|26| - "I missed my old life." - 

When I woke up to an empty bed, I was almost convinced that I'd dreamt Nathan's surprise arrival the day before. It wasn't until my eyes adjusted to the light streaming in through the windows that I noticed the mug of tea and plate of pastries on my bedside table.

Shuffling to sit up against the headboard, I spotted Nathan on my desk chair, flicking through his phone. Fully dressed with damp hair, it appeared his morning had started long before mine.

"Morning," I croaked out.

He twisted to look across at me and smiled. "Good morning, sleepy head. Nice rest?"

"Yeah, think I needed it. Is this for me?" I nodded towards the breakfast.

"Yes. I was hoping to cook you something more impressive but that's all I could get hold of so early in the morning."

I smiled and broke off the end of a croissant. "It's perfect. Thank you."

Nathan helped himself to a pain au chocolat as he dropped his eyes back down to his phone, continuing to scroll as he munched away.

"What do you want to do today?" I asked.

He swallowed his mouthful before replying. "I'm just looking at train times. I thought we could go to a place that meant a lot to me when I lived out here."

"Rome?" I asked, unable to hide the excitement in my voice.

Nathan chuckled. "You'd have had to wake up earlier than this to spend just one day in Rome."

Rather than disappointing me, though, that piqued my interest further. Most of Nathan's stories about Italy had centred on Rome. Could he be taking me somewhere that we'd not spoken of before? After three years together, there wasn't much left that we didn't know about one another, and each opportunity to learn something new was met with excitement.

❆

Nathan didn't talk much during the ninety-minute train journey. His mind seemed to be elsewhere, and I couldn't help worrying that our argument from the previous night still nagged at him.

"You okay?" I asked after twenty minutes had passed without a single word being exchanged between us.

He switched his gaze from the window to me and smiled. "Yep. Are you?"

I nodded. "Just wondered if you were still upset about last night."

He leaned forwards and took my hands in his, squeezing gently. "Everything's great, Bella. I'm just nervous, that's all."

Nervous? What did he have to be nervous about? Before I could ask, he ploughed on.

"This place meant a lot to me a few years ago. I've never shared it with anyone before, and I'm worried it won't be how I remembered it."

"Well, whether it's how you remembered it or not, it's still the same place. That shouldn't take away what it meant to you."

Nathan smiled and squeezed my hands again before releasing them and leaning back in his seat, casting his eyes out of the window. From my chair opposite, I also turned my attention to the scenery flying past, until my thoughts wandered down a dangerous path.

Surprising me, taking me to somewhere special to him, nerves...

"Ours is the next stop," Nathan then said, interrupting my fantasies of him dropping to one knee. "We'll grab a taxi at the station to try to keep the walking to a minimum. As much as you say you won't moan, I don't want you bottling it up instead and secretly hating every second."

"If this place is special to you, then I won't be hating every second," I said in an attempt to reassure him.

Because hating every second would really ruin the mood for a proposal...

The icy January air attacked us as soon as we alighted the train, immediately making me crave the warmth of a taxi. Nathan clasped my hand in his as we left the station and headed for the line of cars. Even as he barked instructions at the driver in rapid Italian, he didn't release his grip, his fingers curled tightly around me.

During the car journey, the driver nattered away with Nathan, and I worked hard to follow the conversation, accepting defeat only when the speed became too fast for me to keep up. He'd spent a year in Italy—the same amount of time I'd be here—and yet his fluency far surpassed my own. Maybe I wasn't cut out for this language lark, especially if my January exams were anything to go by.

We began to climb higher, the busier main roads replaced by quieter tracks winding around a hill. The car swerved around tight bends as if the driver didn't expect us to meet any oncoming traffic, and my life flashed before my eyes on several occasions before we finally came to a standstill outside a small iron gate.

Nathan thanked the driver and paid him—that much I could understand—before we clambered out and met the force of the wind again.

"I forgot how breezy it gets up here," Nathan said, taking my hand again. "But it's more sheltered round the other side. Come on."

