The Last Kiss: A Standalone Romance Novel (The Notting Hill Sisterhood Book 1) Read online

  The Last Kiss

  Anna Bloom

  Contents

  1. The End

  2. Blind Side

  3. A Shrug in French Means Anything

  4. One Night

  5. Things that go Bump

  6. Sisters

  7. French Red

  8. Notting Hill Health Foods

  9. Reality Wears Dark Clouds

  10. B Negative

  11. Moonlight

  12. Valentines for those with an Actual Broken Heart

  13. Fate is a mean mistress

  14. Barney’s Best Friend

  15. Lover

  16. Rain

  17. What’s at the end of the rainbow?

  18. The Sun is a many splendored thing

  19. Chocolate

  20. Cheese Dynasties

  21. Féroce Mama Bear

  22. Wards in the morning

  23. Pancakes

  24. How long does it take to start the day?

  25. Truths by candlelight

  26. Irresistible

  27. This is really going to hurt

  28. Different shades of white

  29. London Calling

  30. For whom the bell tolls

  31. The price of life

  Epilogue

  Coming Soon

  Sign up for an exclusive Julia and Henri cut scene here

  Acknowledgments

  For Andrea, without whom this journey would be so much duller.

  Let’s white sage this sh!t and get the good times rolling.

  Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.

  Grace Hansen

  1

  The End

  My love starts at the end.

  They say when one door closes, another opens in its place.

  Maybe fate has a lot to do with it.

  Maybe it’s serendipity.

  Maybe love is the biggest joke the universe has ever made.

  If it comes though, for you, don’t ever try to fight it. Learn from my story and never let go.

  When something so perfect comes within your grasp, hold it tight. Immerse yourself until you don’t know where the past, present, and future begin and end.

  Love.

  Laugh.

  Live.

  “I told you.”

  His fingers brush at my hair, delicately tracing down my cheek. “And I told you, ma petite fleur.”

  This is unfair. He’s breaking all the promises, every damn one, taking a pickaxe to them and splintering them to pieces.

  Smash.

  A tear rolls from the corner of my eye and he catches it; popping it, caught on the tip of his finger, into his mouth. Stormy night eyes shining. “Another taste of you.”

  Unfair.

  Smash.

  I want to cry harder, want to give it some, but my chest hurts. Every breath is like running a marathon, yet I’m only sitting on the creaky sheet of a hospital bed. I hike in another gasped breath, as a large palm smooths my hair and lips press into the top of my head. A lifeline I want to cling onto even though I know my time is up.

  When I can breathe, I shift slightly, looking up to meet his gaze. “You promised me.” I guilt him with a deploring stare. Please leave, my eyes say, though my tongue is having a problem expressing the words. Stupid tongue.

  That look of beautiful solemnity comes over his face. It’s my favourite look, dark and brooding, all things that make my heart flutter. Stupid heart. Literally.

  “Ma petit Julianna, I never promised.” He leans a little closer, breath brushing my skin, making me ache for days full of sunshine, laughter and tangled cotton sheets.

  My heart races again, pounding loud in my ears, I clutch at my chest, my touch weak, barely holding myself together. That beautiful solemnity darkens into heartbreak. It splinters what’s left of me straight in two.

  “Henri, please.” I gasp his name, remembering another broken rule between us.

  No names.

  No strings.

  Yet here we sit. Well, I lie on the bed. He stands, looking like a man on fire.

  Rules are there for a reason; I must remember that for my next life.

  Oh God. My breath comes even faster.

  The next life… it’s almost here and I still don’t know if I even believe. How can I go not knowing?

  Stop everything. I want a do over.

  This can’t be it.

  Strong fingers entwine with mine. “Ma petite fleur, look at me.”

  I do, unable to keep my eyes from his. The shining pools staring back at me almost make me lose my mind. “I’ll never leave. Be damned any promise I ever made.”

  A smile ghosts my mouth. “Cheater.”

  He shrugs, pure Gaelic charm. “Hey, I never said I wasn’t.” The brightening of his face calms my heart, exhaustion tugs me down.

  I don’t want to close my eyes.

  What if I close them and nothing happens ever again?

  What if that’s it? Forever and ever.

  “Don’t be scared,” he whispers.

  Scared.

  “I am,” I whisper back.

  Turning my face with gentle fingers, he stamps a soft kiss on my lips. Even at the end of my days it’s still the most beautiful taste. Warm and succinct, just the perfect pressure, the perfect time; not too long, not too short.

  “I’m so glad I got to kiss you.”

  “Well…” His lips curve. “That’s not all we’ve done.”

  “Lay with me.” My fingers feebly tap the bed.

  “You know where that ends.” He frowns at the size of the hospital bed. He’s six foot four and built for rugby and doing things to me that turn me inside out and upside down.

  “Squeeze on.”

