Chapter Thirty-Four
Victoria’s heart hammered in her chest. They were so close and yet so far. She thought quickly. "Don't get off your train," she said, the words tumbling out in a rush. "Stay on it. I'll get off at the next station and double back. We'll meet at Paddington."
"Okay." Sasha's voice crackled through the phone, slightly breathless. "That's… yes, good plan."
The train lurched around a curve and Victoria grabbed the seat back for balance. Through the window, the city blurred past in streaks of gray and gold. Her heart was still throbbing, swelling, almost hurting.
And she didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to say it.
Silence stretched between them, punctuated only by the rhythmic clatter of wheels on tracks.
"This is awkward," Sasha said finally.
Victoria laughed, surprising herself. "No, it's not. It's imperfect."
"Is there a difference?"
"Huge difference." Victoria pressed her forehead against the cool window glass. "Awkward is what I've been doing for the past month. Pretending everything was fine, making excuses, running away when things got complicated. This is just… messy. Real."
"You're surprisingly philosophical for someone who's just made a very expensive train booking mistake."
"I've had an enlightening few weeks." Victoria took a breath. "I left my job."
The pause on the other end was so long she thought the call had dropped. "You what?"
"Quit. Talked to my boss this morning and handed in my notice. Well, technically I emailed my resignation because it needed to be in writing formally, but the sentiment was the same."
"Victoria, that's…" Sasha's voice had gone soft. "Why?"
"Because I spent two weeks sitting in that corner office feeling absolutely nothing.
No satisfaction, no sense of achievement, just this hollow sort of…
going through the motions." Victoria watched the town flash past, all red brick and church spires.
"Every meeting, every report, every strategy session, I kept thinking about gardens.
About you covered in soil, laughing at something Cathy said.
About how you actually found something you loved and just… went for it."
"I haven't exactly gone for it yet. I've filled out some course applications."
"Which is more than I'd done in ten years of banking.
I was so focused on being perfect that I forgot to check if I actually wanted what I was working toward.
" The words felt strange in her mouth, admission of failure dressed up as revelation.
"And then I realized I'd rather be imperfect with you than perfect and miserable without you. "
"That's…" Sasha's breath hitched. "That's quite a declaration."
"I'm not done." Victoria closed her eyes. "I think I might love you. Actually, scratch that. I know I do. I'm in love with you, and I have been since probably the greenhouse incident, and definitely since the snooker room, and absolutely since I left without saying goodbye properly."
The silence that followed felt like jumping off a cliff.
"You should have led with that," Sasha said, her voice thick with something that might have been tears. "Would have saved us both a lot of train fare."
???
Sasha pressed her phone so hard against her ear it hurt. Outside her window, a town was appearing, rows of houses packed tight and gray.
"I've been in love with you for weeks," she said, the words spilling out before she could second-guess them. "Since you defended me to your grandmother. Since you kissed me in the greenhouse. Since you looked at me like I was more than just Ambrose's convenient fake girlfriend."
"Sasha—"
"Let me finish." She wiped at her eyes with her free hand. If she didn’t let this out now, she was afraid that she might actually explode.
"I convinced myself it was better to walk away.
That if I made you choose between your career and me, you'd resent me eventually.
That I'd always be the person who held you back from what you really wanted. "
"That's completely…"
"Stupid? Yes, I know. Ambrose pointed that out today.
Quite forcefully, actually, with a lot of swearing.
" Sasha watched the urban landscape thicken as they approached London.
"But I was terrified, Victoria. You're brilliant and focused and you know exactly who you are.
And I'm just… figuring it out as I go. I thought you deserved someone who had their life together. "
"I don't want someone perfect." Victoria's voice was firm. "I want you. Soil under your fingernails, terrible at snooker, completely chaotic you."
Sasha laughed, though it came out more like a sob. "I'm coming to London because I have absolutely no plan beyond finding you and telling you I love you. Which, now that I say it out loud, sounds fairly unhinged."
"Join the club. I quit my job to chase someone who was simultaneously chasing me in the opposite direction. I didn’t even consider the fact that of course you’d be at Ambrose’s birthday celebration in Cornwall. Everyone’s been very careful not to mention your name to me. We're both disasters."
"Speak for yourself," Sasha said, wiping her nose with a tissue and wondering whether this was really happening at all. Then she had a thought. "Wait a minute, you just quit your job this morning?"
