EMMA
My stomach should have been fluttering, but instead I was steady. I was back and ready to tell Max what I should have told him weeks ago.
I rang the doorbell, my nerves kicking in.
“Hello.” I couldn’t help but smile back. “Is he here?”
She nodded, a little spark in her eyes. “Back porch.”
I was halfway through the door when she suddenly grabbed her coat off the hook and her bag off the table.
“You’re going out?” I asked, blinking.
“Just a few errands.”
“You don’t have to leave because of me,” I said quickly. “Really, Grace, I don’t want to put you out.”
But all she did was reach for my hand and squeeze it with a warmth that made my chest tighten.
“You’re not putting me out,” she said gently. “But I think you and Max should have some time alone.”
The look in her eyes said it all. She knew I didn’t come all this way just to say hello. She knew I was here to put things right.
“Thank you.”
Her smile softened. “Go on then. He’s been needing this.”
I nodded and headed for the back porch. Through the screen door, I saw Max sitting there with his back to me and his shoulders slumped.
He let out a long sigh – the exact same sound that had made me go to him all those months ago.
For a second, the porch disappeared and I was right back in that bookshop. I couldn’t help myself.
“You’re sighing pretty loudly over here,” I said. “Need any help?”
He turned slowly, as if he were bracing himself for whatever he might find. When he looked at me, it was all there at once: relief, disbelief, and hope flickered across his face, and underneath all of it was love – steady and unmistakable.
I took a deep breath and let it all out.
“Max, I don’t even know where to start. When I left, I thought I was doing the right thing – for both of us. I told myself I needed time – to choose this life for me, not just for you. And maybe that was true. But God, it almost broke me.
“London was supposed to feel like home but this time it didn’t.
I walked the same streets, wrote in the same notebooks, and the whole time, something was wrong.
I kept looking up, half expecting to see you come through a door and smile at me like you always do.
And when you weren’t there, the air was just… wrong.
“I missed you so much, Max. I missed the way you look at me like I’m the only one in the room and the way you can read me without a single word.
I missed the weight of your hand on my back.
I even missed our ridiculous discussions about ice cream.
And for the record, yes – it is perfectly acceptable when it’s freezing. ”
He laughed then, soft and familiar, and the sound warmed my chest.
“It hit me, Max – home isn’t a place anymore. It’s a person. It’s you. It’s your laugh, your kindness, and the way you hold me like I’m something precious. It’s your ridiculous Canadian heart that doesn’t know how to quit, even when you probably should.
“You told me you fell in love with me in that bookshop. I think I fell in love with you in a hundred little ways I didn’t even realise until I left. It wasn’t until I was gone that I understood how much of me stayed with you.”
I slowly moved closer to him.
“I was scared… scared of losing myself and not knowing if I could have both you and my writing, you and my freedom. But you were never asking me to give anything up. You were asking me to let you in. So here I am, where I should have been the whole time. And I’m telling you now that I want to stay – if you’ll still have me.
I love you, Max. And I don’t need any more time. I just need you.”
He closed his eyes just for a second, and then that annoying, sweet smile spread across his face.
In two quick strides he was in front of me, his hands cupping my face as his mouth crashed onto mine.
He gasped – a sharp, broken sound that told me exactly how close he’d been to giving up.
I grabbed his shirt, needing him closer, but it was never close enough.
His lips moved against mine, desperate and wild, making everything else fade away.
When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against mine.
“What took you so long?” he whispered, his words warm against my lips.