‘What’s going on?’ Rome asked and Freya looked up from her packing, tears filled her eyes again as she saw him.

‘I need to go.’

He stepped towards her. ‘Go where?’

‘Anywhere, I just need to get away from you.’

She heard him gasp softly. ‘What did I do? Did I hurt you when we were making love, was I rough with you?’

Freya shook her head, throwing the last few things into her suitcase and zipping it up. ‘It’s not that.’

‘Then what the hell is it, what did I do?’

Freya grabbed her bag off the bed and hoisted it onto the floor. ‘I need to go.’

Rome slammed the bedroom door, trapping her in the room. ‘Not without giving me an explanation. You owe me that much.’

‘I don’t owe you anything.’

‘Wait a minute. We’re friends, you’re my best friend, and before we started seeing each other, you promised me that that would never change. So before you walk away from us, you at least need to tell me why.’

A sob tore from her throat. ‘Because you’re still in love with her.’

Rome looked confused for a moment. ‘Who?’

‘Paige.’

He looked alarmed. ‘No I’m not. I don’t think I was ever in love with her actually, but I’m certainly not in love with her now.’

Freya shook her head. ‘I was in love with you for two years, and I kept waiting and hoping that one day you would fall in love with me too. Just like I hoped Jake would one day fall out of love with his ex and fall in love with me. But you still love her.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You dreamed about her.’

Rome paled and then he nodded. ‘Yes. I did.’

‘You called out to her, begged her not to leave you and then you woke up and thought I was her. When you made love to me, you were really making love to her, telling her you were scared that you had lost her, telling her how much you loved her, that you’ve always loved her and always will,’ Freya sobbed.

He looked horrified. ‘Wait, that’s not what happened. I was making love to you, I knew it was you the whole time. When I said I was in love with you, I meant it. I love you Freya.’

‘Bullshit. Why would you say that you’ve always loved me? I told you I loved you and you never said it back, despite knowing how much it hurt that you didn’t say it back to me, but now you’re telling me that you’ve been in love with me for two years.’

He pushed his curly hair from his face. ‘It’s complicated.’

Freya shook her head. ‘This is all lies. You just don’t want me to go so now you’re saying anything to keep me here.’

She moved to the door.

‘I didn’t know,’ Rome blurted out. ‘I didn’t know I was in love with you because I never felt like this with Paige. I thought I was in love with her, I was going to marry her, so then when I fell in love with you, I didn’t know this was what love was really supposed to feel like. Everything with you was so much better, so much more wonderful. We were closer in the first few weeks of our friendship than I ever was with Paige. I thought what we had was friendship in the beginning but it was so much more than that. I thought it might be lust but it was more than that too. I’ve been asking people how they knew they were in love and I realised I have all of that with you, I always have. I realised at the observatory that I’ve always been in love with you.’

‘But you never told me.’

‘I wanted to do it somewhere romantic, I didn’t want to just blurt it out, or mention it in passing. I wanted to do it right.’

‘But you called for Paige in your dreams, you begged her not to leave.’

‘I was begging you not to leave, not her.’

Freya shook her head at the lies, opened the door and stepped out into the lounge.

‘You really want to know what my dream was about? What it’s always about. You really want to know how messed up I am? As a child I had nightmares about the grim reaper taking me away. They stopped when I got older but when Paige died the nightmares returned, but this time when the grim reaper comes, it’s always Paige. You want to know how I remember my ex? I see her as bloodied, mutilated zombified corpse and she comes to take me away. Sometimes she has even come to take away my loved ones instead of me: Eden, Bella, my parents or, in the case of tonight’s dream, she came to take away you. In my dream I was begging her not to take you and then I was begging you not to leave me. Just like I’m doing now. You have to believe me. I love you and that dream messed me up so badly because I cannot cope with the thought of losing you.’

Freya hesitated for a moment. It sounded so implausible.

‘But this isn’t really about me not being over my past is it, this is about you not being over yours,’ Rome said. ‘Jake never loved you. He couldn’t have if he was sleeping with his ex the whole time you were together. He betrayed you and you’ve never got over that, which is why you are overreacting about my dream.’

Anger boiled up in her. ‘I’m not overreacting.’

‘You’re leaving here with a suitcase filled with jumpers during one of the hottest summers we’ve had in years. You have no place to go to and you don’t think you might be acting a little irrationally? Why are you so quick to believe I’m lying to you? I have never lied to you since I’ve met you. You just need to calm down and think about what I’m saying, and if you need space to do that, I can give it to you, but please don’t leave. This is your home.’

‘I can’t stay here hoping one day you’ll love me as much as I love you. You love me as a friend but you’re not in love with me. Real love is not something that takes you years to realise, real love hits you with the force of a ten-ton bus, it takes your breath away, you can’t sleep at night because the other person is all you think about. You’re fond of me, you like working with me, that’s as far as it goes. Now it’s time to let me go. Let me move on and get over you once and for all.’

She turned away and walked down the stairs and he didn’t call her back.