  Henri glances at the door. For an awful moment I think he’s going to leave me. That he’s going to do as I asked. But then he toes his shoes and kicks them off, loafers on a hospital floor next to my unused fluffy slippers.

  He settles down, curving a protective embrace around my failing chest. “I’m sorry,” he mutters.

  “Don’t be.”

  Dampness lands on my shoulder and I feel him sob gently, his large frame rocking me like a babe in arms.

  Undo me.

  But then I am undone.

  There’s nothing left to untangle.

  “I wish I could be your Juliette again. Wish we could go back, do it all over.” I almost shout it. I don’t want to go to the other side of never without him knowing just what it’s meant, what he’s meant. Being his Juliette was magical, it made the last few months something more than I ever would have thought they could have been. Being his Julianna…has changed my life.

  Henri turns, a tear still dangling on the edge of his dark lashes like the last droplet on months of insanity.

  “You’ll always be my Juliette, my Julianna, my everything.” He’s humoured me so much, put up with my rules, the way I’ve needed things to be. I know he’s left everything to be here with me right here at the end. God, it really must be a love thing after all.

  I push my face into his chest, the cotton of his shirt, desperately trying to inhale that spice that seems to cling to him. “I’m so glad I met you.”

  Using the tip of his finger he makes me look up. “Even though you fought me the whole way, ma petite fleur?” One of his dark brows arches. His teasing look. God, I love that look too.

  I love all his looks.

  Can’t believe that I won’t get to see any of them again. Can’t believe that my stupid
heart is going to fail, and no replacement can be found. Right when I want to…

  Want to…

  “Tell me what you’ll miss the most?” I ask the buttons on his shirt.

  Henri tightens his arms, and I could just melt right now. Become a puddle of chocolate ice cream against his sugar spun wafer. “You in black lace.”

  Ah, the lace.

  His hands on my thighs, riding silk and lace across skin that didn’t know it could be adored the way he did it.

  “Just the lace?”

  “Burnt pancakes. Coffee at midnight. Eurostar. Always wanting to find you and never knowing where I would see you again. Sand. Candy floss. Amber perfume on your skin.”

  Right now, in this very moment at the end of everything I am adored.

  “I love you,” I say.

  “And I love you.”

  I look up, blinking against everything that could have been. “Henri, you have to keep this promise.”

  “What promise?”

  “The one you’re going to make now.”

  His face slips back to that beautiful shadow where the storm in his eyes brings rain and sun.

  “Hold me until I sleep and then leave.”

  Henri shakes his head, lips pressing into a firm line. “No.”

  “I want you to. Remember me with lace and amber. Candy floss and laughter. Not a corpse who lies in your arms.”

  “Ma pe—” another shake of his head, “Julianna, they still might find a match.”

  Aw, he’s so damn cute. Stupid big hulk of a man.

  “Hold me until I sleep.” I snuggle down, ignoring the beep of the machine as it shouts in dismay at my moving the tubes in my arm and airways.

  Tears roll from his lashes and absorb into my skin.

  My time is nearly up.

  Every breath.

  Every stuttered beat of my heart takes me one moment closer to the end. I’m so tired now. So drained. Energy is like treacle, moving too slow through my veins. Slug. Slug. Slug.

  God, if you are there…

  Thank you for bringing me the greatest gift I ever could have hoped for.

  I close my eyes. Henri’s hand brushes through my hair and I focus on the sensation: soothing, reassuring.

  He plants a kiss on my mouth. My last kiss.

  The last kiss.

  On the cusp of nothing, I hold everything as my lips whisper their last word, exhaustion tying me into a final bow I know I can’t undo.

  “Henri.”

  2

  Blind Side

  I blink rapidly, like sand has kicked up on a warm summer day and stung my eyes. “I’m sorry.” I shake my head, attempting to disperse the imaginary grains. “I don’t really understand.”

  Dr Francis furrows his face into his most concerned frown. I’m sure they make them practice that look in med school. Stand and look concerned in the mirror for ten minutes a day. Final test will be if you can pass the giggle test on week twelve.

  I’m not giggling.

  My chest is tight.

  Too damn tight.

  There are dark smudges across my vision.

  A buzzing in my ears which I’m not sure is coming from inside me or from the light flickering above my head.

  “Julianna.” His voice softens, and he reaches forward to cover my hand with his. There are probably a million different rules against him doing it, but I’m grateful all the same. “Is there no one you could have with you? I’m worried you won’t be able to remember everything.”

  Unable to stop my face scrunching, I stare at him, through him, barely seeing him. The words he’s just said, the sentence he has passed, are slowly clicking themselves into place inside my brain.

  It’s. Over.

  “My sister…” I trail off, empty, barren, but then pick myself up and shake it off. “There isn’t much to remember is there?” Half-heartedly, I huff a small laugh, more for his benefit than mine.