He led me through the gate and along an overgrown path until a small church came into sight. Being so used to Bologna's imposing architecture, the church almost looked understated, as if it didn't feel the need to scream and shout about its impressive façade in order to carry out its role. That made it more endearing, and I knew Jasmine would have loved it. But this was Nathan's special place, and he continued past the church and through another gate at the far side, holding it open long enough for me to slip through afterwards.

Leaving the church behind us, we followed the path down a set of weathered stone steps and weaved our way beneath a thick canopy of trees.

It was more sheltered here, but my breath still caught in my throat when the trees thinned out to reveal an incredible view of a lake surrounded by mountains, forests and villages.

I hadn't been sure what to expect when Nathan had told me about his special place. Perhaps a secluded area of a park only accessible through trespassing, or an undiscovered family-run café that served three customers a day but still kept its doors open out of tradition. Those would have been classic Nathan retreats.

This was a whole other kettle of fish. This was jaw-dropping beauty, completely natural but somehow ostentatious at the same time. Maybe it only felt that way because I'd expected something understated like the church—a place that was only special because Nathan had attached significance to it.

Yet this was the kind of view that you probably only saw a few times in your life: turquoise waters sparkling as the sunlight bounced off the surface; stretches of mountains topped with a layer of pure white snow; clusters of dark green forests breaking up the small, terracotta-roofed communities that were dotted around the outer edge of the lake. It genuinely looked like something straight out of a travel magazine, but with no editing needed.

"The lake is beautiful," Nathan said, "and it's very tranquil down there, but I preferred coming up here and looking at it from this angle instead. You get the full effect that way."

I nodded to agree with him, still speechless. From down at the lake's level, maybe you could only see expanses of water spanning far into the horizon. From up here, every edge and every curve was visible.

"And it's shaped like a heart," he added, squeezing my hand, "so very romantic."

Romantic. The breath-taking landscape had distracted me from my suspicions, but they soared to the forefront of my mind again. This had to be the ultimate proposal spot, surely? Nothing got better than this. What could possibly top it?

I smiled up at him before the magnetic pull of the view drew my eyes back to the lake. It actually was shaped like a heart. A slightly abstract heart, maybe. Not immediately obvious, but then Nathan's head was already focusing on romance.

A tug at my hand pulled my focus back to Nathan, just in time to see him dropping to the floor. But rather than getting on one knee, he sat down on the grass and tugged at my hand again.

"Sit down and enjoy it."

I sank to the ground and Nathan wrapped his arm around my waist, shuffling closer. Either this was an unconventional proposal, it was happening later, or he wasn't intending to propose at all. I mean, it had been unexpected. Maybe my imagination had just ran away with me.

"So, if this was your special place," I said, wondering if I could coax out of him any further insight into his intentions, "then I appreciate you sharing it with me."

"I share everything with you, Bella. I've learnt my lesson there."

He chuckled and pinched my waist to let me know he was only teasing, but I pressed on regardless. Had he only brought me here because he felt like it was a part of his life that he hadn't told me about?

As much as Nathan and I shared everything, we had a mutual understanding that some things didn't need to be discussed. At one point in his life, he was a completely different person, and he wanted to draw a line under that. If something came up in conversation, it came up. But he didn't ever drag up the past unnecessarily, preferring instead to isolate it as a different era with no bearing on his present.

"I know mistakes were made before Christmas, but I hope you don't feel like you owe me every little part of your life, Nathan. I had a right to know about Marie because it happened during our relationship and had an impact on our relationship. This is different. This is personal, and this place was special to you before we even met. I almost feel like I'm intruding."

Nathan shook his head to himself but didn't immediately reply. I leaned against his shoulder, feeling so peaceful that I could have easily closed my eyes if I didn't want to absorb every inch of the view before me.

"I appreciate you feeling that way, Bella," he said after a few minutes of silence. "And I didn't bring you here because I felt obliged to do so."

"Okay, good."

"My year in Italy was a very strange part of my life. We talk about my past every now and then, and obviously you know everything about my time post-Italy, but nothing about what happened in between."

"I kind of assumed it was a cool-off period for you during your sister's pregnancy. A clean break from every bad thing you'd been caught up in before you moved out here."

He shrugged. "It was. I wanted to be there for Georgia. And she was the main thing that kept me grounded because, fuck me, Bella, it was hard."

