Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc

Daily Dose of Romance – Short Stories for FREE

They’d been driving for six hours when the weather changed from inconvenient to genuinely alarming, and Thea pulled off the motorway into the kind of town that had one pub, one church, and a B&B with a sign that blinked erratically. She turned off the engine. The rain hit the car like applause.

“We’re stopping,” she said.

“We’re forty miles from the venue.”

“We’re stopping,” she said again.

Connor looked out at the rain. He looked at the B&B. He looked at her.

“Fine,” he said.

They ran from the car to the door. They were both completely soaked before they’d covered ten meters. The woman at the desk — small, delighted by the emergency — had one room left.

They both looked at each other.

“We’ll take it,” Thea said.

The room was small and old-fashioned and smelled of lavender and old wood, and there was one towel rack, currently holding two wet towels, and one bed, which was queen-sized and not a problem, because she and Connor had been doing this for eleven years — this specific thing of pretending it wasn’t a problem.

She changed in the bathroom. He changed in the room. She came out in the hotel’s oversized bathrobe and he was already in bed, and something about the domesticity of it tipped something in her.

“Connor,” she said.

“Mm?”

“I need to say something.”

He turned the lamp up. He was watching her with the expression she could never read properly — the one that looked like patience but felt like something more active.

“I’ve been in love with you for about eight years,” she said. “And I’ve been very responsible about it and I would like to stop.”

Complete silence except for the rain.

“Eight years,” he said.

“I know. It’s a lot.”

“Thea. I have driven four hundred miles in the last three months to come to things that were nowhere near me just to spend time with you.”

“That’s for work.”

“Not all of it.”

She stood very still in her bathrobe in the lamplight.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked.

“Because you seemed content. Because I wasn’t sure. Because every time I got close to it you made a joke and I took that as a sign.”

“That’s me being afraid.”

“I know that now.”

She crossed the room.

He was already sitting up, already reaching for her, and the eleven years and the eight years and all the careful management of something that had always been unmanageable collapsed at once into the particular relief of being honest.

The rain continued.

They missed the venue.

They didn’t apologise.

In the morning she woke first and watched the light through the curtains and thought about how it sometimes took a road and a storm and a room with one bed to get you where you were already supposed to be.

He woke up and his first act was to pull her in without opening his eyes, as if she were already necessary.

She thought: ‘eight years.’

Worth every one.

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So you made it to the end… which probably means you’re the kind of person who enjoys a little romance with their coffee. If you’re in the mood for more stories about messy feelings, stubborn attraction, and women who absolutely refuse to settle for boring love, you can find all my books here.

Fair warning though. One story tends to lead to another. I’ve seen it happen. Repeatedly.