Someone approaches me with a smiling friendly face, wanting to dance. I realize I’m still standing on the dancefloor. I shake my head and walk woodenly to the edge of the room.
Aidan is dancing with a lovely girl in a pink dress. He sees me and waves. I wave back, feeling sick.
You can leave anytime you want.
The clear dismissal replays in my mind. I watch Landon continue to navigate the room, I watch him talking and laughing. I watch as Ava approaches him and they dance a slow dance. That’s when I decide that I need to leave. I make my way to the doors, numb, moving past the few people already leaving. I make my way to the elevators, wishing as I leave the sounds of the party behind, that it was somehow possible to shed all my feelings and memories as well.
YOU can leave anytime you want.
The words follow me back to the suite. Like an evil, taunting chorus in my head.
My hands are shaking as I undress. I toss the dress and accessories in my suitcase. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to leave. I want to go somewhere far. Somewhere with no link at all to my life as it is now, where I would have the slightest chance of forgetting about Landon.
In the bathroom, I put on a robe and scrub the makeup off my face. My eyes stare back at me, wide and peaked, aching from the effort of trying not to cry.
We can’t work. I’d always known that. I’d known it the last time I walked away, but I’d been so weak, I’d let him draw me back into this... whatever it was we had. Now I was going to go through the hurt of losing him again. What option did I have? I couldn’t separate my emotions from the reality of our situation, just as he couldn’t be the man I wanted him to be. I could never be sure, that he was all mine.
I return to the bedroom, but I stop at the door. Across the room, Landon is standing at the doorway from the hall, looking at my suitcase on the bed. He lifts his eyes to mine, and the pain there slices through my chest. “You’re actually leaving,” he states, as if he didn’t quite believe it before.
I close my eyes. “Yes.”
A few seconds of silence pass. I imagine the party downstairs, winding down without him. I wonder if he’ll try to stop me, and if I’ll have the strength to resist him.
“When do you want to go? Tonight?” His voice is suddenly dispassionate. “Have you called Tony?”
I shake my head.
“I’ll let him know you want to leave. He’ll have a plane waiting for you for whenever you’re ready. His eyes go to my suitcase again. “Do you want me to leave?” he says, “I can arrange for another suite if you’d rather not have me around.”
I shake my head, fighting an overwhelming urge to cry. “No... Don’t. You don’t have to go.”
He nods and walks away without another word, leaving me trembling. Would he leave now? Go back to join the party? Maybe end up somewhere with Ava…
I sit on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands. I’m so confused. On one hand, I know I’m doing the right thing. For myself, even for him.
But on the other hand…
Tears fill my eyes. My mind flashes with all the moments of tenderness from the past two weeks, every moment when he’d made me fall deeper and deeper in love with him.
Tell him how you feel.
My mind recoils from the idea. I hear jack’s voice in my head, the day I told him that I loved him, all those years ago, the brutal dismissal with which he’d rejected me.
I’ll die if that happened with Landon. I just know that something inside me will wither and die.
If you don’t tell him, he’ll never know.
And I’ll always wonder. I breathe. I needed to be brave. If I tell him, and he rejects me, then I wouldn’t be able to fool myself anymore. I’d have to move on because there would be no other alternative.
Outside the bedroom, the hall is empty, and so is the other smaller bedroom in the suite. The living room is also empty, dark and silent.
I start to panic, imagining him going to spend the night somewhere else, with someone else.
Then I notice the breeze and the curtains billowing from the open glass doors to the balcony.
I approach uncertainly, suddenly not sure about what I want… what I have to say. Pushing the curtains aside, I step out into the cold night air. Landon is standing by the railing. He’s no longer wearing his jacket, and his shoulders are broad, but hunched in his white dress shirt. He has a drink in one hand, his face turned towards the many lights of the city.
As I watch, he raises the glass to his lips, then places it carefully on top of the railing. He makes a sound, like a sigh, then straightens and runs a hand through his hair. He looks dejected, and so alone that it’s heartbreaking to watch. I take a deep breath.