Chapter 45
Now
I don’t stop running until I’m off the ship and in an Uber to Daniel K. Inouye International Airport.
“No luggage?” the driver asks when he pulls up outside the cruise ship terminal at Honolulu Harbor.
I look down at my hot pink swimsuit cover-up and flip-flops.
I was so singularly focused on getting off the ship and to the airport that I hadn’t thought to grab anything besides my phone and passport, much less change.
I suppose close-toed shoes and real underwear would have been a good idea. But I’m here now, and either Liam still wants to give us another chance—bikini and all—or he doesn’t.
“No, no luggage,” I tell him. Just me and a whole lot of baggage.
I spend the entire journey oscillating between hope and fear.
What if Liam is angry at me for showing up unannounced? What if he no longer wants me to go with him and this is all a huge mistake? But this feels like the first right thing I’ve done in a long time. The first truly brave choice.
Sure, I could wait for Liam to come home, for the timing to be better, for me to feel less scared, but this moment right now is when he needs me to be there for him.
Maybe bravery isn’t about waiting for the absence of fear, but about doing it anyway. About doing it scared.
As we take the freeway exit toward the departures terminal, I pull out my phone and fire off a quick text to my siblings to let them know where I went.
Me: Hey, so I’m going to London. Surprise!
Bella: are you going after Liam???
Me: I am
Bella: eeeee-eeeee-eek!
Because Jonah is a sociopath, he just gives the message a thumbs-up.
Bella: keep us posted! good luck!
Bella: mom would be so proud
I smile down at my screen because she’s right. My mom would be proud. I can practically hear her say, It’s so romantic, you going after him at the airport. Just like a Nora Ephron movie.
And maybe it is a little bit. But this isn’t a movie.
The credits won’t roll. The screen won’t fade to black after the final kiss.
The audience won’t get up and leave, their cheeks sore from smiling, satisfied that all is right with the world.
Because real-life happily ever afters don’t look like the ones we see on-screen or in the pages of our favorite books.
In real life, the credits never roll. The last page never gets turned.
There’s always another scene. Another day. Another heartache. Another challenge.
Maybe real-life happily ever afters don’t mean never getting hurt or messing up or being scared.
Maybe they mean forgiveness and hope and trying again.
Maybe real-life happily ever afters look like going to therapy and asking for help.
Being honest with each other. Choosing to stay together even when it’s hard.
Maybe happily ever after means running to the airport in flip-flops and a bikini to tell the man you love that you’re not giving up on your marriage.
That you want to be there for him, messy parts and all.
By the time the car comes to a stop, I’m so pumped up with adrenaline that I’m ready to sprint to security. That is until I realize in all my excitement to get here, I forgot about things like logistics.
What airline is he flying? What flight?
I pull out my phone, ready to fire off a quick text to see where he’s at, when I spot a familiar head of dirty blond hair on the other side of the terminal.
It’s an accident that I even see him at all. Surely in a crowded airport full of hundreds of people, he would be easy to miss. But maybe he was looking for me too. Or maybe we were drawn to each other by a gravitational pull, the way we’ve always been.
From across the room, our eyes lock, and a painful ache emerges inside me. The feeling of wanting something so badly, it hurts.
Maybe I move first or maybe he does, but somehow we’re standing in front of each other, chests rising and falling like we’ve crossed an invisible finish line.
“Ros?” he asks, his voice stretched thin with disbelief. “What are you doing here?”
I step toward him, my blood pounding loud and hard in my veins. “I’m coming with you,” I tell him. “To London.”
He blinks. “What?”
The narrowing space between us suddenly feels cavernous, and it takes everything in me not to reach out, to touch him, to feel his skin on mine.
“When you asked me to go, I was scared,” I tell him. “I was scared that maybe we were rushing into things. That we’d make the same mistakes again. I was scared that I couldn’t be the partner you needed me to be. But then I realized there was something even scarier. And that was losing you again.”
His eyes widen and I swallow down the wedge in my throat.
“This past week you’ve been brave with me,” I tell him.
“You’ve gone to therapy. You’ve been honest and real.
You’ve let me into the messy parts of your life.
You’ve shown me that you’re willing to fight for us, and now I want to do the same.
I want to show up for you and love you and fight for you and forgive you and be brave with you, because I want us to last. Because I want you, Liam, messy parts and all. ”
For a long moment he doesn’t speak. His brow tenses, his mouth parting then closing again, and I hold my breath. Finally, he says, “I want that too.”
My heart—no, everything—lifts.
“I asked you to marry me in your grandparents’ kitchen seven years ago because I wanted to spend forever with you, Ros. That never changed. Not today, not three months ago, not ever.”
He eyes the remaining gap between us before stepping toward me and taking my hand, lacing his fingers with mine like he’s afraid I might float away. “But we can slow down. We can just date for a while. I can give you space if that’s what you need.”
I shake my head, tears blurring my vision. “I don’t need space. I never did. What I want is all of you. As much of you as I can have. If you’ll still have me.”
His knuckles squeeze against mine. “Of course I want you, Ros. I want all of you.” His hands move to my neck, fingers twisting in my hair. “Forever.”
Forever. The word slithers past my last protective barrier, wrapping its way around my heart. It’s a promise, a reminder, maybe both.
I launch myself at him, winding my arms around his neck. He laughs, and I feel the sound like lightning in my veins.
“We don’t have to have it all figured out, or know what comes next, or how we’ll deal with it,” he says, his forehead pressed to mine. “I just want to do it together.”
