Page 39 of Time After Time

I hear her breath catch.

A dry chuckle escapes me. “Not what we had. I’m not asking for that. I just…maybe we could be friends…again.”

“We were never friends,” she whispers. “You were…friends with Aksel and Freja and?—”

“The year we were together, we were friends. You were one of my closest friends. I came to you when I lost a patient. You came to me after arguing with a professor. We were more than lovers, Em.”

I have no fucking idea what I’m doing. Calypso isgoing to have a cow that I now want to be friends with my ex. But I do. Seeing Ember again fills a hole in my heart that I didn’t even know was there, but I felt it every fucking day.

She looks out at the snow, away from me. “Friends who ski together, or friends who pretend we never slept together?”

Anger shoots through me at her rejection. “Come on, Em, are you saying we can’t even be….” I trail off.

She smiles like it hurts a little. “Yes, Ransom, that’s what I’m saying. Your…Calypso just warned me off. Do you know that? She said that I was just a fling for you, someone to pass time with, and…anyway, you know that this kind of drama is not my scene.”

Calypso said what?Fucking hell.It seems I need to have a long conversation with mycurrentfling.

“You were never someone I wasjustpassing time with. You were never…just…anything.” I take a breath, calm myself. “You were important to me. You are.”

She studies me. Her breath comes in slow clouds. “Ransom, we are friendly. There’s no ill feeling…not on my side, at least. And it’s not like we see each other often.”

But what if I want to see you often, all the time?

“Is that a no?”

“It’s a maybe.” Sadness flickers across her face. “And maybes aren’t nothing.”

My chest tightens and I struggle to breathe.

“Besides,” she says lightly, “you could use a friend who actually knows what they’re doing on skis.”

There she is, my Em, diffusing tension with humor. “I’m a damn good skier.”

“It’s all relative, Doc,” she calls out as she kicks off down the trail. “Come on now, let me show you how it’s really done.”

I laugh despite myself and follow her.

CHAPTER 11

Ember

My body is sore in the best way. My hair smells like pine and cold air. I feel both invigoratedandemotionally wrung out.

Ransom said he wants us to be friends. It felt good to hear him say it. Too good. Like I was starved and being handed crumbs, and instead of walking away, I said thank you. Well, I said maybe, which is the same thing.

But the thing is that I don’t want to be his friend. I want to be hiseverything, and I want him to be mine. I want what Aksel has with Latika. What my parents have. What Freja has with Jonathan. I want the real thing. A life. A home. A future. I wantus.

I want to live with him. I want to love him. I want babies and laughter and late-night arguments about nothing. I want all of it.

And no amount of denial will change the truth:I love him.

I can’t lie to myself, can I? Not when the reason I haven’t been able to build anything real with anyone else over the past five years is staring me in the face.

I’ve had chances—good men, good sex, good connections. But I never let any of them last long enough to become more.

Because none of them werehim.

And maybe that makes me foolish. But at least now, I know the shape of my own heart. I also know that he’s building something with Calypso. God knows what he sees in her; she’s vapid, bitchy, and pretentious as hell, but…as they say, you can’t choose who you love.