Chapter Three

 

Chapter Three:  Where The River Leads

Schönbrunn

Schönbrunn Palace rose ahead like something out of a dream, and Kimmy laced her fingers through Mark’s as they entered the gardens. The butter-yellow facade glowed in the late morning light, every window reflecting a slice of sky. Beyond the palace, the grounds unfolded in strict, elegant symmetry—wide gravel paths, clipped hedges, bursts of flowers and fountains catching the sun. “This doesn’t look real,” Kimmy said, squeezing his hand. “It’s like someone designed it just to prove the world can still be beautiful.” Mark glanced at her instead of the palace. “I used to think places like this were beautiful because they were built to impress,” he said. “Now it just feels like they’re here to remind us what care looks like when it’s given shape.” She tilted her head. “Care?” He nodded toward the rows of trees, the layered beds of color, the delicate sculptures. “This didn’t happen by accident,” he said. “Somebody imagined it, planned it, tended it. Real beauty usually comes from that—time, intention, patience.” His gaze returned to her. “Kind of like you.” Kimmy blinked, caught off guard. “Me?” “You,” he said, unflinching. “You don’t just happen. You show up. You grow. You care. You’ve been doing the work on yourself for years—even when no one was watching. I see that. I always have.” Her laugh came out soft and disbelieving. “You’re doing that thing again,” she said. “Making me feel like I’m not borrowing my spot in the world.” Mark slowed them to a stop along the path, turning so they faced each other with the palace behind them. “You’re not borrowing anything,” he said. “You belong. Here. With me. In your life. In mine. You’re not an add-on, Kimmy. You’re… central.” Her eyes shone, and she stepped closer until her chest brushed his. “You know what’s funny?” she said. “I used to walk through beautiful places and feel like they were for other people. People who had their lives together. Today I’m walking through one with you and it finally feels like I’m allowed to be part of the picture.” “You are the picture,” Mark said quietly. She let out a breathy laugh. “That’s unfairly sweet,” she murmured, and rose on her toes to give him a gentle kiss—brief, warm, a punctuation mark rather than a paragraph. They continued down the path, shoulders brushing, trading low, shared jokes that didn’t belong to anyone else: which statue looked the most offended, which hedge screamed “court intrigue,” which fountain felt like it had seen too many royal arguments.

After a while, Mark squeezed her hand. “Come with me,” he said. “I have a surprise.” Kimmy narrowed her eyes playfully. “If this is another lecture on Habsburg succession, I reserve the right to revolt.” He laughed. “It’s better. Pastry.” Her expression brightened instantly. “Lead the way.” They followed a side path to a small café tucked along the edge of the gardens, its terrace shaded by wide umbrellas. The air smelled like coffee and warm sugar. A modest line had formed at the counter, but Mark didn’t seem bothered. “This is the place,” he said. “Best apple strudel in Europe.” Kimmy arched a brow. “Bold claim, Professor.” “Some things in life are not opinions,” he replied. “They’re facts.” As they inched forward, Kimmy leaned her head briefly against his shoulder. “It’s nice,” she said, “having you like this. Not rushing. Not checking the time.” He turned his head just enough to press a light kiss to her hairline. “It’s nice knowing we have days instead of hours,” he agreed. When they reached the counter, Mark ordered two plates of warm apple strudel, each dusted generously—recklessly—with powdered sugar. They carried them to a standing counter along the window, the palace gardens stretching out beyond the glass. Kimmy took the first bite and closed her eyes. “Oh. Oh no.” “That bad?” Mark asked, amused. “That good,” she said, already going in for another forkful. “I don’t think I can go back to my previous life knowing this exists and is not in it daily.” “You’ll adjust,” Mark said. “Or we’ll just have to come back.” She smiled around her next bite. “Don’t tempt me with a good time.” He dug into his own serving, and for a moment they ate in companionable quiet, trading appreciative noises and the occasional, “You have to try this exact bite” as if the other hadn’t been doing exactly that already. Then Mark stopped mid-chew, blinking at her. “Uh,” he said. “Sweetheart?”

