Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kieran
I sat at Stefan’s piano, a notebook open on my lap, the pencil resting loosely between my fingers.
I hadn’t meant to write anything, not at first, but the music had come anyway, not fully formed, just fragments, a refrain that returned, again and again, shifting slightly each time, as if it were trying to settle into something more certain.
I wrote it down, listened to it in my head, then adjusted it.
Stefan’s presence filled the space in a way I couldn’t ignore, not intrusive but constant, like a rhythm underneath everything else. He hadn’t moved much. One hand rested against his chin, the other on the keyboard, his eyes focused on the screen, lost in concentration, unaware I was watching him.
Or maybe he is, and he’s choosing not to acknowledge it.
Once breakfast had been finished, he’d declared his holiday—Folsom—was officially over, and that meant he had work to do. I’d offered to leave, but he was happy for me to stay.
And then the music had begun in my head, and I’d given myself over to it.
I looked back at the page. The melody shifted again, lower now, warmer. I wrote faster, the notes coming more easily, as if something had finally clicked into place. When I stopped, it wasn’t because I’d finished, but because I needed to breathe.
I set the pencil down and leaned back, letting the quiet settle around me.
“You’ve been writing for a while,” Stefan said at last, his voice low.
I huffed. “It’s nothing yet. Just ideas.”
“For what?”
I hesitated. “A piano sonata.”
Stefan arched his eyebrows. “That sounds like more than nothing.”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “If it goes somewhere.”
His gaze lingered on me for a moment longer. “It will.” There was no doubt in his voice.
I looked down at the notebook again, tracing one of the bars absently with my finger. “It’s strange,” I said quietly.
“What is?”
I didn’t look up. “How easily it came. I haven’t felt like writing music for a while now.”
“That’s understandable, given the circumstances.”
I had an idea why I’d felt the need to write, to catch the notes before they vanished into the ether, and it all boiled down to one thing.
This won’t last.
There was a world beyond this room waiting for me, a life I hadn’t yet returned to. Decisions I hadn’t yet made.
Consequences I couldn’t avoid forever.
Stefan glanced up, catching my gaze, and for a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then he smiled, and placed his laptop on the seat cushion next to him. “Come here.”
As if I could refuse that.
I closed the distance between us, settling astride him, my arms looped around his neck, the warmth of him immediate, familiar now in a way that still felt new.
His arms came around my waist, and I leaned into him, our lips meeting.
Don’t think about what happens next.
I wanted to live for this connection, this intimacy.
For as long as I had it within my grasp.
September 9
I was at the piano when Karl came home, the late afternoon light slanting across the keys. I nodded towards him, and he came over to me, listening as I played.
“That’s new. What is it?”
I hadn’t meant for the piece to take shape so quickly. What had begun as fragments—half-formed phrases, ideas that didn’t quite settle—had become more cohesive. It wasn’t finished, not even close, but its structure was emerging.
The last note hung for a moment, then faded into the room. I exhaled slowly, my hands still resting on the keys, and then I handed him my notebook. He took it without comment, scanning the pages, his expression shifting as he moved through the bars.
He glanced up. “This is for Stefan.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t respond.
“Were you going to tell me?”
I shrugged. “Eventually.”
Karl closed the notebook. “Play it again.”
I frowned. “It’s not finished.”
“I didn’t ask for finished,” he said in a dry tone.
That was very Karl.
I turned back to the keys, and for a moment, I sat there, my fingers resting where they’d been before. Then I began to play.
This time, I didn’t think about it, didn’t question it, but let it unfold.
The opening bars—quiet, searching—gave way to something warmer, more certain, the shifts coming more naturally now, as if the piece already knew where it wanted to go, even if I didn’t.
I didn’t look at Karl while I played. I didn’t need to. I knew he was listening to every note.
When it ended, I let my hands fall away from the keys, and silence reigned once again.
“It’s good,” Karl said at last.
I snorted. “You used to critique more when I was your student.”
“Okay, then let me amend that. It’s honest.”
Oh.
I looked down at my hands.
“I didn’t mean it to be,” I said in a quiet voice. Then I glanced at him. “You’re reading a lot into a few pages of music.”
Karl met my gaze. “No, you’re putting a lot into them.” He studied me for a moment longer. “Will you play it for him?”
The question caught me off guard. “Maybe.”
Karl raised his eyebrows. “That sounds like a no.”
“It’s not finished,” I protested.
“That’s not what I asked.”
I let out a slow breath. “Not yet.”
Karl gazed at me. “But one day?”
I didn’t answer, but the idea settled somewhere in the back of my mind.
“Why aren’t you at Stefan’s place?”
I blinked. “Are you complaining because I’m here?”
“Not complaining, more surprised.”
“He went to meet with a client, so I figured I’d work here. We’re meeting for dinner later.” When Karl made no comment, I glanced at him. “What?”
“What makes you think I have something to add?”
I snorted again. “Because I’ve known you since I was how old?”
He sighed. “I have nothing to say that I haven’t already said.”
I closed the lid of the piano. “Everything’s fine.”
The sudden tightness around my chest belied that statement.
“Can we put this into perspective? You’ve been in Berlin a week, and in that time, I don’t think you’ve spent more than a few—”
“Don’t,” I blurted. Karl blinked, and I sighed. “I know, okay? And I don’t want to think about this, because that only sends me down one road, and right now, I do not want to go there.”
My phone buzzed, and my heart skipped a beat. He’s home early.
Except it wasn’t a text, but an email notification.
Damn.
I almost ignored it, but then I saw the subject line. My name. The college.
I opened it, and just like that, Berlin had an expiry date.
