Page 88 of The Unfinished Line

“I just want her to be ok.” The statement didn’t remotely express how desperately I wanted to see her sister. How much she meant to me. But, I imagined driving the entire length of the UK probably spoke for itself.

“Trust me, you’ll be angry later.” She tapped the calf of her boot with a riding crop she’d carried with her in her back pocket, and waved goodbye as the sign forGolden Crest Farmsdisappeared in my rearview mirror.

And as I stepped out of Paddington Station and failed to hail the third cab that sped past me in the pouring rain, I realized Seren hadn’t been wrong.

Iwasangry. And growing angrier by the minute.

Dillon had called me an hour and a half earlier. I’d been sitting in my hotel room near Heathrow, where I’d stayed the last two nights after driving to Wales, and had been in the process of booking a flight leaving for LAX in the morning. Withlittle more than a week before I was due back in Los Angeles, I’d resigned myself to going home. I knew I couldn’t wait around in the UK forever.

She hadn’t said much on the phone.

I asked her if she was okay.

Yes.

She asked me where I was.

Reading.

She asked me if I’d be willing to see her in the morning before I left for LA.

Okay.

I told her to text me her address.

And we hung up.

My text tone chimed a moment later, and after a few minutes of staring at the flight itineraries on my computer screen, I snapped my laptop shut, pulled on myUCLAhoodie, stuffed my feet into a pair of Uggs, and walked out of the shoebox-sized room.

I’d turned in the rental car after leaving Swansea—I couldn’t handle another roundabout—so I walked a block toReading Stationand grabbed a coffee at Pret a Manger, almost missing the last late-night train to Paddington.

And there I now stood, drenched by the downpour, cussing at the passing cabs, and regretting my decision to not wait until morning.

Yeah, angry didn’t quite cover it.

By the time I got to South Bank, and had shouldered my way into the lobby of Dillon’s apartment building, I’d decided I was going to slap her. A decision that sounded more and more promising as I slipped past the sleeping concierge and discovered I needed a keycard for the elevator, so instead found myself panting up eleven flights of stairs.

It turned out I was all bluster.

The moment she opened the door, I forgot all about my anger.

She looked different than I had last seen her, more than four months earlier.

I know it was the middle of the night, and I had surprised her, arriving unannounced, but still, she was less put together than I’d expected. Her hair was longer, hanging shaggy below her ears, and her cheeks were gaunt, her t-shirt loose on her body—a testament that she’d lost more weight than she could afford to lose. I was taken aback by the dark circles under her eyes, heavily contrasted by the paleness of her face.

But still, when she smiled at me after losing the look of startlement at the unexpected intrusion, she had the same mild composure, the same equable good nature I’d learned to love so much.

“You’re a little early,” she said, and the next thing I knew, I’d flung myself into her arms.

I could be angry later. I wouldn’t let her off the hook that easy. But for the moment, the unburdening relief of seeing her there, in flesh and blood, alive and well, was all I could focus on. It had unlodged the seed of fear that had taken root, spreading the idea that I might never see her again. And with its uprooting came a flood of tears I could no longer contain.

“Hey,” she soothed when she realized I was crying. The force of my embrace had pushed us several steps into her hall, and with my eyes still squeezed shut, I could feel her reach to close her door. “Come here, Kam-Kameryn.” She pressed her lips to my temple, wrapping me in her arms.

“I thought you were gone,” I choked into her neck as she stroked my rain-slogged hair.

“Shhh,” her lips brushed my wet cheeks, traveling to my mouth. “I’m right here.”

I let her kiss me. I let her turn my thoughts from all my questions—from all my anxieties and fears. Later, I would ask her the things I wanted to know. But for the moment, all I wanted was to forget everything for a while. To feel whole again, the way she’d made me feel in LA. And to find a way to make her feel the same.

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