"What, Georgia's pregnancy, or...?"

"I missed my old life. And I hate to admit that because it makes me feel weak. But I missed the sordid parties, the drugs, Louisa... I assumed taking myself out of those situations by moving to Italy would be easy. Away from the temptation. But I thought about going back so many times. And I never told you because I was scared you'd no longer see Italy Nathan as the bad-guy-turned-good-guy if I did. I'd just be the bad guy who really wanted to carry on being a bad guy."

In such a short space of time, Nathan had given me so much to think about that I could barely keep up with my racing thoughts. How long had he been carrying this on his shoulders? He joked about how he didn't deserve me and how I was too good for him, but I'd just taken those as light-hearted comments. Had he actually been stewing on this for all that time?

"Nathan, wanting to go back did not make you weak. It made you strong. You had those temptations and you resisted. It shows that it wasn't an easy ride and yet you rode it out regardless. It's an incredible strength of character and you shouldn't be embarrassed by it."

"It's the fact that I had those thoughts in the first place. I should have wanted to be there for my sister but instead I wanted to go back to England and carry on wasting my life away on sex and drugs."

"But that was your life. It would have been weirder if you were easily able to switch it off and never think about it again. It was such a big change that you no doubt craved what you were used to. I mean, it's nowhere near the same thing, but look at me. I'm here because it's good for me, yet every day I want to go home. Because going home is the easy option. The familiar option. The thing that would make me happiest."

He said nothing, but his hand swept up and down my back in soothing strokes. Sometimes it was easy to forget that Nathan had a past that was completely different to his present. His behaviour and actions now did not resemble the person he claimed he'd been several years earlier.

Whilst it would never be comfortable for me to think about him in those situations, I always felt immensely proud of how far he'd come and how much he'd turned his life around. After hearing about his struggles during his time in Italy, it only made me prouder.

"Whenever I got those thoughts, I'd come here," he then said. "Looking at this view put everything into perspective. It made the drugs and sex seem insignificant, reminded me that the most important thing was family. The way I was going, I'd have never had a family. I still think it's a miracle I found you."

I chuckled. "You know, I'd been convinced all morning that you were going to propose."

Dislodging me from his shoulder, Nathan snapped his head round to look at me, eyes wide. "Really? Why?"

I shrugged. "You randomly turn up to surprise me, you say you want to show me somewhere special, you looked nervous on the train, and then we get here and it's crazy romantic. Although hearing myself say that out-loud, it sounds super insensitive given what you've just told me."

A grin spread across Nathan's face, causing his eyes to twinkle in that characteristic way that I'd fallen in love with.

"Are you disappointed?"

I didn't give him the satisfaction of a real answer, saying instead, "It just means I've still got it to look forward to."

Nathan planted a gentle kiss on my lips before turning his gaze back to the lake. A few seconds later, he laughed to himself.

"Shit, thinking back, it really does look like I was building up to a proposal."

"I'm glad it wasn't just me getting ahead of myself, then."

"Yeah, sorry, Bella, but this is my special place—not yours." He winked.

I grinned and rested my head on his shoulder again. If it had been insensitive to bring up the proposal after Nathan's confession, then he didn't seem to think so. If anything, it had relaxed him again and made him laugh.

"There was a time before Christmas when I really felt like we might not make it," Nathan said. "Every morning I woke up and wondered if that day would be the day you broke up with me. And every time I thought about that, I thought about this. This spot here. This lake, these mountains... It was such a personal part of my life, and you are the most important thing in my life. I knew I had to bring you here."

"Thank you for introducing me to the other part of your life. I've never felt closer to you."

"I'm very happy to hear that. But I've not got a ring so don't try to manipulate a proposal out of me."

I felt his lips smiling in amusement as he pressed a kiss to my forehead. 

❆❆❆

Thank you for reading :) xx

So hands up who's ever felt like they were going to be proposed to, only to realise they'd misread the situation? *raises hand* My friends and I were talking about this recently and all of us had been in a scenario where we thought our boyfriends were going to propose, only for said boyfriends to be completely shocked that we'd come to such a conclusion. (I'm now married and another friend is recently engaged, so the boys are starting to come around to the idea...)