Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
TOM
We don’t go back to the party.
I should feel guilty about that. It’s Kit and Isla’s day. There’s cake we haven’t eaten, champagne we haven’t drunk, a baby we’re supposed to be celebrating. But Nina’s hand is in mine and she’s pulling me along the harbour wall and guilt is very far down my list of priorities right now.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask.
‘The café.’
‘We’re running away from a party to go to your workplace?’
‘My workplace has a flat above it. With a door that locks.’ She glances back at me, and the look on her face makes my chest constrict. ‘Unless you’d rather go back and make small talk with Dot about her hip replacement.’
‘The café’s fine. The café’s great. Lead the way.’
She laughs – bright, reckless, the laugh of a woman who’s stopped holding on and is letting the momentum take her. I want to bottle that sound. I want to hear it every day until I die.
The café’s dark when we reach it. Nina fumbles with her keys, drops them, swears under her breath.
‘Steady.’ I pick them up. Our fingers brush. Neither of us pulls away.
‘I’m steady.’
‘You’re shaking.’
‘I’m cold.’
‘It’s mid-September. It’s not cold.’
‘Fine.’ She grabs the keys back. ‘I’m nervous. Are you happy?’
‘Extremely.’
She gets the door open. We stumble inside, and then we’re in the dark café with its smell of coffee and warm pastry, the fairy lights still on, casting the room in amber.
The giant pink bear from the fete is still in the corner.
The chalkboard shows tomorrow’s specials in her handwriting.
Everything the same. Everything completely different.
Nina turns to face me.
I kiss her.
It’s not like the harbour. That was revelation, shock, eleven years of tension snapping at once.
This is different. This is slower. This is choosing – knowing exactly what I’m doing and doing it with my whole body.
My hands on her waist. Her back against the counter.
The coffee machine ticking gently beside us, cooling into silence.
She melts into me. Her hands fist in the front of my shirt. She pulls me closer and makes a low sound against my mouth that empties my head of every thought I’ve ever had.
‘Upstairs,’ she says. Not a gasp. A decision. ‘Now.’
We barely make it.
The flat is dark, lit only by the streetlamp outside the window and the harbour lights reflecting off the water.
I’ve been in this flat a hundred times – tea on the sofa, Sunday mornings with the papers, the years of friendship that were always more than friendship.
But the air in here is different tonight.
Charged. The furniture looks like a set someone’s built for a scene I’ve been rehearsing for eleven years without ever being given the cue.
Nina kicks off her shoes. I shrug out of my jacket. We stand there, a metre apart, breathing hard.
‘Hi,’ she says.
‘Hi.’
‘This is—’
‘I know.’
‘—terrifying.’
‘I know.’
She steps closer. Puts her hand flat against my chest the way she did on the harbour – feeling my heartbeat, pressing her palm into the evidence.
‘Still fast,’ she says.
‘Still you.’
Her fingers curl into my shirt. She looks up at me and her face is open in a way I’ve never seen it – not performing, not deflecting, not making a joke to diffuse the tension.
Just Nina, stripped of every defence, standing in front of me with nothing between us except the air and the question of what happens next.
‘Tom.’ Her voice is quiet. ‘Before we – I need you to know—’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know how to do this. With you. With anyone I actually—’ She stops. Starts again. ‘Everyone before you was easy because it didn’t matter enough to be terrifying. This matters. You matter. And I’m scared I’m going to get it wrong.’
I take her face in my hands. Tilt it up so she has to look at me.
‘You’re not going to get it wrong.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I know you.’ I brush my thumb across her cheekbone. Feel her lean into it. ‘I’ve known you for eleven years. You could get everything wrong and I’d still be standing here.’
‘That’s a lot of pressure.’
‘That’s a lot of love. They feel similar.’
She laughs – shaky, wet, real – and then she’s kissing me again, and her hands are pulling at my shirt, and I stop thinking about anything except this woman in my arms, in her flat, in the life I’ve been imagining since I was sixteen years old.
I take my time. After eleven years, I refuse to rush this. I know where her bedroom is, and I back her towards the door, not once breaking my mouth from hers.
This kiss is everything. It rewrites the stars themselves.
