Chapter 47
I REALLY THINK HE COULD LOVE ME.
BILLIE
The flight from Halifax to Toronto is two hours and thirty-two minutes. And I spend every single moment not thinking about what I’m going to say.
This is not a plan. Plans require forethought, structure, a general sense of what you’re doing and why.
This is a woman who woke up on a Saturday morning after a week of not sleeping, stared at her ceiling for forty-five minutes, said “fuck it” out loud to no one, booked an overpriced flight on her phone while still in bed, and was at the airport within ninety minutes wearing yesterday’s jeans and a flannel that might be his.
It’s definitely his. It smells like him. I chose it on purpose, and I’m not going to think about that.
I call Neve, realizing I haven’t told anyone what I’m doing or where I’m going.
“Hey, Bills,” she answers jovially.
“Hi. So, I’m flying to Toronto.” I pause, wincing, waiting for her shriek of delight or shock.
“Uh-huh.”
“Um, I’m going to tell Darcy I want him to stay. Here. Well, not here, because I’m at the airport, but in Balsam Bay. I love him, Neve. I love him so fucking much it makes my heart hurt when I think about it too much, but like not in a scary way, in a good way, if that’s even possible, you know?”
“I do know,” she answers my rhetorical question, but I’m on a roll, so I don’t stop talking.
“Remember how I told you Leo is like a French baguette? Hard on the outside but soft inside?” I don’t give her an opportunity to respond this time.
“Well, Peter is a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. He’s golden and warm, soft, approachable, and welcoming.
He’s sweet all the way through. He’s comforting and impossible not to love.
It would be annoying, how perfectly wonderful he is, if it wasn’t for the fact I’m pretty sure he’s in love with me, too.
And if he isn’t, he could be. If he stays in Balsam Bay, I really think he could love me. ”
“I really think so, too, Billie.” My best friend sniffles. “I’m so happy for you,” she garbles through a sob.
“Damn, Billie. That was… wow.” Leo’s voice comes through the speaker, and my cheeks heat. I’m not surprised or upset I was on speaker; I just forgot he’d probably be there, too.
“Um, thanks, Leo.”
“And I knew you’d be going after him. Leo told me you asked for Darcy’s address, and I legit did a happy dance.”
“She did,” he confirms.
“And then I called Amanda,” Neve continues. “I told her not to expect you on site for a few days. If she needs help with anything, me or Georgia or Leo can step in and give her a hand.”
“Absolutely,” Leo reiterates.
“You two are the best, and I love you.”
“We love you, too, Billie.”
“We love you so much, Bills,” they say in unison. And then just Neve: “Now, go get your man!”
The woman in 14B is reading a romance novel with a woman splayed across the sand and a shirtless man on the cover. I resist the urge to tell her real love doesn’t look like that.
And thank fuck, because lying directly on the sand like that? Hard pass.
Real love looks like someone sliding your medication across the counter without being asked.
Real love looks like eating cereal standing up because someone burned the toast and neither of you cares.
Real love looks like a man telling you he’s coming back and you being too broken to make sure he knew you wanted him there.
I should have told him.
The pilot announces our descent into Pearson International Airport.
I press my forehead against the window and watch the city materialize below me—gray and sprawling and endless, the opposite of everything I know.
Somewhere in that grid of concrete and glass is a man who sent me a text saying I miss you days ago.
I didn’t respond because I was scared, and I’m still scared, and I’m on this plane anyway, which is either the bravest or the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
The airport is a sensory assault my brain processes as simultaneously fascinating and unbearable.
Too many signs, too many people, too many announcements overlapping.
I follow the moving crowd to the taxi stand on autopilot while my eyes snag on everything.
A kid eating a massive donut, a woman reuniting with someone at arrivals, a dog in a carrier who looks personally offended by air travel.
In the cab, the driver asks where I’m headed, and I read him the address from my phone.
He nods like it means something. It means nothing to me.
I don’t know this city. I don’t know which neighborhoods are which, or how the streets connect, or what Peter’s building looks like.
I only know that he’s in it, and I need to be where he is, and everything else is just geography.
The building is tall, made of glass and steel.
It probably has a concierge and an elevator that requires a key card.
I stand on the sidewalk and look up at it and think, this is where he lives.
This is the life he had before me. And for a vertiginous second, I understand why he wasn’t sure he could leave it.
Not because of the money or the prestige, but because leaving a life—even one that’s making you sick—means admitting it was wrong. And that’s harder than it sounds.
The concierge buzzes me up without resistance, which either means Peter told them to expect someone, or my unhinged woman-on-a-mission energy was convincing enough. The elevator takes approximately nine years to reach his floor, and I spend every second of it not rehearsing a speech.
I knock.
Footsteps.
A pause.
The door opens.
He’s in a T-shirt and jeans, and his hair is doing the thing it does when he’s been running his hands through it. He looks tired and slightly stunned and so beautiful that the opening line I didn’t prepare evaporates entirely.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.” He’s staring at me like I might be a hallucination, which, fair.
