Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
Walk down the path or turn around
Georgie
Troms?, Norway. The Gateway to the Arctic, my guidebook calls it, though you can barely read those words anymore because I’ve pawed the pages so often.
I’m finally on my first expedition with Jake, along with a few other tourists, and it’s been tough but so rewarding I could burst. Or freeze to death. One of the two.
Last night I saw the Northern Lights for the first time. These green ribbons were dancing across the sky, shimmering and pulsing. I just stood there in the snow, mouth hanging open like a complete numpty, probably looking like someone who’d never encountered the concept of light before.
Today we went snowshoeing, which sounds athletic until you realize it’s essentially waddling with tennis rackets strapped to your feet.
Then ice fishing, which involved sitting on a frozen lake with a hole cut in it, dangling string into water so cold it could kill you in minutes.
Mental, really. The locals do this for fun.
I actually caught something, a little Arctic char, all silver and pink and gasping, its eye staring right into my soul. I looked at its tiny fish face and immediately felt like a murderer.
“Sorry, mate,” I whispered before letting it slip back into the hole. I gave it a little mental funeral blessing: May you swim free and avoid all future hooks, amen.
Jake rolled his eyes. Heartless man. He caught eleven and kept them all. Monster.
Now we’re trudging toward tonight’s camp spot, and I can’t stop thinking about how this trip has been weirdly brilliant for my coding brain.
Away from screens, surrounded by all this epic silence, my mind’s been spinning up features for IRIS faster than I can scribble them in my frozen notebook with my frozen fingers.
Maybe this is what kept Patrick centered all those years. All that time on mountains and glaciers, letting his brain breathe and reset.
Just thinking his name makes something sharp twist in my chest. I think it always will. When I’m forty, married to someone sensible who doesn’t accuse me of corporate sabotage, I’ll still feel this specific ache when I think of him.
It’s been four weeks since I saw him on my doorstep.
Four weeks of dreams where I open the door differently, say different things and make different choices.
I can be having a perfectly nice time, appreciating Norwegian fjords, and then bam—my brain serves up some random Patrick memory and I’m fighting tears in front of strangers who came here to see the Northern Lights.
Jake mentioned casually that he’s back in Skye.
So, I’ve been pouring everything into IRIS, my start-up baby. I’m terrified but also excited. Roy’s joining as my first employee, which feels alarmingly boss-like. I had to practice saying “my employee” in the mirror three times without giggling.
We’re taking things slow and steady. Quality over quantity, that’s the plan. I don’t need to be the next tech unicorn or whatever they’re calling successful start-ups these days. I just want to build something I’m proud of.
The path curves ahead, snow crunching satisfyingly under our boots. The afternoon light has turned magical, like we’ve wandered straight into a Christmas card. This is my life now. Georgie Fitzgerald: Arctic Adventurer.
I can’t quite believe I’m going to camp tonight.
There’s smoke rising from further up the hillside, which is reassuring. Someone else is mad enough to be camping here. Safety in numbers and all that.
“Look, someone else is camping too,” I say, pointing at the lone figure silhouetted by a bonfire up the slope.
I squint through the fading golden light, trying to make out details. Probably some mad Norwegian who does this every weekend. The figure straightens, turns toward us, and—
“Oh my God.” I spin to face Jake so fast I nearly lose my footing. “Oh my God, Jake, what the actual fuck is Patrick doing here?”
“Before you murder me—” He holds up both hands defensively. “—and I can see you’re thinking about it—just hear me out.”
“What’s going on?” My hands are shaking. I might throw Jake off this mountain. “Did you—did you set this up? Jake, I swear to God—”
“Look, you’re not the woman you were after that prick in uni.
” His voice goes serious, the big brother voice he uses for important things.
“I see that now. Really see it. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that Patrick will not be an easy person to love—he’s complicated and stubborn and sometimes a complete bastard—but he will love you the way you deserve to be loved. ”
His eyes meet mine.
“I’m sorry, Georgie. I treated you like a child who couldn’t make her own decisions. I acted like I knew better when it’s very clear you know exactly what you want. I was trying to protect you but I just... I got in the way instead.”
A sob catches in my throat. I press my mittened hand against my mouth.
“Jake, I can’t do this.” My voice cracks completely. “I can’t just… not here. I’m not strong enough.”
“I think you should hear him out,” Jake says gently.
“But if you don’t want to, I respect that.
He came here for you but he’ll be gone before you’ve even set up your tent.
There’s a helicopter waiting to take him away if need be.
You can choose to walk down the path and talk to him if you want to, or you can choose to turn around and never see him again. Whatever you decide, I’ll support it.”
Patrick
I’ve never been so nervous in my life, and I’ve been in situations that should’ve killed me.
