Nic spoke behind her quietly, his voice low. ‘We never made it here, to the North Rim, did we?’ he said. He paused, and in the silence stretched all that he had come here for. ‘But we’re here now.’
She did not answer—could not. He came to stand beside her and she felt the powerful sense of his presence at her side.
‘We’re here now,’ he said again.
And still she could not answer.
He spoke again, in that quiet, deep voice.
‘What are names? Nic Rossi or Nicolo Falcone. Doc Fran or Donna Francesca. What are names compared with who we are? And why...?’ He drew a breath. ‘Why should they imprison us? Why should we imprison ourselves? Why should I let my poor mother’s fears be fulfilled in me? Why would I be as faithless as my father, abandon my own child as he did? If I think it’s defeatist to stick with the universe as is, then it’s even more defeatist for me to think I would be like my father.’
He took another breath, drawing cold air into his lungs.
‘Because of that I let you go, telling myself it was the right thing to do. And I did not seek you out again.’
Fran spoke, finding the words to say. ‘I thought to make contact again, but I couldn’t find you—and you had made no contact with me. I had to accept it was over. That I had to move on. I told myself you had been the confirmation of my decision not to marry Cesare. Told myself that because letting go of Cesare had been easy it would be just as easy to let go of you, too—’
She broke off.
‘It wasn’t easy. Isn’t easy.’ She looked at him, her face strained. ‘It wasn’t easy to tell you I wouldn’t marry you.’
She sensed his body, so close to her but not touching, tense.
‘So why not ask yourself why it isn’t easy?’
The question came from him. Not accusing. Only setting it between them. Needing an answer.
She could not give one. For tears were spilling, silently, and she could not stop them, could do nothing but stand there, full of so much she could not speak of.
Silence netted them. Silence and the chill wind blowing down from the north.
Nic spoke. His eyes fixed on the far horizon to the south.
‘Your answer is the same answer I will give,’ Nic said, in that quiet, deep voice. ‘The answer that brought me here to join you, to where you, too, have come. For the same reason I have come here, giving the same answer to the same question. Come here to the destination we never made it to on our road trip together.’
There was a sudden unbearable tightening in his throat, and as if of its own volition, his hand reached for hers, meshing their fingers tightly.
‘The destination we’ve reached now. Here...’ He paused. ‘Together.’
A sob choked from her, impossible to stifle, to deny, as impossible to stop as it was to stop her fingers clutching at his, crushing them with hers, desperate and clinging. Instantly his own grip tightened on her hand and he swept her bodily into him. Folding her to him as she wept against him, sobs racking from her, breaking free at last of all that had held them back, bringing to her a release that flooded through her.
He let her weep, cradling her against him, his strength supporting her in her storm of tears.
His arms tightened about her as words broke from him. ‘Don’t leave me. I can’t bear it if you leave me.’
The cry came from deep inside, from a place he’d never acknowledged could ever exist. But it blazed within him now.
She couldn’t speak—not in words. But her hands clutched at his body, convulsing over the thick material of his jacket.
‘Fran, this is us. This is who we are. We knew that, felt it when we were together, but we did nothing about it. We let life take us in different directions. But we should never have let that happen.’
He was guiding her forward, sitting her down on the bench she’d leapt from at his approach, lowering himself down beside her, his arm still around her shoulder. She buried her face in his chest, tears still streaming uncontrollably.
His mouth smoothed the golden tresses of her hair. ‘Shall I say it first? Say what the truth is between us that we have been too blind to face?’
He lifted her face from his shoulder, let his blue, blue gaze pour into hers.
‘You said we were good when we were together, but we were more than good. We were right for each other. Right as only two people who should spend the rest of their lives together are right for each other. That’s what we had—that’s what we recognised in each other but never said out loud. Well, now I do. I say it out loud—to you, here and now.’