Chapter 28 #2
The words land like a stone dropped into still water. I watch the ripples spread – through my chest, my stomach, my hands gripping the wall.
‘Tom.’
The shame is physical. A heat spreading up my neck, across my face.
Seventeen-year-old Nina, performing bravado for her friends, reducing a first kiss to a joke.
Because she was scared. Because the way he looked at her was too much, too real, too honest, and the kiss tasted too much like a forever kiss, which seemed so silly when so young and with our entire futures ahead of us.
And yet here we both stand. Still us. Still the two of us, our past and future entwined.
‘Tom—’
‘You don’t have to—’
‘I was seventeen.’ My voice comes out rough and cracked. ‘I was seventeen and you looked at me like I was the only person at that party and I didn’t know what to do with that. So I said the cruellest thing I could think of because it was easier than admitting I felt it too.’
He turns to look at me. The stillness in him is absolute.
‘What?’
‘I felt it.’ My hands are shaking. I take them off the wall because I don’t want to hold on to anything solid right now.
I want to be in freefall. I want to be honest. ‘I’ve been feeling it.
For weeks, or months, or maybe for eleven years – I don’t know where it started, Tom, I can’t find the beginning of it.
I just know that when you left, it was like – it was like the lights went out.
And everyone kept telling me it was normal to miss my best friend but it wasn’t that.
It was bigger than that. It was the wrong shape for friendship. ’
‘Nina—’
‘I’m not done.’ I’m shaking properly now.
Not cold. Not scared. Just – open. Too open.
Every wall I’ve built is coming down at once.
‘I don’t have a speech. I don’t have the right words.
I just know that you’ve been standing in the dark waiting for me and I have been so blind, Tom. So unforgivably blind. And I can’t—’
My voice breaks. I press my hands to my face. Breathe.
Tom doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t speak. He waits. The way Tom always waits. Patient and still and giving me all the room I need.
I drop my hands. Look at him.
‘I need to show you something,’ I say. ‘Stay here.’
‘Nina—’
‘Just – stay here. Please. Two minutes.’
I walk away from him. Back through the pub – past Brynn, who takes one look at my face and stands up, past Jude who opens his mouth and closes it again, past Isla who squeezes my arm as I pass without asking why. Out the front door. Across the harbour. Into the café.
The dog lead is hanging on the hook by the door. Chips’s old lead – the one Tom bought, the one that’s been hanging there since the day Chips went home with his owners and broke my heart in a smaller, simpler way.
I take it off the hook. Hold it in my hand. The leather is soft and worn. It smells faintly of dog and salt.
I walk back to The Ship. Back through the pub. Past everyone. Out the back door.
Tom hasn’t moved. He’s standing at the harbour wall exactly where I left him, hands in his pockets, looking out at the sea. Waiting. The way he’s always waited.
He turns when he hears me.
I hold up the lead.
‘This is Chips’s lead,’ I say. ‘You bought it. The day you brought him to me.’
‘I know what it is.’
‘I’ve kept it. On the hook by the door. Since the day his owners came for him.’ My voice is steady now. Clear. ‘I told myself it was sentimental. A memento. But it wasn’t that. It was yours. It was the thing you gave me, and I couldn’t take it down.’
He’s looking at the lead. Then at me. His face is so open it hurts to look at.
‘I don’t have a grand speech, Tom. I just have this.’ I hold out the lead. ‘Come home. Please. Come home and let me love you the way you deserve to be loved. The way I should have been loving you all along.’
Tom takes the lead from my hand. His fingers close around it, and around mine, and he holds on.
‘Nina.’ His voice is rough. ‘You don’t have to—’
‘I was seventeen and I said the worst thing and you heard me and you stayed.’ I step closer. Close enough to see the pulse in his throat, the brightness in his eyes. ‘You stayed, Tom. Through Peter, through the grief, through all of it. You stayed.’
‘I didn’t know how to leave.’
‘And now you have left. And it’s wrong. Scotland is wrong. You being there is wrong.’ I reach up. Touch his face. Feel the muscle in his jaw clench under my fingers.
Then I kiss him.
Not gently. Not tentatively. I kiss him the way I should have kissed him when I was seventeen – without fear, without performance, without caring who’s watching.
I kiss him standing on the harbour wall in Sea Salt Bay with the taste of salt on both our lips and eleven years of silence breaking apart between us.
His hands come up to my face. Mine fist in the front of his jacket. He makes a sound against my mouth – low, involuntary, the sound of a man who’s been holding his breath for eleven years and has finally, finally let it go.
My mouth grazes his, once, twice, and on the third time he takes control, tilting my head, holding me firm, cradling my jaw with delicate fingers and his thumb.
His tongue brushes gently against mine, seeking acceptance, and I sweep back, opening my mouth further so I can taste all of him, all the mint, the faint tang of beer, the warmth.
I’m fizzing, bubbling, pressing myself close to him.
His body is firm, hard. I groan a little, lifting my fingers into his hair.
The stroke of our tongues and my blood singing.
When I pull back, we’re both breathing hard.
‘That,’ I say, ‘was not like kissing my brother.’
Tom laughs. Really laughs – surprised, delighted, wrecked – the sound cracking open doors that have been locked too long. And I want to hear that sound every day. For the rest of my life. I want to be the reason for it.
‘Good to know,’ he says. His thumbs trace my cheekbones. His eyes are bright. ‘To be fair, it’s put me off my game.’
I pull back, ‘I was seventeen. And stupid. And scared.’
‘And now?’
‘Now I’m twenty-eight. Still stupid. Still scared.’ I turn my head, press my lips to his palm. ‘But I’m done running. I’m done pretending. And I’m done letting you stand in the dark.’
He pulls me against him. I press my face into his chest, feel his arms come around me, feel the solid warmth of Tom Darcy holding me like I’m the only thing in the world worth holding. His heartbeat under my ear – steady, fast, certain.
‘I have to go back,’ he says into my hair. ‘To Scotland. Tomorrow. I can’t just disappear – there are patients, the practice, Cara—’
‘I know.’
‘But I’m coming home. As soon as I can. I need to sort things properly – give Cara time, find a replacement—’
‘I know, Tom.’
‘A few weeks. Maybe a month. But I’m coming home.’
I pull back enough to look at him. ‘I’ve waited all this time without knowing what I was waiting for. I can wait a few more weeks.’
He kisses me again. Softer this time. A promise made with his mouth against mine.
‘I’m coming home,’ he says again. Like he needs to hear himself say it. Like he needs to make it real.
‘I know you are.’
Behind us, the pub door opens. A slice of golden light, a burst of noise. Then Jude’s voice, carrying across the evening air:
‘Finally. Finally. Kit, you owe me twenty quid.’
‘Shut up, Jude.’ That’s Brynn.
‘I’m just saying, I called it. Years ago. I said—’
‘Jude. Shut. Up.’
The door closes. The harbour settles back into quiet.
Tom looks at me. I look at him. And we start laughing – helpless, ridiculous laughter, the kind that comes when you’ve been holding on too tight for too long and you can finally, safely, let go.
The harbour. The boats. The last of the evening light on the water. The village behind us, celebrating a baby named Peter.
And Tom’s hand in mine, warm and steady and here.
Finally here.