back. ‘You’re enough for me, and I have enough for both of us.’
His eyebrows drew together, making her laugh. ‘What do you mean? Your father isn’t ...’
She held up her hand. ‘Don’t ever speak of him. He doesn’t exist to me,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s my mother we can thank.’
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ Alex said, looking confused still.
‘The day I ran out of the house, the day he killed her, I took her jewellery,’ she told him. ‘I buried some of it near here without telling you, before we left that night, and I’ve already dug it up. I only sold two diamonds to help get me to London all that time ago.’
Alex grinned, then started to laugh. ‘You little fox! Here I was thinking we didn’t have a penny to rub together!’
‘I’m going to wear her diamond wedding band when we marry, and everything else we can sell to start over somewhere.’ Sophia sighed. ‘At least that way she didn’t die for nothing.’
‘I’ll never let you forget her,’ he said. ‘I’ll never let us forget any of the loved ones we lost. We mustn’t ever stop talking about them, letting their memories live on.’
‘One day, will you come back to France with me?’ she whispered, thinking how much she loved the country she’d worked in, the locals embracing them and doing all they could to help. From the moment she’d landed on their friendly soil, she’d felt right at home.
‘Of course.’
Alex leaned forward and kissed her, slowly at first and then more urgently. She ran her fingers through his hair and pushed him back, climbing on top of him and straddling his thighs. Her hair fell around his face as she kept her lips on his, kissing him and pressing herself even harder tohim. There were memories pushing at the surface, always wanting to take her back to where she’d been and what she’d done, but this made all of those thoughts go away. This was what she’d been wishing for, waiting for, fighting for.
