Chapter 22
The morning light filtered through Emma’s bedroom window.
Emma was still asleep, her dark hair fanned across the pillow, one hand resting on Natalie’s hip where it had been when they’d finally drifted off the night before.
Natalie lay perfectly still, memorizing every detail.
The way Emma’s lashes curved against her cheeks.
The small crease between her brows that never quite smoothed even in sleep.
Three and a half months. She’d counted the days on her phone while Emma was in the shower yesterday. One hundred and seven days, give or take, between her flight out of Shannon later that day and the tickets she’d booked for December twentieth.
Emma stirred, her fingers pressing slightly against Natalie’s hip before her eyes opened. When they focused on Natalie’s face, a slow smile spread across her features.
“You’re watching me sleep.”
“I was memorizing.”
Emma pushed herself up onto one elbow, the sheet falling away from her shoulder. “Memorizing what?”
“Everything.” Natalie reached out and traced the line of Emma’s collarbone with her fingertip. “The way the light hits your hair. The sound of your breathing. I want to be able to close my eyes in LA and picture it exactly.”
Emma caught Natalie’s hand and pressed a kiss to her palm.
The gesture was so simple, so intimate, that Natalie felt it like a hook behind her ribs.
She’d spent years perfecting the art of leaving, and in all that time, she’d never once felt like this on the morning of a departure.
Like she was being asked to leave a part of her body behind.
They didn’t rush. There was no point in rushing. They made coffee and drank it on the back steps. And then they walked through the woods one last time.
When they came to the archway, Natalie paused in its shadow, remembering the rain and the kiss that had started it all.
“Every time I passed through this tunnel, I thought of you,” Natalie said.
“I could almost feel your lips on me again, smell the rain. And each time I walked under the archway, and replayed that moment in my mind, I let my imagination wander. I came up with alternate endings. Ones where I never got on a plane the next morning. Ones where I still left, but I’d been honest with you, so you were still here the following year. ”
Natalie turned to face Emma, the words pressing against her ribs like they were trying to escape. Her breath came shallow, controlled, the way it always did when she was trying not to let something slip out. But this wasn’t something she could hold back anymore.
“And in all the different scenarios I dreamed up,” she said, her voice thinner than she meant it to be, “there was one thing I always said to you. Something I should have said a long time ago.”
Emma went still, her eyes locked on Natalie’s face, tracking every flicker of emotion like she was memorising it. The air between them felt thick, charged, the way it did before a storm broke. “What’s that?”
Natalie swallowed. “I love you,” she said. “I have for years. And I need you to know that before I go.”
Emma’s breath hitched, just slightly. For a moment, she didn’t speak, and Natalie’s pulse hammered in her throat, her body tensing against the vulnerability of it. Then Emma’s voice came, soft but sure. “I love you too.”
Natalie leaned in and kissed her, and the ache was already there, already spreading through her chest like a crack in ice, because this was a goodbye as much as it was anything else, and her body knew it before her mind caught up.
She hadn’t even left. The plane hadn’t even taken off.
And yet her body was already counting down the days until she’d see Emma again.
Natalie broke the kiss, pulling back to meet her eyes. “I booked flights last night. I’m coming back December twentieth, for two weeks. Through New Year’s.”
Emma’s expression shifted, something opening in her face that made Natalie’s chest ache. “You’re coming home for Christmas.”
The word home stopped Natalie’s breath. She hadn’t called it that, not out loud, but Emma had. Effortlessly, like it was obvious. Like Kilvolan had become Natalie’s home the moment she’d stopped pretending it wasn’t.
“It’s not enough,” Natalie said, and the words came out faster now, tumbling over each other.
“Three and a half months and then only two weeks, and I know that’s not enough, but it’s what I could do right now, and I needed something to count down to, something concrete, because the thought of getting on that plane in a few hours without knowing when I’d see you again. ..”
Emma kissed her, and it was nothing like the kisses from last night—heated, searching, desperate with the awareness of time running out.
This kiss was different. Slower. Deeper in a way that had nothing to do with pressure and everything to do with what it meant.
Emma’s mouth moved against hers deliberately, like she was pressing a promise into Natalie’s lips and trusting her to carry it across an ocean.
Her hands came up to frame Natalie’s face, palms warm against her jaw, fingertips light at her temples.
She kissed Natalie without urgency, with quiet certainty that this wasn’t an ending but a pause.
When Emma pulled back, her eyes were bright, and Natalie understood that Emma had been waiting for her for five years and was prepared to wait three and a half months more without doubting Natalie would come back.
The trust in that undid her. Emma had no guarantee except the word of a woman who had spent her whole life leaving, and still she looked at Natalie like December was already certain.
“December twentieth,” Emma said. “I’ll be here.”
Natalie laughed, the sound catching in her throat. “You might be working. You’ll have shifts by then.”
“Then I’ll swap them. I’ll beg. I’ll bribe someone.” Emma’s thumbs stroked along Natalie’s cheekbones. “I’ll be here.”
“I wish I could stay,” Natalie whispered.
“I know.”
“I wish I’d stayed five years ago. I wish I’d never gotten on that plane.”
Emma shook her head, just slightly. “Don’t. We’re here now. We’re together now. That’s what matters.”