Page 67 of The Love of Our Lives
‘Don’t go,’ he says. ‘Come travelling with me.’
My heart catches in my chest. ‘Why? So, you can have someone to hang out with?’
‘No,’ he says, frowning lightly, ‘because I want to be with you.’
I half laugh, still exhausted by today’s events. ‘Today you might, but what about tomorrow? Or the next day? What if I wanted to stay exactly where I am. Would you stay too?’
Adam doesn’t answer immediately and I find myself nodding. ‘See, you were always going to leave eventually. You always do.’
‘That’s not true,’ he says firmly.
‘Oh, isn’t it?’ I say, my heart thumping now. ‘What happened with Claire, Adam? That’s right, Charlie told me.’
He swallows. ‘That was different, it felt different with her. I told you that.’
‘Nothing seems very different to me,’ I find myself saying wearily. ‘People need you here – Charlie, Sven, me – but you’re still just going off anyway.’
‘That’s because the world never let me down,’ he says gruffly now. ‘The world was the only consistent thing in my life. Do you know what it was like, never having anyone to depend on? Being left to fend for myself like that.’
‘No,’ I start, ‘but—’
‘So you don’t have any idea what I went through with Claire. Do you know she said if I didn’t settle down and stop travelling completely, she would leave me?’
‘No,’ I whisper now, feeling awful for him.
‘So I knew she would ultimately be happier with someone else, and it also just confirmed to me,’ he says, ‘that the only person I can depend on to actually show up for me, is me . . . until I met you that is, and I wondered if maybe, just maybe, you might be that person to show up for me too.’
Tears prick at my eyes because I want to show up for him, I do. I want to follow him to Canada and travel the world and go everywhere I can with him. He’s the most vibrant, warm, enthusiastic person I’ve ever met, after Cat.
Adam reaches for my hand and a lump starts in my throat, as I wonder what it would feel like to just jump on a plane with him – live in the moment, like he always does.
Even if this is all going to end.
But after everything that just happened, I have to stop thinking about me and start thinking more about what Emily would have wanted in her last months; keep her alive and honour her legacy like I’d planned – in the important ways. And not just that, the closer I get to the day of the transplant, the more I’m recognising that I can’t just up and leave the UK. Emily has to be here for my other self to receive the heart, and I’m not entirely sure I want to risk throwing anything off-course. Because something about Charlie’s accident has shaken me and I have this innate sense that that didn’t happen the first time. I just know it – in the same way I’ve known that some other things definitelydidhappen the first time – this growing awareness that I could change something here.
Change the outcome.
The thought makes me shiver and there’s something else about it all too, something knocking at my brain. Like a puzzle pieceI’m not quite fitting into place – or my brain won’t let me fit into place.
Adam takes a breath when I say nothing, holds my hand tighter. He smells of warm fleece and joy and light, and everything I’ve fallen for about him.
‘Say something, Emily,’ he says. ‘Don’t do this for the second time . . . I don’t think I can go through it again. I won’t go through it again.’
Those words. The way he’s looking at me now, so very full of love.
But I have to see this through for Emily, and my other self, to the end.
‘I can’t, Adam. I’m sorry.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The next month goes by in a blur as I finally put together my photography portfolio for Emily’s college application. I feel certain this was important to her – just like Cat with her nursing training. Except, because of me, Cat never even got the chance to apply, let alone get accepted.
And I won’t let that happen to Emily too – I won’t ruin her legacy like that.
I can’t deny I’m enjoying the application process, though, and like with everything I’ve done so far, I find my soul come alive as I stretch myself; seeing what else I can do in this healthy body.
And perhaps when I’m back in my old life, I could become a photographer too. There was nothing physically stopping me, I’m realising.
