Emily closed the sketchbook, wiping at her face with the back of her sleeve.

“How did you find me?”

He was looking at her again, in that way of his. It made her wonder if she seemed different, if the tears had changed the contours of her face, revealed a part of her that wasn’t there before.

“I called my mother.”

“That must have been fun.”

“I sent her a copy of this,” he said, showing her a snapshot of the photograph taken outside the bookstore in Paris. “Asked who the last woman was.”

Emily allowed her eye to travel over them each in turn, then go back to rest on Catriona. She drank in the freedom, the joy, in her grandmother’s smile. And even though she was dead, Gigi too, they were not gone, because there was still someone left behind, to remember.

“Where’s Phoebe?”

“She decided to go home. Said she needed to find her own way. Something about saving the gorillas…”

Emily let out a small laugh before folding her face into a frown. “I’m sorry.”

“It never would have lasted, not with me going to Nashville. Besides,”—he bumped against Emily, let his shoulder rest against her own—“she was way too normal for my liking.”

“When do you go?”

“Now. Tonight.” He took a breath. “My flight leaves in a couple of hours.”

“Why are you here, Tyler?”

He replied by bending his head to kiss her, just once. A gentle touch of lips, and she wanted to lean into it, to lose herself in the moment, but something made her move away.

So much had changed in such a short space of time. So much for her heart and mind to contend with, but she had not yet had a moment to try and make sense of any of it, least of all him. So much time that she didn’t know what to do with. Days and nights and stolen moments in between that were all now hers to do with what she wanted.

“Come with me,” he whispered, resting his forehead against her own.

Emily stared at him, wanting to be able to simply say yes, to be swept off to Nashville, to immerse herself in the romance of her very own story.

The only problem was, she remembered what her grandmother had written in her diary. About Noah asking her to marry him, about why she said no. Because he would change her, make her into someone she didn’t want to be.

Going to Nashville, falling in love, would be the easy option and in a way would allow her to hide again, to hide from herself, from the choices she knew she had yet to make. She had so much time to explore and decide, to make peace with being alone.

“I have this image in my mind and cannot recall if it’s a memory or a dream,” Emily said, watching Tyler closely for some kind of reaction, trying not to think about how easily the words now spilt from her mouth, how she didn’t care if her tongue got caught around one of the syllables, or if she stumbled and lisped, because it was him. He knew her, he saw her, not the idea of someone who used to be.