Chapter 10
TESSA
Tessa.”
My body tenses as I hear Archie’s name. I came here to be alone, to stand in the cold and not think about him, and now he’s behind me and saying my name. I don’t know what to do with the hope and frustration that flood through me.
I can’t push down the wild, stupid hope that somehow this can work out. Yet, somehow, he’s found me in my favorite place. I don’t know yet if that makes it better or worse.
“How did you find me?” My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
“I read it in your Substack.” A pause. “You wrote about this bridge. About coming here when you wanted to get away from things and think.”
The words land one at a time. He read my Substack. And he remembered.
I turn then, and he’s standing under a lamppost, hands in his jacket pockets, and even in the dim evening light, I can see the shadows under his eyes.
“You read my essays?” I ask. I assumed he looked at one or two videos, and that was it.
“All of them.” He doesn’t move closer.
“You read everything I wrote, but you couldn’t write me one text before you walked out of that Conservatory?” I ask, and my body warms as anger rushes through me. How could someone care enough to read my Substack, especially that old post about this bridge, and then just ghost me so badly?
His jaw tightens, and he reaches up and roughly rubs his neck. “I know,” he says. “I know.”
“You left me in the Conservatory.” My voice shakes, and I hate it, but I keep going.
“With my dress around my waist, when I could still feel your hands on my skin. You said you had to go, and you were gone before I understood what was happening. You said it was work, but I didn’t think a week would go by without hearing from you.
Not after what we shared in the Conservatory. It’s been days of nothing, Archie.”
He doesn’t flinch or look away. “I got called out for work.” He exhales.
“Tessa, I work in private security. Executive protection—high-profile clients, threat assessment, the kind of work where you don’t get to say no when the phone rings.
A client’s security was compromised, and I was on call.
When a job goes active, personal devices get locked down.
No contact outside the team. I’ve been out of town on assignment, with no way to reach you.
I haven’t even been home. When I got my phone and saw your new video, I felt like the worst asshole in the history of the world.
I rushed to find you as soon as I could leave the office. ”
I stare at him, my mind processing everything he’s saying. “You could have told me before you left.”
“I’m truly sorry. I’m not used to having to explain this. What happened that night…I wasn’t expecting it. But on my life, Tessa, I’ve thought of nothing else since then. I hate that I hurt you.”
“You could have texted from the car.” I understand it was a work emergency, but how long would it have taken him to send me anything?
“When we get calls like this, we have to drop everything. I was immediately on the phone with my boss, getting details for the assignment, then my personal phone was taken for security, and I was given a work burner. We can’t use company phones for anything personal, not even sending an email.”
“I spent five days thinking I invented you,” I say quietly. “Everything you said in the Conservatory—I thought I made it all up.”
“It was real.” His voice cracks on the second word. “Every word of it.”
He crosses the distance between us in three steps—not touching me, but close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off him in the cold air and see the stress creasing his forehead.
“It wasn’t easy.” He grips the railing beside my hand, an inch of cold metal between his fingers and mine. “I need to tell you something. This isn’t an excuse.”
“Her name was Rachael,” he says, looking at the water instead of me. “We were together for two years. I was going to propose—had the ring, had a plan.”
My throat tightens.
“She didn’t wait.” His fingers flex on the railing.
“I was on a Heartline job—two weeks, full lockdown, same protocols. She knew all about what I do and how I can be unreachable for days or weeks at a time. When I got back, the apartment was empty. She’d left with a guy she met at the dog park.
Two years, and she didn’t even leave a letter. ”
“Archie...”
He pauses. “It trained me to do exactly what I did to you—when the crisis call comes, everything personal gets locked in a box. Mission first. Feelings later. Except later never comes.”
“It’s an explanation,” I say. “And I’m glad you told me. But Rachael was your past. I’m standing here now. I need to know that the next time your phone rings, you won’t disappear and leave me wondering if I hallucinated the whole thing.”
“I won’t.”
“Can I really believe that?” It hurts to ask this question when it’s clear he’s suffering, too.
“I know.” He turns to face me fully. “I’m not asking you to trust the words. I’m asking you to let me prove it.”
The wind catches my hair, whipping it across my face. Before I can push it back, his hand is there—tucking the strand behind my ear, fingers barely brushing my jaw. The touch is so gentle after all this rawness that my eyes sting.
“I’ve spent years building a whole platform around the idea that everyone deserves someone who shows up,” I tell him. “And the whole time, part of me believed I wasn’t the kind of woman someone stays for.”
His hand stills against my face.
“Men like me at first. They like the confidence, the energy. But then it becomes too much—I’m too loud, too opinionated, or my body’s too big.
And they start chipping at me, trying to make me quieter or make me fit into their idea of what a girlfriend should be.
” I meet his eyes. “I don’t like feeling like I’m not enough—and when you disappeared in the blink of an eye and didn’t even text?
It felt like you didn’t want me, like all you wanted was someone to get your sister off your back for a minute, so hey, let’s hook up in the Conservatory. ”
Archie cringes but doesn’t try to dismiss what I say.
“I understand how you felt that way, and I truly am sorry. I don’t want you less.
” His thumb traces my cheekbone, and his voice drops low.
“I want you exactly as you are. I would never ask you to be anything but exactly who you are.” His gaze holds mine, fierce. “You’re an extraordinary woman, Tessa.”
I look at him as we stand on the bridge. I believe he means what he’s saying, but a part of me hesitates. Could this be my fairy tale ending?
Archie exhales sharply, his hot breath visible in the cold air between us.
“I’m done running,” he says. “I don’t know how to be someone’s person after being alone this long. But I want to learn.” He reaches for my hand, lifting it to his face and pressing a slow kiss to my palm. “With you.”
“I want to be with you, too, Archie. I don’t need perfect,” I tell him. “I just need you to stay.”
“I’m staying. I’ll never keep anything from you ever again. I swear on my life.”
I close the distance between us and kiss him.
He raises his hands to my cheek and then slides them to the back of my neck, fingers threading into my hair as he pulls me closer.
I grip the front of his jacket, rise onto my toes, and kiss him the way I’ve been fantasizing about since the night in the Conservatory.
His other arm wraps around my waist, pulling me flush against him, and the warmth of his body after all this February wind makes me gasp against his mouth.
My heart expands with emotion just from the way he holds me.
One hand cradling the back of my head, the other pressed flat against my lower back like he’s letting me know he’s got me and isn’t letting go.
A laugh escapes my throat, thick with tears, and he pulls back just enough to look at me.
“You’re crying,” he says, alarmed.
“I’m happy.” I’m laughing, tears streaming. He looks at me like I’m the greatest gift in the world. “I’m happy, you idiot. Kiss me again.”
His tongue invades my mouth, and pleasure zings through my body as my sadness turns to the brightest happiness I’ve ever felt.
He presses one of his legs between mine, and I whimper against his mouth.
His hand slides under my coat, palm flat against my waist through thin fabric, and the contact sends a shock through every nerve.
“Tessa.”
“Don’t stop.”
“We’re on a bridge.”
“I don’t care.”
He groans and kisses the side of my neck, and I melt into him.
“You’re freezing,” he murmurs against my throat.
“Then let’s go somewhere where we can warm up.”
He pulls back. His pupils are blown wide, and he’s looking at me like he wants to devour me.
“My place is close,” I say, taking his hand. We walk fast, almost running, and I’m laughing again—breathless in a way I haven’t felt in years.
My fairy tale is coming true.