"London?"
The word comes out breathless, excited in ways I didn't know I could still feel. James's smile widens—genuine, unguarded, the expression of a man going home after centuries of exile.
"London," he confirms. "If you'll come with me."
"Yes. God, yes."
***
The plane lands at Heathrow just as night claims the city. From the air, London spreads below us like a living map—the Thames snaking through buildings that mix centuries without apology, lights blazing against darkness in patterns that suggest both chaos and careful planning.
James hasn't stopped looking out the window since we began our descent. His hands grip the armrest with enough force that the metal groans, and I realize he's nervous. Two hundred years old and he's nervous about coming home.
I lace my fingers through his. "We can leave if it's too much."
"No." His voice is rough. "I need this. Need to remember it's real."
The taxi drops us in Southwark, and the moment James steps onto the street, something fundamental shifts in him. His shoulders drop. His breathing evens out despite not needing to breathe. It's like watching tension I didn't know he carried finally release.
"This way." He takes my hand and leads me through streets that smell like history and rain.
London after dark is different from American cities. Older. More layered. Buildings press against each other in configurations that suggest they've been negotiating space for centuries. Pubs spill light and laughter onto cobblestones worn smooth by footsteps that predate anyone living. The city hums with life even as it sleeps.
James walks like he's following a map only he can see. Down narrow alleys that open into unexpected squares. Past churches whose stones remember plagues and fires. Along the Thames where the water reflects city lights in colors that make my vampire eyes ache with beauty.
"That bakery." He stops suddenly, pointing at a modern storefront. "Used to be Harrison's. The baker would slip me extra bread when my mother sent me for the morning loaf." His smile is distant, fond. "He had twelve children. Always said one more mouth wouldn't be noticed."
I stay quiet. Let him remember.
We walk further, and he shows me fragments of a life I'll never fully understand. The church where he was baptized, now converted to luxury apartments. The street where his father's shop stood, now a Starbucks. The park—smaller than he remembers—where he proposed to Margaret on a spring morning when the world still made sense.
"I haven't been back since I turned," he admits as we sit on a bench overlooking the Thames. "Couldn't bear it. Thought it would hurt too much to see how everything changed while I stayed frozen."
"Does it hurt?"
"Less than I expected." He looks at me, and something in his expression cracks open. "Because you're here. Because I'm not alone anymore."
The words lodge under my ribs like prayer.
He stands, pulling me with him. "There's one more place. The most important one."
We walk to a small church tucked between modern buildings like a memory refusing to fade. St. Mary's, the sign says. Parish Church. The door is unlocked—London still trusts its ghosts—and we slip inside.
The interior smells like stone and centuries. Candles flicker near the altar, left by believers seeking intervention from powers they can't name. James leads me to a corner where light barely reaches.
"Here." His voice drops to whisper. "This is where I said goodbye to my father."
I look around, seeing nothing but shadows and old wood.
"He was dying. Consumption." James's hand finds the wall, tracing stone like it holds memory in its grain. "I sat with him for three days. We talked about everything—his regrets, mine, the business he was leaving me, the way he pushed me because he loved me."
"You got your conversation," I realize. "The one you told me you regretted not having."
"I did." His gray-blue eyes shine with something that might be tears. "I told him I understood. That I forgave the harshness. That it came from love." He turns to face me fully. "I got closure with my father. But I've spent two hundred years wishing I'd had more time. More conversations. More moments of just... being together."
The confession hangs between us, weighted with centuries.
"Theresa." He takes both my hands, and I feel the tremor in his fingers. "I stopped living when Margaret and the children died. I didn't end my existence, but I stopped participating in it. Just went through motions. Decades blurred together because nothing mattered enough to make them distinct."
"James—"
"Let me finish." His voice cracks slightly. "Two hundred years of that. Two hundred years of watching the world change while I stayed still. And then you walked into my office with your spreadsheets and your coffee and your absolute conviction that you were invisible."
He pulls me closer, and we're standing in the same spot where he said goodbye to his father centuries ago.
"You made me remember what it feels like to want something. To care whether tomorrow comes. You showed me that immortality doesn't have to be endurance—that forever only matters if you're spending it with someone who makes you feel alive."
The words steal my breath.
"I love you," he continues, and his voice steadies with certainty. "I love your rage and your guilt and your conviction that you're monstrous when you're the most human person I've met in two centuries. I love that you challenge me, that you kneel for no one unless you choose it, that you turned death into freedom instead of cage."
He drops to one knee, and the gesture in this place—this church where he buried his father, where his human life ended in all the ways that mattered—makes my vision blur with blood tears.
"Marry me," he says simply. "Spend forever with me. Teach me how to live instead of exist. Remind me daily that we have infinite tomorrows and they all matter because we're together."
"Yes." The word comes out choked, certain. "Yes, always yes."
He stands and kisses me, and I taste centuries of loneliness ending. When we break apart, both of us are shaking.
"I have an idea," he says, wiping blood tears from my cheeks with gentle thumbs. "We could start the honeymoon early. Before the ceremony, the paperwork, the making it official."
"What kind of honeymoon?"
His smile is young, excited. "A tour. Through Europe. All the cities I've lived in, all the places I want to share with you. Paris and Barcelona and Venice. Show you the world through vampire eyes. Create memories that overlay the lonely ones."
The offer feels like gift and promise combined.
"Where do we start?" I ask, already knowing.
"Paris," he says. "Always Paris."