“What?” Kimmy asked, fork halfway to her mouth. He set his plate down, already smiling. “You have… a little something.” He waved vaguely around his own face. She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “Gone?” “Not even close.” She swiped her chin. “Now?” “Worse.” He tried and failed to stifle a laugh. “How did you get it on your forehead?” Kimmy stared at him, scandalized. “You’re lying.” “I wish I were,” he said. “You look like you lost a snowball fight. With a bakery.” She covered her face with one hand, laughing. “You are not allowed to be this pleased about it.” “Oh, I absolutely am,” he said. “This is going in the mental scrapbook.” She tried to wipe at the spots herself and seemed only to relocate the sugar. Finally, Mark reached for a napkin and stepped closer. “Here,” he said, his tone still teasing but his touch careful. “Let me.” He brushed the powdered sugar from her cheek, the bridge of her nose, near her lip. The laughter lingered between them, but beneath it something quieter moved—something about the way his fingers lingered just a moment longer than necessary, the way his eyes softened when she looked back up at him. “I like you like this,” he said, thumb sweeping one last faint streak from her skin. “Happy. Unselfconscious. Covered in evidence that you enjoyed something.” Kimmy’s smile faded into something gentler. “I like the way we are together,” she said. “It… fits.” His hand still cupping her cheek, Mark leaned in and kissed her—slow, certain, neither a tease nor a test. Just a quiet, grounded yes. She leaned into it without hesitation, fingers curling lightly into the front of his shirt. The taste of apple and cinnamon and sugar blurred with the warmth of his mouth, and for a moment the café, the palace, the whole world dropped to a soft hum behind them. When they finally parted, their foreheads rested together, breaths mingling.  “Okay,” she murmured. “You were right about the strudel.” “And about us?” he asked, voice low. Kimmy smiled, eyes closed. “Especially about us.” They finished the last bites of their dessert, shared a final look that didn’t need translation, and turned back toward the gardens and the waiting ship—two people walking a little closer, laughing a little easier, knowing something between them had quietly settled into place.

The Plan

The last evening of the cruise arrived wrapped in a sky that couldn’t decide between gold and rose. The sun hovered low over the horizon, smearing color across the river in wide, shimmering strokes. Up on the top deck, the air was warm with just enough breeze to keep it from feeling heavy. Most of the other passengers had gathered nearer the bar or along the railings at the bow, but Mark and Kimmy had claimed a quieter corner—a cushioned bench with a clear view of the water and the slowly approaching lights of a riverside town. Mark wore a simple black t-shirt and gray slacks, bare forearms resting on his knees for a moment as he watched the current. Kimmy sat sideways beside him in a white bikini top scattered with a small floral print, paired with short, form-fitting yellow shorts that hugged her hips and made her legs look endless. She’d pulled her legs up under her, one knee brushing his thigh, the casual closeness of someone who no longer questioned whether they were allowed to take up space in each other’s lives. For a while, they were quiet. Not with the silence of avoidance, but with the kind that comes when two people are both gathering courage. Finally, Mark straightened and turned toward her fully. He reached for her hands—both of them—threading his fingers through hers, holding on like they were the thing tethering him to this moment. “Kimmy,” he said, and there