* * *

Freya hurried down the street towards the ferry that would take her to St Mary’s and away from the man she loved. She wiped the tears from her eyes that wouldn’t stop falling.

Her head was a swirl of emotions. Rome’s weird dreams, his sudden declaration of love that came from nowhere, the fact that, if what he said was true, he had loved her and never told her.

But then, she had never told him how she felt either.

Rome was right about one thing though, he had never lied to her before, never given her any reason to doubt him.

As she joined the back of a small queue of people waiting for the five o’clock ferry, the phone rang and she quickly fished it out of her bag and saw it was Eden.

She answered the phone.

‘Freya, are you OK?’

More tears fell from her eyes at her friend’s kindness. How could she tell Eden she was leaving, she’d be so upset. Not only was she walking away from Rome, she was walking away from Bella and Eden too and the thought of that hurt almost as much as leaving Rome. Maybe it wouldn’t be forever, she just needed some time to think.

Up ahead, Bob, the ferry captain, was starting to let people on board and she shuffled forward in the queue.

‘I don’t know,’ Freya said, quietly, mainly because she had no idea how to describe what was going on in her head at the moment. ‘Eden, has Rome ever told you about the dreams he has of Paige?’

There was silence for a moment and Freya stepped aboard the ferry, flashing Bob her ferry pass and dragging on her suitcase.

‘Are you talking about the horrible dreams he has of her as the grim reaper?’

Freya’s heart sank as she sat down. It was true. ‘Yes.’

‘He’s had them since he was little. Rome read everything he could get his hands on when he was growing up, including a ton of stuff that was way too old for him. The hazards of having a library at the end of our road. That was Rome’s playground – while the other little boys were out playing football, Rome was in there reading books about anything and everything, including a load of books about death after our gran had died. For some reason he fixated on the image of the grim reaper and had terrible nightmares about it. They went away after a few years but they came back after Paige died, with her in the starring role.’

Freya closed her eyes as the boat suddenly juddered into life. Why had she doubted him? He had been telling the truth. Well, at least about that.

‘Eden, I need to go. I’ll call you later.’

‘You better do.’

‘I will.’

‘He loves you, you know. Mum was right about that. Anyone can see he is crazy in love with you. Please don’t do anything rash.’

She was just about to defend herself but Rome had been right about that too. Throwing anything she could grab into a suitcase and running away was how she had handled the thing with Jake and now she was doing the same thing again.

‘I just need some time to think.’

‘He’s your best friend, don’t forget that. I know how it feels and, however much it hurts to have Dougie back and know he will never be mine, I would rather have him home and to see him every day than to never see him again. So before you do anything stupid, please think what your life will be like without Rome in it at all.’

Freya thought about this.

‘Call me later,’ Eden said.

‘I will, I promise.’

Freya hung up and stared out at the inky sea, as Bob manoeuvred the boat out of the harbour. A pink glow lighting up the horizon indicated the sun was going to rise soon.

Was Rome right about her issues with Jake? Had Jake really messed her up far more than she realised?

The problem was, her relationship with Jake had begun in a similar way to how her relationship with Rome had started. They had been friends first then one night they had ended up sleeping together. Jake hadn’t been keen to start a relationship either but they’d slept with each other a few more times. When her nan had died and she’d had nowhere else to go, Jake had offered her his place as somewhere to stay until she sorted herself out and she had been so pathetically grateful and so stupidly in love with him that she had made herself indispensable, cooking, cleaning, working her arse off for him at his company. He’d never said he loved her and she told herself she didn’t need to hear it because she thought he did love her in his way. And although he talked about Lizzie a lot she had naïvely assumed that if he wanted to be with Lizzie he would be. She’d had no idea he was having his cake and eating it. When she had found out it had hurt her so much.

She realised now, that experience had tainted her relationship with Rome. She had been waiting for Rome to betray her too. Maybe not in the same way; she knew she could trust Rome to be faithful to her, though that hadn’t stopped the green-eyed monster when he had been talking to Amelia, that first night at Envy, and whenever Kitty had come round and flirted with Rome. She had been expecting him to betray her by not loving her back but had he really been in love with her the whole time, falling deeper in love with her every day they were together?

She thought about the connection they shared when they made love. It had never been like that with Jake. You couldn’t fake that level of intimacy. They could only really have shared that connection if he had deep feelings for her too.

She thought about all the dreams he had made come true for her, and how incredible it was that he wanted to do that for her. He said he wanted to make her happy. Tears filled her eyes again.

She replayed the events of the last few hours in her head now she knew what Rome was saying about the dream was true. Everything he had said fitted with his version of events, which meant that when he’d been making love to her and had kept repeating that he loved her, he really had been saying it to her.

He loved her.

And actually the signs had been there all along.

Oh god what had she done? She had allowed what Jake had done to ruin what she had with Rome. It wasn’t that Rome was hung up on his past at all, it was all her.

Fresh tears filled her eyes as the boat came in to dock at St Mary’s. She needed to talk to him.

