A sob escapes me at his words, at the confirmation of what I think I’ve always known deep down. That this thing between us was never really hate. It was something else entirely, something we were both too young and too scared to name.
“So where does that leave us?” The question comes out as half laugh, half sob, and I don’t even try to pretend I’m not crying now. The tears are streaming down my face, soaking into the pillow, and I don’t care.
I watch his face, looking for an answer, looking for a solution, looking for the magic words that will make this work. But he’s looking at me the same way, like he’s hoping I have the answer he doesn’t.
“I don’t know,” he says finally, and my heart clenches painfully. He squeezes my hand gently, holding it against his chest where I can feel his heart beating, steady and strong. The same heart that’s breaking right alongside mine.
He looks at me, soft and tender, and my heart breaks a little more because I can see in his eyes that he’s reached the same conclusion I have. That this impossible thing between us isn’t going to work. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
“Sometimes love isn’t enough, is it?” I manage, and the tears are falling freely now, sliding down my temples and soaking into the pillow beneath my head.
He reaches over and brushes the wetness from my cheek with his thumb, his touch impossibly gentle.
“No,” he says quietly, and his voice cracks on the word. “Sometimes it isn’t.”
Maybe we could have made it work in our younger years, thrown ourselves into it without knowing where life would takeus. We could have been reckless and stupid and hopeful in the way only young people can be.
But now, both of us established in our careers, both of us people who love our jobs and are so rooted in our homes that are so far from each other, with neither able to just pick up and move across the country on a hope and a prayer, it’s a fantasy. The kind of thing I might have clung to at twenty, but not now.
“I hate this,” I say, my voice thick with tears. “I hate that we finally figured this out, that we finally stopped fighting long enough to see each other, and now there’s nothing we can do about it.”
He looks at me with an expression that I think I’m going to carry with me for the rest of my life. Tender and devastated and so full of love it makes my chest ache.
“Just stay here with me for a little while longer,” he says quietly. “We’ve got until your flight. Let’s not waste it. Let’s not spend our last hours together talking about why it can’t work. Let me just... let me just hold you for a while.”
I kiss him instead of responding, soft and desperate and full of everything I can’t put into words. All the love and grief and longing that’s been building in my chest pours out of me and into him, and he takes it all, kisses me back with the same intensity.
His hands slide into my hair and he pulls me closer, and we fall into each other one more time. Slower now. More tender. Both of us trying to memorize every touch, every sound, every moment.
The airport is packed with travelers rushing in every direction as announcements in Spanish and English echo off the high ceilings. The fluorescent lights are harsh after the soft glow ofthe hotel room, and everything feels too bright and too loud and too real, like someone has ripped away the protective cocoon of the night and exposed us to the harsh light of day.
Dominic insisted on coming with me even though his own flight to Seattle doesn’t leave for another three hours. So here we are, standing near my gate, the boarding call echoing through the terminal, trying to figure out how to say goodbye to each other. How to end something that never really got to begin.
People stream around us, pulling suitcases and checking phones and living their ordinary lives, but I feel like we’re on an island in the middle of it all, existing in our own bubble that’s about to pop.
“I could come to New York,” he says suddenly.
“Don’t.” I reach up and touch his face, stopping him before he can finish, my palm resting against his stubbled cheek. “We both know how this goes.”
His hand comes up to cover mine where it rests on his face, holding it there like he can’t bear to lose the contact. His eyes are red-rimmed, and I know mine look the same. Neither of us slept. Neither of us could.
“So what, we just accept nothing?” His voice is rough. “We shake hands and go back to our separate lives and pretend we didn’t find each other again after twenty-five years? Pretend we’re not in love?”
“We accept that this was real and it mattered and it wasn’t meant to be.” I force myself to hold his gaze, to not look away. “We accept that sometimes timing is everything and ours was wrong. Maybe it’s just... not our time.”
The words feel like swallowing glass, but I say them anyway.
“In another life,” he says quietly, and the words land like stones in my chest. Like a eulogy for something that never got to live.
“In another life,” I agree, and I feel them settle there.
“But not this one.” He looks at me with those dark eyes that have haunted me for so many years, first with hatred and now with something so much worse. Love. The kind of love that destroys you when you lose it.
“No, not this one.” I step forward and wrap my arms around him, pressing my face into his chest one last time. I breathe him in, trying to memorize it, knowing this is the last time.
His arms come around me, tight enough to hurt, and we stand there while the airport moves around us. The boarding announcements keep coming, and I know I have to let go, so I finally pull back.
“Take care of yourself, Midnight,” I say, and my voice only shakes a little. “Don’t work too hard. Stop being so damn stubborn all the time.”