  “Well, we need to talk things through,” he pauses, his hand patting mine, “how you want this to go. You’ve got decisions to make: how much medication you want to take, what further procedures you’d like that could,” he tilts his head here—could… but might not, the tilt of his head tells me— “help.”

  “So exactly how long are you saying?” Usually, I run from facts with my arms flailing in the air, but I think this is a fact I should know.

  Another pause, another tilt of the head, full of unspoken things. Clearing his throat, Dr Francis pulls himself up straight. “Six months,” he shrugs, because shrugging always helps, “a year at the most.”

  God. My heart. It’s actually just going to disintegrate in my chest while I’m still sat in his office. We don’t need to worry about the next possible twelve months.

  “In a year, I will be dead.” There’s no point icing the cake with fancy frills and flowers. My cake is a plain Victoria sponge and it’s about to become crumbs.

  He nods. Simple. “That is the prognosis.”

  Prognosis. What a word.

  “And there is nothing, simply nothing that you can do?” I ask. How can this be? We live in the twenty-first century. People can do all sorts these days.

  “There are. That’s what we’re discussing.” He speaks slowly, like he’s talking to a small child, or a woman who’s about to die. “The first thing to do is to create a medication regime to make things comfortable. We can talk about operating on the valves again.”

  Oh, those cranky valves. I rub at my chest, a throwaway bidding that they might just do what the fuck they are meant to do—pump blood around my body. I mean, it’s not that hard is it?

  “And…?” Give me more. Give me more.

  “And we can get you on the waiting list for another heart.”

  “Another heart? What happens? Do you go to the supermarket and pick one up off the shelf?”

  Dr Francis smiles wanly at my attempt at saving the moment from becoming the single most depressing of my life.

  “No, we put you in the database. I’m afraid it’s a list, like most things.”

  “A list of people waiting for hearts?” I mean, I guess that makes sense, right? I can’t be the only poor bitch with a dodgy ticker.

  “And it comes down to things like blood type, tissue type,” he carries on, spewing more words in my direction my brain can’t cope with. “Later, not right now, we would have you on medication so should a match come up, your body would be receptive to the new organ. The body is an amazing machine, but unfortunately it means it will spend the rest of your living days trying to reject an organ that doesn’t belong to you.”

  “And… And…” It’s almost heinous to think about it. “The heart is kept alive until it is put into my body?”

  He nods, that sympathetic frown back on his face. “Julianna, all of this can be discussed. I will refer you to Mr Simmonds at the transplant team. He’s amazing and I know if anyone can help you, he will.”

  “But you can’t anymore,” I faintly whisper.

  “Julianna. You are in the second stages of heart failure. At the end of the second.”

  “And how many stages are we talking?”

  “Four. You know this. We discussed it way back at the beginning when the issues were found.”

  I nod, up and down. Up and down. “Four stages, right.”

  “The third and fourth stage run together, and no one knows how long each stage will last.”

  I don’t move. I’m carved from stone.

  “What will it feel like?”

  Dr Francis meets my eye. “You want to know what the symptoms of total heart failure will be like?”

  I nod. Up and down. Up and down.

  “It will be much like you’ve been feeling for the last two years.”

  Well, that’s not too bad. My smile grows.

  “But worse,” he adds before I get a chance to really scrunch my cheeks. “Eventually, your body will become weaker and weaker. If your heart, which is the pump for the entire nervous system, the en
tire body, can’t move enough blood, exhaustion will become the norm. Your other organs will fail as they are starved of the oxygen they need from the blood that your heart can no longer pump.”

  See, no icing on this cake. Plain stale sponge of reality.

  Twenty-nine years old and my body is going to stop working before I hit thirty.

  If that ain’t a punch in the vagina of life I don’t know what is.

  “Julianna, I’m sorry. As a heart specialist there is nothing worse than when you realise you can’t save someone.”

  Oh, well, let’s make it all about you.

  “It’s okay. I guess you can’t save them all.”

  “I like to try.”

  “So, what happens now?”

  He’s going to make me leave this office. I’m going to have to walk outside with a death sentence hanging over me. A flashing beacon that will tell everyone that I’m different, that my time is up.

  “I’ll put you on Dr Simmonds list; his secretary will call you. And I’ll see you next week so we can discuss renewing your medication.”

  “Next week? But what if…?”

  He smiles, small and sensitive. “Julianna, you aren’t going to die before next week. Not unless you get hit by a bus.”

  I stand, legs not connected to my body. The door to his office is a whole five steps away. I might not make it.

  “Buses. I’ll watch out for them.”

  “Make sure you do.” His bright-blue eyes twinkle. “If you’ve got any questions please ring. I’m not sure you’ve taken it all in.”

  He might be right there, but I’m pretty sure I picked up the Cliff Notes.