Page 114 of My Best Friend Is Broken

“Of course! I’ll just wait by the car. Take your time.”

When she’s gone, he turns to face me properly. “Be honest. What do you really think?”

“It’s much better than the other two we looked at.” I pause. “I think it’s perfect,” I admit. “But it’s also terrifying. This is real, Nicky. This is putting down roots, making a commitment to staying in one place, building something permanent.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No. No, it’s not bad. It’s just...” I struggle to find the words. “For so long, I didn’t let myself want thingslike this. I didn’t let myself imagine a future beyond just surviving. And now we’re standing in a lovely garden, talking about buying a house together, and it feels almost too good to be true.”

He steps closer, his hands finding my waist. “It’s not too good. It’s exactly what we deserve. Both of us. A home, a future, something that’s ours and can’t be taken away.”

“What if something goes wrong? What if I have a bad stretch? What if the Russians come back? What if…”

“Then we deal with it together,” he interrupts gently. “In our house, with our garden, with a dedicated room for your medical practice and way too many bedrooms for two people. We deal with whatever comes because we’re partners, and partners don’t run at the first sign of trouble.”

I lean into him, letting him take my weight. “I want this. I want it so much it scares me.”

“Good. Being scared means it matters. Means you’re actually letting yourself care about something beyond just getting through the day.”

He’s right. He’s always right about these things.

“Okay,” I say, pulling back to look at him properly. “Let’s do it. Let’s buy a house and build a life and be terrifyingly domestic together.”

Nicky’s smile could light up the entire city. “Yeah? Should we make an offer?”

“Yeah. Let’s make an offer.”

Haggling with the vendor via the estate agent takes an hour. But through it all, I can’t stop thinking about the future we’re building. The room that will be my practice, the kitchen where we’ll make breakfast, the garden where we might eventually have summer barbecues with Mollyand Dario, Carlo and Dante, and whoever else becomes part of our expanding circle.

It’s real. It’s happening. We’re not just surviving anymore. We’re actually living, planning, building something that might last.

On the drive home, my hand finds Nicky’s on the gearshift.

“I wrote to Olivia’s parents today,” I say after a moment of silence. “Well, not to them exactly. Just a letter that I’ll probably never send. But I needed to say the things I’ve been carrying.”

“How do you feel?”

“Lighter. Not cured or absolved or anything like that. But lighter.” I squeeze his hand. “Ready to build something instead of just carrying the weight of the past.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do. We’ll build our house, your practice, our life. All of it, together.”

And driving through London with the man I love, heading back to our temporary home while planning for our permanent one, I think about how far I’ve come from that terrified man who came home from prison thinking his life was over.

It wasn’t over. It was just beginning. And now, finally, I’m ready to actually live it.

Chapter thirty-eight

Liam

This movie is awful. Some cheesy romcom. But I’m curled up next to Nicky on our comfortable sofa, and the world feels as if it is glowing.

I am with the man I love, and soon we are going to be making a beautiful new home together. It is all far too good to be true.

“Ow!” I exclaim as I rub my arm.

Nicky raises an eyebrow at me. “Everything alright?”

I grin. “Yeah, just pinching myself to make sure this is real.”