Slipping back down the hall, I stop midway and go into the bathroom, looking at myself in the medicine chest mirror. I’m tired and solemn and fully committing to my decided course of action. I take a step over and reach into the shower, turning it on as high as it can go. I pull the curtain closed but leave the door open. Returning to the dining room, I stand in front of the window air-conditioning unit. I look at it for some time until I reach forward and turn it on to the coldest setting, full blast. The icy air pours out and cuts into the skin on my arms. I let the chill soak through me until it hits my bones, and I sit back down in my chair with my laptop on the table.

A writer’s imagination is a powerful thing. We feel what our characters feel. We hear people talking in our heads. We allow ourselves to be carried off and whisked back again from strange and beautiful places. It’s surrender and it’s something not quite sane and I need to let it happen to me now.

I need to picture a new reality—a reality where Ryan is here. I take a deep breath and clear my mind.

The shower water is still running. Splashing and misting, I can almost feel the steam. Ryan originally planned on showering tomorrow morning but after we went sightseeing, drank too much at dinner and walked farther than we expected, he decided not to wait.

He loves Italy as much as I do. The plane ride was...trying, but we got through it. He took something for his motion sickness, we watched Rudy twice on my iPad and he squeezed the life out of my hand for the full nine hours. Still, we made it.

I can’t believe he was able to take more than a month’s leave from work. He wasn’t kidding when he said he never took days off and I’m so thankful that he didn’t. He has one week left before his flight home and tomorrow, we leave for Sorrento, a beautiful town along the Mediterranean.

I check my email confirmation from the hotel we’re going to stay at, and check-in is at one o’clock. Another SOS email from Sam catches my eye and I wince a little bit. She is going to kill me. I’ve been so busy gallivanting around Rome with Ryan that I still haven’t written the last chapter of my novel. I need to wrap that up now before I become her worst client and she hates me forever.

Final chapter. Time to give Charlotte and Robert the ending they deserve. I take a confident breath and try to look inwards, drawing on all my feelings from this last amazing month as I move my hands to the laptop keys.