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She followed the signs to Departures and pulled up to the curb behind a taxi. People were everywhere, hauling suitcases out of trunks, hugging, waving. A skycap was stacking bags on a cart.

She put it in park. But she didn’t turn off the engine.

Drew looked at the keys still in the ignition. Then he looked at her. “You’re not even getting out?” he said.

“No.”

“You drove me all the way here. Two hours. And you’re gonna drop me off at the curb like a fucking cab.”

“Drew, that’s not fair.”

He took his sunglasses off, and his eyes were red, and for the first time since she’d known him, all that anger was pointed at her. “Fair?” He laughed, and it was the worst sound she’d ever heard come out of him. “You want to talk to me about fair?”

He grabbed the duffel off the floor, shoved the door open, and got out. And then he slammed it hard enough to rock the whole car.

Nicole flinched.

Through the passenger window, she watched him walk away. He didn’t look back. He went through the sliding doors and into the crowd, and he was gone.

She pulled off her sunglasses, put her forehead down on the steering wheel, and cried.

She cried so hard she couldn’t breathe right. She cried with the engine running and people walking past her car, and she didn’t care who saw. She cried for Drew, and for herself, and for her father, and for what she’d just done. She’d been so sure on Sunday. She wasn’t sure of anything now.

She felt like she was dying.

Somebody knocked on her window. A man in an airport police uniform was standing there, frowning. “Ma’am, you can’t leave your car here.”

She looked at him. She looked at the doors Drew had gone through.

“Ma’am?”

She turned off the engine. She got out of the car and left it sitting right there at the curb, keys and all, and she ran.

Through the doors. Past the ticket counters and the people in line, past a family with a luggage cart, past a man in a suit who yelled something after her. Down the long hallway to security, where she pushed her purse through the X-ray machine with her hands shaking so bad she almost dropped it, and grabbed it off the other side without stopping. Down the concourse. Her lungs were burning. She was looking at every gate number, every face, and she didn’t know which gate.

And then she saw him.

He was standing in line at the end of the concourse with his duffel on his shoulder and his boarding pass sticking out of his coat pocket. They’d already called his row. He was two people from the door to the jetway.

“Drew!”

He turned around.

When he saw her, every bit of that anger left his face, and what was left looked a lot like hurt. He dropped the duffel. She ran the last few steps and threw herself against him.

It wasn’t like the Friday after Thanksgiving or that Sunday in January, when she’d run to him laughing and kissed him in front of everybody. This time, she grabbed the front of his coat and pressed her face against him, and she couldn’t stop crying. Her whole body was shaking with it. For a second he didn’t move, his arms still down at his sides, and she thought he wasn’t going to touch her at all. Then he wrapped both arms around her and held her so tight her feet came off the ground.

“I love you,” she said into his coat. “I love you. I love you so much.”

His hand was in her hair. He was holding the back of her head, and she could feel him shaking too.

“I love you too,” he said. His voice was barely there. “God, Nicole. I love you too.”

“Sir.” The woman at the gate desk said it gently. “Sir, I’m sorry. We’re closing the door.”

He didn’t let go. She didn’t either. They stayed like that in the middle of the gate with everybody watching, and she held on to him with everything she had, and for one second she thought about saying it. I take it back. All of it. I’m still yours. It was right there. But she didn’t say it. She couldn’t. Nothing had changed, and they both knew it.

He set her down. He put both hands on her face and looked at her like he was trying to remember it. Then he kissed her forehead and held his mouth there.