was something in his voice that made her look up immediately. “Yeah?” she asked softly. He drew in a breath, steady but deep, as if pulling the words up from somewhere he’d been keeping them for a while. “I have a plan,” he said. “And I want to know if you’re on board.” Her lips curved, but her eyes stayed serious. “Okay,” she said. “Hit me.” He looked down at their joined hands, as though anchoring himself there, then back up at her. “I want to come to North Carolina,” he said. “To live there. With you.” The words seemed to hover in the air between them, fragile and solid all at once. “Not permanently. Not yet,” he continued. “I wouldn’t sell my place right away. I’m not trying to rush every bridge behind me. But I don’t want to keep living like… this is a someday thing. I don’t want countdowns and airports and weekends that feel too full and never enough.” His hands tightened around hers, gently. “I want to try this for real. I want to wake up and know you’re on the other side of the house, not the other side of a map. I want grocery lists and school nights and Sunday afternoons. I want to move toward you, not just visit you.” He swallowed, and for the first time in a long time, Kimmy saw something like fear in his expression—not of her, but of the magnitude of the step he was offering to take. “I’m scared,” he admitted. “I know how big it is. But I also know I’m ready to stop living in the before. I want the next part of my life to be the part where I chose you and didn’t flinch.” He held her gaze. “I want to know if you want that too. If we’re on the same page.” The river moved steadily beneath them. Somewhere behind, a glass clinked, someone laughed, a camera shutter clicked. Up here, everything else went quiet. Kimmy felt something in her chest unclench so suddenly it almost made her dizzy. He wants to come. He wants to be there. With me. For weeks she’d been carrying the hope like a fragile, secret thing—this wish that he might someday offer the very thing he was now laying between them so carefully. More than once she’d almost asked. More than once she’d stopped herself, afraid that wanting too much would break what they already had. But here he was, not being pushed, not being cornered—choosing. Relief washed through her first, warm and overwhelming. Then excitement, bright and sharp. Underneath both sat something deeper: a quiet, steady joy that felt like it was settling in for the long haul. She squeezed his hands, needing him to feel all of it. “Mark,” she said, her voice roughened by more emotion than she expected. “I hoped you’d say that. I… wanted to ask. About you moving. About us trying this for real. But I didn’t want to spoil what we already had, or make you feel like I was asking you to give up everything.” His eyebrows knit together, soft and surprised. “You wouldn’t be spoiling anything,” he said. “You’d be telling me the truth.” “I know,” she said. “Now I do. But I think I needed you to be ready on your own. To know it wasn’t just me pulling you into something you didn’t really want.” He huffed out a quiet, incredulous laugh. “Oh, I really want this,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever wanted something this grown-up this much in my life.” Kimmy smiled, eyes wet and bright. “Good,” she whispered. “Because I want you there. Not as a visitor. Not as a guest I have to schedule my life around. As… part of my life. Part of my home.” The word hung there, and she realized as she said it that it didn’t scare her at all. “You’re not giving up your world,” she went on. “You’re expanding it. We both are. We’ll figure out the logistics—the house, the timing, the money, all of it. But the big thing? The ‘do we actually want to build a life together in the same place’ thing?” She squeezed his hands again. “For me, that answer is yes.” Mark’s shoulders sagged with a visible release of tension. A slow, amazed smile spread across his face, the kind that looked like it had been waiting years to arrive. “So we’re on the same page?” he asked. “Same page. Same paragraph. Same sentence.” She paused, eyes sparkling. “Probably even the same wish we tossed into that fountain.”

He laughed then, really laughed, the sound full and unguarded. He let go of one of her hands only to reach up and cup her face, his palms warm against her cheeks, thumbs brushing lightly along her skin. “Come here,” he murmured. She moved closer, rising to her feet as he did. Her hands slid to his waist, fingers hooking lightly in the fabric of his shirt. The ship rolled gently beneath them, the river carrying them forward as if it too approved of their decision. Their first kiss in that moment was soft—a seal on the words they’d spoken, an exhale of relief and yes. She leaned into him, her body fitting against his, one knee bending slightly as if her heart had lifted her before her brain could catch up. When they parted, they stayed close, breaths shared, foreheads nearly touching. “One more,” she whispered, echoing another night on another part of the deck. This time, when their lips met, the kiss went deeper—not rushed, not desperate, but full. A kiss that tasted like commitment, like a decision made with eyes open. Her hands slid around his back, holding him close; his fingers spread at the nape of her neck and along her jaw, cradling rather than claiming. She felt herself rise onto the ball of one foot, her leg lifting instinctively behind her as if her whole body had decided it was okay to lean fully into this. Into him. Into them. The river moved. The sun dropped lower. Somewhere, someone took a picture that would catch only the outlines of two people wrapped up in each other against the blaze of the sky. Up here, in their corner of the deck, there was no before or after. No countdowns. No hypothetical someday. Just now. Just a man who had chosen to move toward the woman he loved. Just a woman who had finally allowed herself to want a life big enough to hold them both. They stayed like that a moment longer, wrapped in each other’s arms as the ship carried them forward into whatever would come next. Fade to black