“Karl…”
He peered at me. “What’s wrong?”
I cleared my throat. “I have a meeting in Manchester, on Monday. Apparently, the investigation has reached its conclusion.”
“And?”
I rolled my eyes. “They haven’t shared that, just that they want to see me. So they can tell me to my face, I suppose—or get me to answer more questions, you know, drag it out a bit longer.” For a moment, I didn’t move.
“And how do you feel about that?”
I almost laughed. “How do you think I feel?”
Karl didn’t answer immediately. “Relieved,” he said at last.
For the second time in less than ten minutes, he caught me off guard. I frowned. “Relieved?”
“It means things are moving,” he said, his voice calm. “Forward motion is good. Whatever happens next, you won’t be stuck in this… suspended state anymore.”
I looked down at the message that had just cut my time here into something finite. Because suddenly this wasn’t open-ended anymore. This wasn’t we’ll see how long I stay.
This was—
Six days.
I swallowed. “I have to call Diana.”
“Yes.”
“And book a flight.”
Karl inclined his head. “Also yes. Although I’d do that first.”
He was thinking practically, even if I wasn’t.
I opened the airline app, my thumb hovering for a second before I forced myself to start searching. There were three options for Sunday, one of them obscenely early, one late afternoon, and one early in the evening.
Maybe the early one. Get it over with. A clean break.
No moment to think about it too much. No drawn-out goodbyes.
My chest tightened slightly. That was the part I didn’t want to think about.
Karl’s voice cut in, quieter now. “You’ll tell him.”
Again, not a question.
I didn’t look up. “Yes.” I didn’t select a flight or close the app, but sat there, staring at the screen as if it required more from me than it actually did.
“How many flights are there?”
“Three.” It came out as a croak. “I was thinking,” I said after clearing my throat, my voice more controlled than I felt, “that if I take the early flight—”
“No,” he interjected.
I blinked, looking up at him. “No?”
“No,” he repeated, his voice calm but firm. “You don’t get to disappear like that.”
“That’s not—” I stopped and took a moment. “I’m just being practical.”
Karl’s expression didn’t change. “No, you’re not. You’re avoiding the part that matters.”
I let out a breath, sharper this time. “And what part is that?”
He looked me in the eye. “The part where you acknowledge this isn’t merely a convenient trip you’re ending.”
Oh fuck.
He was right, of course, no matter how badly I wanted him not to be.
I didn’t want to examine my situation too closely, because once I did, I wouldn’t be able to pretend it was simple anymore.
“You have less than a week.” Karl stared at me. “Don’t turn it into something you run from.”
I swallowed. All of a sudden, that felt exactly like what I’d been about to do—make it manageable, as if it hadn’t mattered. As if he hadn’t—
I stopped that thought before it finished forming, but it was there now, unavoidable.
I stared at the screen, at the neat little rows of departure times that made this feel like something logistical, something easier than it actually was.
Instead, I locked the phone, letting it fall into my lap. “I’ll tell him tonight.”
Karl nodded once, a simple acknowledgment. And somehow, that made it real.
There was no putting it off, no reframing it, or pretending it was just another detail to manage.
This was the moment everything shifted, when I had to say the words out loud to Stefan.
And face whatever comes after.
Dinner was finished, the plates were loaded into the dishwasher, and there was nothing to do but tell him the truth.
“College emailed me. They want me back on Monday.” The words sounded strange out loud. Too final, too definite.
Stefan nodded once. “I see.”
That was all.
No what happened?, no are you okay?, no immediate attempt to fill the space that opened up between us.
I gripped the edge of the table. “There are a few flights to choose from.”
“That’s good.”
This time I heard it. Acceptance, as though this had always been the outcome.
I watched him for a moment, trying to read his expression, looking for even the minutest crack in that composure I’d come to know so well.
“I’m glad,” he said at last.
I swallowed. “Why?”
“You’ve been in limbo since you arrived here. Waiting. Reacting. This…” He gestured slightly, not just to the room, but to the city beyond it. “This was never meant to be permanent.” There was a pause. “You have your life waiting for you in England.”
And there it was, no softening, no attempt to wrap it in something kinder, nothing but the plain, unvarnished truth laid out between us.
“And what about this?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.
Before I could make it safer.
For the first time since I’d started speaking, Stefan didn’t answer immediately. I saw the way his focus shifted, not away from me, but inward, weighing his words.
Then he took my hand, and before I could let out a sigh of relief, he killed it.
“This was something you needed.” His voice was quieter, more deliberate.
Past tense. Defined.
Final.
I felt it settle, something being placed exactly where it belonged, whether I liked it or not.
“But?” I asked. There was always a but.
Stefan’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes sharpened.
“Berlin was an escape for you. That doesn’t make it your future.”
His words weren’t cruel—there was no cruelty in Stefan—but they were measured, considered, and uncomfortably close to the truth.
I looked away, my jaw tightening as I tried to find something to push back with, to show him he was wrong. Something that proved this—whatever this was—was more than mere circumstance, or timing, or—
I stopped myself, because I had nothing that came close to his certainty, and that scared me more than anything he’d said.
“When do you leave?” he asked.
“I think I’ll take the late afternoon flight.” Saying it made it real in a way nothing else had.
It was a deadline. A countdown.
“Then we still have time.”
I stared at the man sitting opposite who’d just told me, without hesitation, that this wasn’t my future, but who also hadn’t put distance between us.
“Yes,” I said quietly. “We do.”
And suddenly, that was all that mattered. Certainly not Manchester, the meeting, or whatever happened after it, but this fragile bubble of time that still belonged to us, that felt more real than anything that came next.