Bob tied the boat up and the small number of passengers slowly started to disembark, some of them stopping to chat to Bob on the way out. Freya had to stop herself from screaming in frustration, she had to get back to Hope Island.

Suddenly there was a commotion on the jetty as someone shoved past the small queue of people patiently waiting. People were protesting but the man didn’t care.

Freya’s heart leapt into her mouth as she recognised the dark curls and the huge frame of Rome Lancaster. She stood up, wiping her tears away so she could see clearly. It was him. How the hell he was here when she had just left him on Hope Island, she didn’t know, but he was here.

She ran to greet him as he suddenly stepped on the boat and gathered her into his arms. ‘I told you, I’m never letting you go,’ he said, fiercely, as he kissed her hard.

She protested feebly against his lips, desperate to talk to him, but then she didn’t care any more and she melted into the kiss.

Rome shuffled her backwards onto the boat out of the way of the people still departing or getting on.

Oh god, he was here. He was kissing her. She hadn’t messed everything up with him at all.

He pulled back slightly to look at her. Her brain was a mush of emotions and questions. ‘How are you here?’ she blurted out.

‘I stole Isaac’s speedboat,’ Rome said before kissing her again.

He held her to him tightly, clearly afraid to let her go. When he did pull back, she could barely catch her breath. But there was so much she wanted to say to him.

The boat was already pulling away from the jetty, taking them back to Hope Island, taking them home, when suddenly Rome dropped to his knees in front of her.

The small crowd of passengers gasped and went quiet. Any words she had wanted to say caught in her throat as he produced a small black box from his pocket.

‘Freya Greene, I love you so much. You are everything to me. My best friend, my soul mate, will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’

She quickly sank to her knees in front of him. ‘No, no, no. Rome you don’t need to do this. I love you. I made a mistake. I cocked up. I didn’t believe you when I had no reason not to trust you. You were right when you said that I was letting my past hold me back. This wasn’t you at all. I was on my way back to apologise, you don’t need to propose to me to get me to stay.’

He looked at her in confusion. ‘You don’t want me to propose to you?’

‘Of course I do, I want forever with you. The day we get married will be the happiest day of my life. But I want this when the time is right for you. Not because we had a silly row.’

He sat back on his heels, clearly unsure of what to do next. No book of love could prepare him for this. She stroked his face and he held her hand against his cheek.

‘I held back too,’ Rome said, softly. ‘When I first met you I was so afraid of getting hurt again, of falling in love and losing you, that I pushed the possibility of love away. I wouldn’t even consider that I was falling in love. I ignored the signs, ignored the feelings building up inside of me. And when the feelings became too much to ignore, when they would keep me awake at night because I was thinking about you and I ended up at your flat too many times to count, not because of the nightmares but because I just needed to be close to you, I was still too cowardly to do anything about it. Not because I was afraid of getting hurt, but because I didn’t want to cock it up and lose you. You were, and you still are, my best friend and that was way too important to me to do anything that might damage that friendship. I would much rather we were friends forever than lovers for a few weeks and then lose you because I’m an idiot. I should have told you sooner, I do love you.’

‘I love you too,’ Freya cried.

He wiped the tears from her cheeks. ‘I wasted two years, confused by my feelings, and too afraid to admit the truth. I don’t want to waste another day. This, right now, is the right time for me. I want to marry you.’

He opened the black box. She stared at the ring and gasped. The stone was not diamond or opal, it was made from glass just like he said it would be. Swirls of gold, blue, caramel and pink twisted around each other in a tiny bead of fused glass.

It was at that moment the sun peeped above the horizon and the light picked out the tiny fragments and bubbles of different colours that surrounded the swirls. It was like looking at a tiny galaxy of a million stars, the swirls and the gases of the nebulas in space.

‘I started making this for you after our conversation outside the jewellers that night. I didn’t know when I was going to give it to you, but I wanted to see if I could make something as beautiful and special as you are. The gold and blue is for your hair, the toffee strand is for your beautiful eyes and the rose is the exact shade of your lips, which I could kiss forever and never get tired of it.’

Freya stared at it, unable to take her eyes off it.

‘If you want a traditional diamond or an opal or a sapphire or a ruby, I’ll get it for you, but I wanted something that captured how uniquely beautiful you are. I love you, will you marry me?’

Freya nodded, unable to hold back the tears now. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I’ll marry you.’

Rome slid the ring onto her finger and Freya couldn’t stop sobbing as he gathered her to him and kissed her.

The passengers cheered and clapped and she pulled away from him slightly, giggling, and realised they had arrived back at Hope Island. The streets were quiet and peaceful, the island still seemed to be sleeping, the street lights twinkling in the early morning light. But she knew she was home now.

‘You’ve made all my dreams come true now,’ Freya said.

‘And we’ll make new dreams together.’

Freya looked out at the sun rising over the sea. It was a new day, a new beginning. ‘Shall we go home?’

Rome shook his head. ‘I would love nothing more than to go home and take you back to bed right now, but I need to go back and get Isaac’s boat.’

Freya laughed.

‘Will you come with me?’

‘I’d follow you to the moon and back.’