I stood on K2 in a whiteout so thick I couldn’t see my own boots. Almost blacked out on Everest when my oxygen regulator crapped out at eight thousand meters. Flew a helicopter through a storm that had me gripping the stick like a death wish. Not that I’d ever admit that to Georgie.
None of those situations comes close to this.
She walks toward me through the snow, boots crunching with each hesitant step, and damn, she’s beautiful, even drowning in a thick snowsuit, bobble hat pulled down over her ears.
Her cheeks are red from the cold, dark hair escaping in wild tangles under the hat, and her mesmerizing green eyes catch the firelight like something out of a dream.
My heart beats so hard I can feel it in my throat.
“Hi.” I manage a smile, trying to look like I haven’t just flown across the Arctic Circle to beg.
“Hi.” It’s so soft the wind almost steals it. She stops a few feet away, mittened hands twisting together, staring up at me like she’s not sure I’m real.
God, I’ve missed her. Every bloody thing about her.
All I want is to close the distance, pull her against me, bury my face in her neck, and just breathe her in. But I don’t know if I’m allowed to anymore. I destroyed that privilege.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, her breath clouding in the frozen air between us.
“I’m not here to see the Northern Lights,” I say, attempting a joke, but it comes out rough. “Beautiful as they are. I’m here for you. To see you, if you’ll let me.”
I swallow hard. “Jake probably told you there’s a helicopter waiting if you want me gone.”
Please don’t want me gone.
I’ve never begged for anything in my life, but I’m begging now, silently and desperately.
Her chin trembles before she catches it. “I never wanted you gone. Even when I was angry, I never wanted that.”
Her mittened hand comes up, hovering near my chest like she wants to touch me but is afraid to. “It’s just… I don’t want to get hurt again. And I’m scared that if I let myself…”
She trails off, sucking in a breath. “I’m scared I won’t survive it a second time. Because when I fall, I fall completely.”
“I’ll do everything I can to make sure I never hurt you again.
” I step closer, closing the distance between us, and grab her hands in mine.
Hold them tight. Look her dead in the eye so she can see I mean every word.
“And I want you to fall completely. For me. I’m not.
.. I’m shit at this. At saying what I mean.
But I need you to know—” I take a breath.
I’m standing here in the Arctic freezing my bollocks off, trying to say things I’ve never said to anyone, trying to be vulnerable when every instinct screams at me to protect myself.
“Having you fall for me completely would make me the luckiest bastard alive.”
She looks down at where our hands are joined, my fingers wrapped tight around hers. A tiny furrow appears between her brows. Please don’t pull away. “I can’t go into something knowing you might change your mind again.”
I keep going because I have to get this right. I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t. “I won’t. I want you for the rest of my life. Not for now. Not until it gets hard. For the rest of my life.”
Her breath catches, a sharp intake that fogs between us.
“What?” She blinks rapidly, mouth opening and closing. “You… wait, what? For the rest of…” She stares at me like I’ve grown a second head. “But I don’t fit into your world, Patrick.”
I pull her closer still, until there’s barely a foot between us.
“That world can go to hell. When you walked into mine, you changed it. So no, you don’t fit into my old world.
You fit into my new one. The one I want to build.
The one where I come home to you. Where I choose right instead of easy.
Where I get to love you for the rest of my life.
” I pause, throat tight. “If you’ll have me. Let me earn my place in yours.”
Tears glisten in her eyes, catching the firelight.
“I’m not good at this. Never have been. But I’m asking anyway.” My voice goes rough. “Give me another chance, Georgie. Please.”
For a long moment, she just stares at me, her chest rising and falling rapidly. Wind whips around us, the whole bloody Arctic holding its breath.
Then she launches herself at me, arms flinging around my neck, nearly knocking me backward. Her lips crash against mine, mittened hands clutching at my jacket. Soft, beautiful lips kiss me with so much tenderness it makes my chest go tight.
I catch her, hands sliding to her waist, and lift her off the ground. She gasps against my mouth, and I use it as an excuse to deepen the kiss, pouring everything into it. Her legs wrap around my waist, snow boots knocking against my thighs.
I’ve spent years chasing highs. Summiting peaks, pushing helicopters to their limits, building businesses from nothing. Always searching for that next rush, that moment of standing on top of the world with my heart pounding.
Georgie’s the bloody jackpot. Every day with her will be that feeling. That pure, electric high of being alive.
She’s so genuinely sweet, so innately kind to everyone she meets, that I know I’ll wake up grateful for the rest of my life that she chose me. That someone this good saw something worth saving in a bastard like me.
When we finally break apart, both gasping for air, she’s crying.
“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” I murmur into her hair. “I’m not letting go. Not ever again.”
There’s an eruption of cheers from further down the hill. Jake and two random tourists who have apparently been watching our entire dramatic reunion like it’s fucking dinner theatre.
I glance over her head to see Jake giving me an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
Bastard’s going to be insufferable about this. I’ll never hear the end of it.