Page 136 of Carry Me Home

‘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.