“That’s what I want too,” I tell him, my breath hitching as my eyes flood with tears.
“And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for pushing you away, for not understanding that you were struggling too.
I’m sorry for not giving us the chance we deserved.
” I swallow down the emerging lump in my throat.
“I wish we could go back and do it all over.”
“I’m sorry too.” He tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear and his gaze drops, his dark eyes finding mine and holding them tight. “But I don’t want to start over.”
I frown. “What do you mean? I thought…?”
“There are a million ways we could rewrite our story, Ros,” he says, fingers twitching as he cups my face.
“But I want our story just the way it is. I want this life we’ve built and torn down and will build again.
I want the good and the bad. The fights we had, and the fights we should have had. All of it. No editing.”
My heart cracks, a long, wide fissure right down the center.
“I don’t know if you remember the night we met—”
“I remember everything,” I tell him.
His mouth wavers into a smile. “—I told you that the risk was what made loving someone meaningful. That you might get hurt, but it was worth it for the chance to love someone and to be loved in return.” The full force of his focus settles on me.
“I want you to know that it was all worth it. Everything. You are worth it.”
I don’t have to think; the words just tumble out of me. “You’re worth it too.”
Liam is brilliant, infuriatingly good at so many things. But the parts I love most aren’t the shiny, peer-reviewed parts. They’re the messy parts. The real ones. The parts I want to spend the rest of my life learning and knowing and loving.
Liam’s brow softens, his lips parting, then his arms close around me, pulling me into an embrace that whittles me down to my core. “I don’t want to pretend like it never happened,” he says into my hair. “In fact, I don’t want to do any more pretending at all.”
My heart squeezes, a force so intense, so powerful, I feel like it might split me apart.
“I don’t want to pretend either,” I tell him. Then, in a lower, sturdier voice, I say, “Which is why I’ve decided to ask for help.”
He pulls back, his brows drawing together. “What do you mean?”
I lick my lips, not realizing I’ve started to cry until I taste the salt. “I mean that I’ve been pretending to be fine since my mom died. But I’m not, and I can’t carry this alone anymore. So here I am, asking for help.”
As soon as I say it, I feel a rush of awareness across my skin, the feeling of being exposed, vulnerable. But instead of afraid or ashamed, I feel brave.
Liam brushes the pad of his thumb across my jaw, flicking away a stray tear. “I want to carry this with you,” he whispers. “I want to do everything with you.”
Hope ruffles its feathers against my chest. There’s still so much work to do—hard, painful work—but just like Liam said in his speech, it’s the kind of work that’s worth it, that I want to do with him.
“I want to carry your burdens too,” I tell him. “I want to carry the parts that are too heavy to carry alone.”
“We’ll do it together,” he says. Then he takes my jaw in his hands, angling my face to his, and kisses me, a slow, bottomless kiss that turns me boneless.
“I love you, Ros,” he whispers, his lips brushing mine, and suddenly we’re no longer in a crowded airport, surrounded by hundreds of travelers.
It’s just us as his hands spread across my back, hauling me to him.
Just us as my arms tighten around his neck, savoring our closeness.
Just us as he crashes his lips to mine, sending sparks scattering over my skin.
“I love you too,” I tell him. And in that moment, my love for him is overwhelming. Something too big, too powerful for my body to contain.
This thing, this love between us, isn’t simple—it never has been. It’s the hardest, scariest thing I’ve ever done, but it’s worth it. Worth it in the way a difficult hike is worth the sore legs and depleted oxygen for the view. And this moment with him is the best damn view in the whole world.
We stay like that, holding each other, trading kisses like we’re the only people in the airport, the only people anywhere, until finally Liam pulls back, his eyes damp, his lips swollen.
“As grateful as I am to have you going to London with me, I have one question.” His mischievous gaze travels up and down my frame.
“Are you really planning to meet your mother-in-law for the first time in a bikini and flip-flops?”
I look down, remembering how I’m dressed. “Yes, and?”
A chuckle breaks in the back of his throat. “She’ll love you no matter what, but, uh, maybe we should get you some proper clothes.”
“And a toothbrush,” I add.
“You didn’t bring a toothbrush?”
“Nope. Just the clothes on my back,” I say, gesturing to the pink cover-up. “Well, and my passport,” I add, holding it up.
His mouth splits into a grin. “Wow, you must have really been in a hurry.”
“What can I say? I needed to chase down my man. There wasn’t time for things like real clothes.”
He laughs, then leans in, gripping my waist, and kisses me. “Good,” he whispers. “I like you better without real clothes anyways.”
As his lips meet mine once more, I feel the same rush of anticipation that I did nine years ago in his kitchen, back when I had no idea who he would become to me, or what would happen.
When the future felt as vast and limitless as the ocean.
And even now, nine years and a million hurts and joys later, the future still has that open-ended feeling to it.
I don’t know what will happen next. Where we’ll go from here.
All that’s still to come in our lives—the good, the bad, the messy.
But I feel a kind of sturdiness coursing through me.
Like the axis that has been continually spinning under my feet has finally come to a standstill.
Or perhaps like returning to dry land after too much time at sea.
Maybe it comes from Liam, from the weight of his hand in mine as we walk toward the counter to buy me a ticket to London. Or maybe it comes from me, from feeling brave. But a quiet certainty thrums inside me, a certainty that whatever comes next, whatever challenges we’ll face, it will be together.
Maybe that’s all happily ever after is and always was, I think. Maybe it’s facing an unpredictable future together, knowing that no matter what, you won’t be alone.