“No, Em, you’re not understanding.” He’s dropped my hands now and is pacing on the grassy path. “I’m not mad at you. I would never be angry at you for holding back something like that. I know you didn’t do it to hurt me. On the contrary, you did it in part to protect me. But Emma, don’t you see what all this means? We’ve been shutting each other out. Growing apart. Keeping things from each other. You didn’t tell me everything, and I—I didn’t tell you how I really feel. Which is this.”

My breath quickens, every nerve ending in my body standing at attention. He’s going to say it now, and there will be no going back.

“The entire time I was there, on Castor Island, you were all I could think about. I’ve loved you for years now, Emma. You know that, don’t you? When I first told you how I felt—back in our second year—I was awkward and immature about it and my words were clunky and inadequate, and it scared you. I get that. It scared me too. We were kids—what did we know about love? We had our whole lives ahead of us. Love was this distant concept, and it always felt like we’d have time. So much of it. I guess it took me being kidnapped and separated from you for months for me to realize how much that love I felt, it wasn’t going anywhere. It was real. And almost dying, thinking I might never see you again… It gave it all an urgency I’d never felt before. Like I’d always just taken us for granted. Because I always thought we’d just be there—an us—and that life would take us in all kinds of different directions, but we’d always come back to each other. And that one day, everything would just fall in place. And we’d be together.”

Ollie stops pacing now and grabs my hands again. His face is inches from mine, and my body responds to his, leaning into him as he draws me closer.

“Emma, you are pretty much everything to me. And if we don’t…if something were to happen again… I can’t wait any longer, for you to know that. I need you to know it now.”

The world spins, and Ollie’s hand is on the small of my back, and our mouths meet in that gentle, sweet way they did the last time we kissed.

I sink into him, feeling the heat rising from my toes up my body, and for a few more seconds I’m not thinking about anything, or anyone, else.

When the kiss breaks, I am reeling.

I know how I just felt; I can’t deny that.

But is this what I want?