"Around lunchtime," agreed Victoria. "I, uh, didn’t give all this a lot of thought. I just sort of jumped on a train to Manchester to come and find you." She paused. "You know, I don’t even have a toothbrush. All I’ve got is my phone and wallet."
Sasha laughed. "Samesies. I left my entire suitcase in your mother’s guest bedroom."
"Christ, we’re hardly well-organized, are we?"
The fact bothered Sasha a whole lot less than she might have imagined.
She closed her eyes, the train swaying gently.
"What are we going to do?" The question felt enormous, weighted with all the logistics they'd been avoiding.
"I mean, practically speaking. You're in London, I'm starting college in Manchester… "
"I have no idea," Victoria interrupted. "Genuinely none. For the first time in my life, I don't have a plan, a backup plan, or a contingency strategy. And weirdly, I don't care."
"You don't care?" Sasha couldn't keep the disbelief from her voice. "Miss Five-Year-Career-Trajectory doesn't care?"
"Terrifying, isn't it? I'm as shocked as you are.
" There was a smile in Victoria's words now, something light and reckless that Sasha had never heard before.
"But I spent thirty-one years planning everything down to the last detail, and it got me redundant and miserable.
So maybe it's time to try something different. "
"Like train-based romantic chaos?"
"Exactly like that."
"I’m not sure making declarations of love over the phone was exactly what I had in mind when I got on this train," Sasha said.
"You were the one that called me," pointed out Victoria.
"And it’s just as well I did, otherwise you’d be halfway to Manchester and I’d be stranded in London."
"We’ll have a million more moments to say the right thing in person," Victoria said, her voice soft in Sasha’s ear. And a blanket of warmth spread over Sasha.
They stayed on the phone until Sasha's train pulled into Paddington, until she was navigating through crowds of commuters and tourists and people who weren't experiencing earth-shifting revelations on a Thursday afternoon. Victoria's voice was a constant in her ear, grounding and impossibly real.
"I can see the departure boards," Sasha said, standing in the middle of the station concourse. "Where should I wait?"
"Don't move. I'm in a cab now, we're five minutes away. Maybe ten with traffic. Possibly fifteen. London traffic is genuinely awful."
"I'll be here." Sasha leaned against a pillar, watching people rush past with their neat lives and sensible destinations. "I'm not going anywhere."
Because she wasn’t. Not ever. Not anymore, and definitely not without Victoria.
???
The taxi dropped Victoria at the wrong entrance because of course it did, and she had to sprint through Paddington like she was competing in some sort of demented urban Olympics.
Her wallet bounced against her hip, her phone was dying, and she'd lost sight of where she was going approximately thirty seconds after entering the station.
Until she saw her just standing there.
Saw Sasha standing in the golden evening light near platform seven, looking rumpled and beautiful and so perfectly imperfect that Victoria's heart actually lurched.
The platform was disgusting. There was a crushed coffee cup near Sasha's feet, the board overhead was flickering erratically, and somewhere behind them someone was shouting about delayed services. It was crowded and dirty and smelled faintly of industrial cleaning products and fast food.
It was the worst possible setting for a romantic declaration.
But Victoria didn't care even slightly.
She closed the distance between them at something between a walk and a run. Then Sasha was already moving toward her, and then they were colliding in a tangle of arms and breathless laughter.
"Hi," Victoria said, which seemed inadequate given the circumstances.
"Hi yourself." Sasha's hands found her face, fingers tangling in her hair. "You're actually here."
"So are you. We're both terrible at directions, apparently."
"We're both terrible at a lot of things." Sasha was crying and smiling simultaneously. "Communication, timing, basic geography—"
"Relationships," Victoria added. "I'm spectacularly bad at relationships."
"Good thing I'm in love with you anyway."
"Extremely good thing. Because I'm completely, stupidly in love with you too."
She kissed Sasha then, right there on the dirty platform with hundreds of people rushing past and an announcement about the 18:47 to Bristol echoing overhead. It was nothing like the carefully orchestrated kisses in romantic films, all perfect lighting and swelling music.
It was better.
Sasha tasted like train coffee and tears and promise. Her hands were warm against Victoria's face, solid and real and finally, finally here. When they broke apart, Victoria kept her close, foreheads pressed together.
"So what now?" Sasha asked.
Victoria thought about plans and timelines and all the careful structures she'd built her life around. Then she thought about Sasha covered in soil, about summer afternoons in Cornwall, about choosing happiness over perfection.
"Now," she said, "we figure it out together."
And for someone who'd spent her entire life knowing exactly what came next, the uncertainty felt surprisingly like freedom.