“Please don’t. He wasn’t nasty about it. He thinks I’m good at my job, and in this business, you want to keep essential people.” It was becoming really clear that Zep didn’t consider her essential.
“Still, you can’t let him guilt you into staying.” Zep went to one knee as Daisy stopped in front of him. “I might need to take her for a walk. She’s wound up.”
“It’s fine. I’m not going to bed anytime soon.” There was zero way she would sleep. “She can sit up with me. I need to get ready. Apparently I’ve got an interview on Monday.”
His head turned at that. “Monday? This Monday?”
Finally she got a reaction out of him. Maybe he was viewing this as something that would happen a couple of months down the line. “Yes, Zep. I’ve got a ticket to go back to New York with my parents tomorrow afternoon. I interview on Monday, but I’ve been told it’s a formality. I could be back in New York in less than a month.”
He stood, his face falling before he managed a gentle smile. “I’m happy for you.”
She felt tears behind her eyes, but she wasn’t about to shed them. “That’s great. What do you . . . what do you think this means for us?”
He went quiet and sank down onto the bench that had been here when she’d moved in. How many nights had she sat on that bench and listened to the sounds of the world around her? This was the place where she’d learned how to be still. Such a simple skill and yet it had made a world of difference for her.
“I don’t think long distance is going to work for us,” he said.
She sat down beside him but made sure they weren’t touching. That distance she’d felt between them seemed intentional on his part. “I thought you wanted to try.”
“We’re not going to get a chance to try. If you leave tomorrow, when are you going to be back? Tuesday? Is that when you’ll put in your notice? I don’t think two weeks is enough time to try out something we both know isn’t going to work. And you’ll spend most of those two weeks getting ready to move.”
“It could be longer. Even if I take the job, it could be a month or six weeks.” That could give them time to figure out if he wanted to come with her. She could stretch it out, tell them she couldn’t leave her department until they found a replacement. It might buy her another couple of weeks.
He turned to her, a faintly cruel expression on his face. “You need six weeks of stress relief?”
“Are we back to that? Because I apologized. It was a stupid thing to say and I was trying to protect myself. I never viewed it that way, and that’s not what I’m asking for now.”
“What are you asking for?”
That was the problem. She wasn’t sure. She wanted for him to say that it would all be okay, that no matter what she decided, they would be all right. “I guess I want to talk this out with you.”
“Really?” He turned her way, his handsome face in shadows. “Now you want to talk about it. How long have you known this was a possibility? You at least knew this afternoon and you didn’t once mention it to me, though you had plenty of opportunities. You had all evening to say something. Maybe if we’d talked, I wouldn’t have been so floored at what happened tonight.”
“Were you? Because from what I’ve seen, it hasn’t bothered you at all.” He’d been the life of the party, making everyone laugh and charming her parents and all their friends.
“Of course it bothers me. I care about you, but I was also ready for it. I always knew you would leave. I didn’t know it would be so soon. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted?”
It frustrated her, but there was only one answer. “Yes.”
“Then tell me how I’m the bad guy for trying to not make this hard on you.”
She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. Not in front of him. She knew what he would do. He would hold her, and he might even tell her what she wanted to hear, but it would be pity. He was a deeply sympathetic man. “It almost feels like you want me to go.”
“Of course I don’t want you to go,” he replied, his voice hoarse. “I don’t know. Maybe I do because I know if you stay, you’ll regret it. If you stay here for me, you’ll resent me for the rest of your life because you’ll never know what you could have accomplished somewhere else. You know in the end you’re going to walk out that door and you won’t look back.”