“I have things to say, and I need you to let me say them, because if you interrupt me, I’ll lose my nerve, and then I flew two and a half hours for nothing, and I don’t even like flying, and the airport was a lot, and there was a dog in a carrier that looked really upset, and I’m still thinking about it, so—let me talk. ”
His mouth twitches. “Okay.”
“Okay.” I take a breath. “The marina project got approved. The mayor called a special session, and we won the vote. The harbor master testified, and Neve’s presentation made two bureau members cry.
It’s happening, Peter. The whole thing. Boardwalk, pop-up vendor spaces, everything.
The town needs you for this. Your financial plan, your projections, the grant applications you started—they need you back there to see it through. ”
He’s smiling. Not the surprised kind or the polite kind. The kind that starts in his eyes and doesn’t stop.
“Also, my dad had to step down from the bureau. They found out he was leveraging his position to push the storage facility deal for a developer he had a financial stake in. Conflict of interest. He’s under review.
” I say it flatly because I’ve had days to process it, and I still don’t know whether I’m relieved or devastated or both. “So that’s done.”
Peter nods slowly, still smiling. The smile is starting to make me nervous because he doesn’t look surprised by any of this, and I’m beginning to suspect I’m missing something.
“And the other reason I’m here—” My voice catches, and I hate it, but I push through it.
“The town needs you. But I need you for completely different reasons. I need you because you remember to ask if I’ve eaten.
Because you slide my meds across the counter like it’s nothing.
Because you showed up at my house and hugged me, and you didn’t try to fix me.
You showed up, and you stayed, and historically, people don’t always do that for me, Peter.
” My eyes are burning, and my throat is tight.
I’m standing in his hallway in yesterday’s jeans, making a fool of myself, and I can’t stop.
“I need you because when you left, your house was too quiet, and the coffee tasted wrong, and Tammy came by twice, and I gave her apples both times and talked to her about you, which is genuinely unhinged behavior, and I need you to come home because Balsam Bay is your home now, and I—”
“Beth.”
“You said you wouldn’t interrupt.”
“Look behind me.”
I stop. Blink. Look past his shoulder into the condo.
Boxes. Everywhere. Stacked against bare walls, labeled in his neat printing—books, kitchen, donate, Mom & Dad.
The furniture is sparse, like pieces have already been removed.
The bookshelves are empty. The walls are bare, other than a few rectangles of slightly darker paint where frames used to hang.
“I told you I was coming back,” he says quietly.
I stare at the boxes. At the suitcase by the door. At the completely dismantled life of a man who made his decision before I made mine.
“You’re selling the condo,” I say.
“Already listed it.”
“You’re quitting your job.”
“Already did that, too.”
“You—” My voice breaks properly this time. I press my hand over my mouth, and the laugh comes out watery and cracked. “You asshole. I flew here to beg you.”
“And it was a beautiful speech.” He’s grinning now, the full golden-retriever grin, the one that makes his eyes crinkle and his whole face light up like a sunrise. “The part about Tammy was especially moving.”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“You flew over two hours to kill me?”
“I flew over two hours to tell you I love you, but murder is also on the table.”
The grin softens into something quieter, making my chest crack wide open. “Say it again.”
“That I’m going to murder you?”
“The other part.”
I step forward into the doorway, into his space, into the mostly packed remnants of the life he’s leaving for me. “I love you.”
He pulls me into him, and his arms close around me.
I press my face into his chest and breathe him in.
And I am crying—actually crying, not the silent leak from a couple of weeks ago, but the real, ugly, shaking kind—and he’s holding me so tightly his heartbeat thumps against my cheek, and he says, into my hair, so quietly it’s almost just a vibration, “I love you. I’ve loved you since you fell asleep on my couch, mumbling about a load-bearing wall. ”
“That’s a very specific moment to fall in love.”
“I’m a very specific person. But if I’m honest, I think I’ve loved you since the moment you licked the spicy salt from the rim of my glass and handed it back to me.”
I laugh into his shirt, and he laughs into my hair, and we stand in his doorway holding each other, surrounded by boxes, in a city that belongs to neither of us, but it doesn’t matter. None of the geography matters.
Not Toronto, not Halifax, not the two hours and fortyish minutes between them.
Home is this. Home has always been this.
“Take me back to Balsam Bay,” I mumble against his chest.
“Working on it.” He pulls back enough to look at me, wiping my tears with both thumbs. “Flight’s tomorrow morning. But tonight, you’re here. I have a mostly functional kitchen and exactly one pan that hasn’t been packed.”
“Eggs?”
“Eggs.”
“You always make me eggs when I’m a disaster.”
“You’re not a disaster. You’re the love of my life. And you happen to show up at my door in crisis with alarming regularity.” He kisses my forehead. “It’s my favorite thing about you, really. Except you’re not covered in mud this time.”
I grab the front of his shirt and pull his mouth down to mine. Our kiss tastes like salt from my tears and the strawberry gum I chewed on the cab ride and the beginning of everything. When we finally pull apart, I look past him at the boxes one more time.
“I’m glad you’re going back.”
“I was always going back, Beth.” I meet his deep brown gaze, believing his words down to my marrow. “I was always going to go home.”