‘Fuck,’ she groans as the door shuts, leaving us in the dark of the bedroom, and I push her up against the closed door.
‘Okay?’ I kiss back against the curve of her lips.
‘Fuck.’
I chuckle softly, and then fall to my knees. The only place I want to be with her. Worshipping the very ground she walks on.
‘Tom?’ She’s nervous, even her words are shaking. Her legs are shaking. She’s shaking. I run a hand up her leg, smooth and warm. I may come in my pants before I touch her.
I smile to myself as she leans back against the door.
Taking my time, I run my fingers back down and then back up, pressing a kiss to the side of her knee which trembles at the lightest of my touches.
Rising higher on my knees, I kiss my way up her thigh, hand creeping around to cup that perfect arse I’ve spent far far too long admiring.
She smells amazing, floral and sweet, like the finest dessert you aren’t meant to eat with a spoon.
‘Tom,’ she whispers.
‘Shh, just let me adore you.’
She groans a little and this time the tremble of her knees is more of a slip slide as she pushes her thighs together. My fingers trail again, just gently, lightly, up and down, up and down.
Another press of her thighs and I’m biting down on my smile.
A kiss to her knee, a kiss an inch higher, another inch, until I’m at the frilly edge of her floral knickers.
I press a kiss to the place where her thighs meet, the apex of everything I’ve imagined, from when I was a hormonal teenage boy to now, when I’m a grown man.
‘Oh, God. Tom.’ My name on her mouth is a sin and I want to hear it over and over again.
I brush my thumb across the front of her knickers and she shudders slightly.
Another press, another shudder. My middle finger slips back, still over cotton, only to find it damp and clinging to her core.
It’s only a split second until I’m under the edge of the elastic, sliding my fingers through her, her desire and heat guiding the way.
Heaven.
It’s actual heaven.
She shudders again, weight leaning back against the door, knees now bent so she can push her hips forward. There’s my girl, the one I knew was always there, waiting just for me. I press a kiss to the front of her cotton knickers, inhaling the intoxicating scent.
‘This feels too good,’ she whispers. ‘Is it bad it feels too good?’
I don’t answer. Instead I edge her knickers down, pressing my mouth against the gentle curve of her mound, sliding my tongue into places I never dreamed it would go.
‘Ah shit,’ she whimpers. She’s a verbal kind of woman. And I love it.
A lick, a press, a suck of her most sensitive place and I slip my fingers inside her, making her arch away from the door completely. I catch her behind with my free hand, holding her still as I feast on the only meal I want.
She’s arching, whimpering, until she pushes me away. ‘No, Tom, wait.’
I duck my head out from under her dress, and look up at her as she blinks down at me. ‘Anything wrong?’
‘No. I just want you on the bed and inside me.’ Her gaze holds mine, wild curls a halo above her head, face flushed. ‘If I don’t feel you inside me, right now, I think I might implode.’
‘That sounds terribly messy.’ I straighten up, pull her into my arms. ‘Better not risk it.’
Settling her on the bed, I shed my tie, shirt, belt. She sits up to help with the button on my jeans and together we push them down. Nina’s gaze zeroes straight in on my dick as soon as it’s free.
‘Oh.’ It’s almost a whimper.
‘Oh?’
Her gaze meets mine and she bites down on her bottom lip.
‘Oh.’ Her teeth release and a wicked smile flashes across her face. ‘Oh, indeed. Mr Darcy. I think you’d better come here.’
So I do, pounding forward, capturing her mouth with mine until we are nothing but teeth, and skin, and the very air itself.
The morning comes too fast.
I wake to sunlight through thin curtains and Nina pressed against my side, her head on my shoulder, one leg thrown over mine. She’s still asleep. Her face is soft, and beautifully unguarded. Just Nina, breathing slowly, her fingers curled against my ribs.
I don’t move. I lie here and let it be real.
The harbour sounds come through the window – gulls, waves, the clank of halyards, a fisherman’s voice carrying across the water.
The coffee machine downstairs clicking on its timer, warming up for the day.
The smell of salt air and lavender and the warmth of Nina’s skin, which I will now spend the rest of my life associating with Sunday mornings.
