Page 78 of Time After Time

“Merci, Racquel.” Ember picks up a mug.

Racquel wiggles her eyebrows at me. Looks like the Rousseau housekeeper is on my side.

“Thank you for making Ember’s favorite,” I say.

Ember looks at me, stricken.

“I remember,” I remark softly.

As if she’d done her job, Racquel claps her hands and leaves us, hummingQue reste-t-il de nos amours. What remains of our love….

Ember takes a deep breath. “All this is very confusing.”

“I remember everything,” I tell her.

Ember curls her hands around the mug as if anchoring herself to something warm.

I feel the tension in the air. Something’s shifting.

“What do you remember?” she challenges, then takes a long sip of chocolate.

I pick up a crêpe and hold it close to her lips. She takes a bite.

I brush powdered sugar from her lips. This is the first time I’m touching her like this in fiveyears. I shudder at the contact, the electricity of it, the charge of it.

“I remember how good we were. I remember how much we enjoyed each other’s company. I remember how I could talk to you about being afraid of doing that pineal tumor resection—the one with the vascular anomaly. I remember how you cried when you thought you’d screwed up your stem cell paper, and how we stayed up half the night working on it, even though it didn’t need it. I remember?—”

“The time when you told me that a woman your age wouldn’t be dramatic about a relationship ending,” she cuts in.

I flinch.God. I feel the pain I inflicted on her like a scalpel to the gut.

“I…I was scared.”

“Of?” she asks, eyes narrowed, voice tight.

“Of you. Of us. Of getting hurt. Of screwing up another relationship that meant something to me.”

She dips her head. I hold the crêpe up for her once more. She takes another bite, chews, swallows, then looks at me again.

“What has changed?”

“I have,” I confess, my voice low. “Back then, I thought loving someone meant controlling every variable. Being older, being more established, I convinced myself that I had to protect you. But the truth is, I wasn’t protecting you. I was protecting myself. Fromthe possibility of getting hurt. From screwing it up. And in doing that…I lost you.”

She listens to me intently.

I want to be careful, not get it wrong, but I also don’t want to pretty it up.

The words thicken in my throat, but I push them out.

“I’ll be honest with you, baby. I thought I’d moved on. I thought I’d buried us. But seeing you again now…fuck, it wrecked me. It reminded me that I never got past you. I’ve been in love with you this whole damn time, I just didn’t want to admit it. And now….”

Her eyes are full of emotion as she looks at me, aware that I’m opening myself in a way I never have before, not even with Olivia, not even when I was young.

“Now?” she asks on a breath.

“Now, I’m terrifiedagain—but for different reasons. Because I know exactly what I’m losing if you walk away.”

Ember bends and takes another bite of the crêpe.