“I’ll have to rely on croissants and your bittersweet memory to sustain me.”

I begrudgingly let him go and step back.

“I wouldn’t change anything, you know. If I stayed in New York, I wouldn’t have come here, and I wouldn’t have met you. I would do everything exactly the same.”

“Really? You’d do everything the same?”

I give him a knowing look, fully aware that he still thinks that I should have stopped Ryan when he came to Rome. I can see why. Watching Ryan drive away was a physically painful experience for me, but I had to take these last few months to heal and to really understand what I need and want. Stopping him four months ago would have been great in the moment, but who’s to say where we’d be today if we rushed into things again. I almost called or texted millions of times but stopped myself. I didn’t want to ask him to wait for me. I didn’t want him to put his life on hold. If I get home and he still feels the same way, we can start over. Not as a continuation but as something entirely new and based on who we are now.

“No comment,” I eventually answer.

A small grin pulls across Liam’s cheek. “I wouldn’t change anything either. You’re a very peculiar girl, but you’ve made a real difference.”

“A real difference in what?”

“Everything,” he says simply.

If that response doesn’t warrant another bear hug, I don’t know what does. I throw myself into his arms for a final time before getting into the cab. Once inside, I fasten my seat belt and roll my window all the way down.

“I’ll miss you,” I say as Liam steps closer. “And I’ve changed my mind. You can have pizza without me tomorrow if you want to.”

He flashes me a roguish smile, holding his hands behind his back and allowing me a good long look at him standing as he did the first time we met.

“I always intended to,” he says.

My jaw drops. “You jerk!”

Liam laughs as my taxi pulls away from the curb at a typical, crazy Italian speed. “Soft spoken until the very end,” he calls out. “I’ll miss you!”

23

I feel an absolute rush as I get out of the yellow cab in front of 5 Tudor City. It’s a cold October day but there’s so much excitement bursting through me that I don’t feel chilled in the least. The sounds of sirens, the people, the traffic, heck, even the smells...everything about New York sends my heart into a flutter.