‘Stop watching me.’ Her voice is thick with sleep. Her eyes don’t open. ‘I can feel it.’
‘I’m not watching.’
‘You’re absolutely watching.’
‘I’m lying here minding my own business. You happen to be in my line of sight.’
She opens one eye. ‘It’s too early.’
‘It’s nine o’clock.’
‘Exactly. Too early.’ She burrows closer, hiding her face against my chest. ‘Five more minutes.’
‘I have to go. Mum will send a search party.’
‘Five more minutes.’ Her arm tightens around me. ‘Then you can face Ivy.’
I give her ten. Fifteen. Twenty. The minutes stretch, warm and slow, and I hold on to each one the way you hold a breath you don’t want to release.
Finally, she sighs and rolls away and back onto her pillow. ‘Okay. Go. Before I physically prevent you.’
‘Is that an option?’
‘Don’t tempt me. Again.’ She sits up, pushes the hair off her face and I relish the view of all of her. Her warm skin, the curve of her breasts, the pebbling of her nipples against the morning air. ‘Tom?’
‘Yeah?’
‘When do you have to leave? For Scotland?’
‘This afternoon. Probably. I should see Mum and Dad first.’
‘And then you’re going back.’ I’m trying to read her expression, but for the first time in my life, my fluency in all things Nina fails. Does she think I’m keen to go back? Indifferent? Hating the thought of it like it might end me to be separated from her again, which is how I do feel?
‘It’s just a few weeks. I need to hand over properly. The practice, the patients. Talk to Cara. I told you last night.’
At Cara’s name, her expression tightens slightly around her mouth, quickly released.
‘What are you going to tell her?’
‘The truth. That I’m coming home. That this is what I want.’
‘Is it?’
‘Nina.’ I sit up. Take her hand. ‘I have wanted this since I was sixteen years old. Through all the various places you and I have been at different times. I wanted it through Peter, through the grief, through Scotland, through every version of my life where I tried to convince myself I could build something without you in it. And I couldn’t.
It was never going to work because the question was never about Scotland.
It was about whether I could build a life around your absence.
’ I look at her. ‘And the answer is no. It was always no.’
She’s quiet for a moment. Her thumb traces a circle on my palm.
‘That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me,’ she says. ‘And you said it while looking like you’ve been electrocuted.’
‘My hair’s fine.’
‘Your hair is vertical.’ She reaches up, smooths it down. Her hand stays on my head. ‘Come back, Tom. Come back and stay.’
‘I’m coming back. Two weeks. Maybe less.’
‘Promise?’
I catch her hand. Press my lips to her knuckles.
‘I promise.’
‘Okay.’ She nods. Breathes. ‘Okay.’
She walks me downstairs. The café is still dark, chairs stacked on tables, the pink bear keeping watch from its corner, the morning light filtering through shutters.
The village outside the windows is quiet – sleeping off the christening, the harbour still, the boats barely moving at their moorings.
‘Call me,’ she says at the door. ‘When you get there. Second ring.’
‘Second ring.’
‘And text me. Properly. Not just fine and good. Actual information. What you ate. What animals you saw.’ She’s smiling, but her eyes are bright. ‘Just come back. That’s all. Just come back.’
I pull her in. Kiss her. Long and slow and full of everything I can’t say in words, every promise I’ve ever wanted to make compressed into the press of my mouth against hers.
She holds on. Her fingers twist in the front of my shirt the way they did last night, like she’s anchoring herself, like letting go is a skill she hasn’t learned yet.
‘Go,’ she whispers against my mouth.
I make myself walk away. Down the harbour. Up the hill. Every step a small act of will, like walking against a current.
At the top of the lane – the last point where you can see the harbour – I turn back.
She’s still standing in the doorway. Bare feet on the stone step. Wrapped in a cardigan. Watching me go.
Two months ago, I drove away from this village and the last thing I saw was Nina alone on the harbour wall, disappearing into the mist.
This time, she raises her hand. I raise mine.
And the morning light is on her face, and the café is behind her, and she’s smiling, and I turn the corner knowing – with the calm, absolute certainty of a man who has finally stopped running from the obvious – that I’m coming back.
Two weeks. That’s all.
And then home. For good this time.