“Don’t even try to talk, Mace. Because I don’t think you understand the problem. You think you let me down. You think you got caught up and prioritised badly, and now you’re guilty as hell and don’t know what to do about it, because you do know abandoning me tonight was a deliberate, stupid, thoughtless thing to do, on top of the way we’ve been drifting apart. You’re wondering why I’m so calm and because I am, you’re even more confused, because if I was shouting and crying and breaking things you could rock in here and take control and use that incredible body of yours to bring me back down and make me feel okay again.”
He moved into the room. He wanted to see her face, but he was wary of coming too close. She dipped her brush in the paint and continued whiting out the canvas.
“No, don’t talk, Mace. That should make this easier for you. The problem is I knew how much I could hurt someone if I loved my job more than them. I knew it would be impossible to continually justify choosing work over a partner. So I didn’t do that. I didn’t risk anyone else’s heart. Of course, I didn’t risk mine either, until you.”
She put the brush down and moved to face him. She’d been crying. The whites of her eyes were pink. He turned to sand; a sculpture that looked like a man but had no substance and would blow away to nothing from the lightest breath of air. She saw all the coarse grains; all the imperfections and the fragile, crumbling makings of him.
“I knew you were dangerous from the start, I just didn’t know how that would affect me. Now I do. I thought I was strong enough to hold our two halves together. Now I’m not sure I if I am.” She turned back to the easel. “I deserve better. We both do.”
Mace separated; his heart and his lungs, his head and his body, falling away to nothing, no beat, no air, no thought, no action.
“I don’t know where we go from here. Our merger is dysfunctional. It might be smarter to spin off our separate interests so we don’t lose more than we’re prepared to.” She picked up a brush. “I don’t ever want to hate you, Mace, but we can’t keep going like this.”
He hung on to her words, their cold efficiency, their accurate diagnosis. It wasn’t that simple for him, and he’d fight to change her mind, but she’d taken the ground from under him with her businesslike manner and shaken it like a picnic rug. He was tipped over and all in pieces, left without a solid footing to reason from. Everything she’d said was true.
“Do you still love me?” The words clawed up his throat and cracked his jaw to get free.
She spoke without hesitation. “Yes, I do, but you have to be in my life for that to mean anything.”
God. Fuck. It wasn’t over. “It won’t always be this way. We won’t be a start-up forever.”
“No, but we’re talking years, not months, like this.”
Right again. As much as he wanted to deny it. He’d need to be away from her for months when they set up the new office and she didn’t know that yet. He was reduced to begging, and from his weak position he had no real chance of convincing her, but he did it anyway.
“I’ll do better. The business will cope. I can hire a more senior development team.”
“You know that’s not realistic.”
“You’re talking yourself out of us. I’m still here. I’m wrong. I’m so fucking wrong, but I love you and I’ll find a way to make this good again. You can’t give up on us.”
She abandoned the easel and came to stand in front of him. “I didn’t give up on us, you did. My show sold out tonight. If you were still here you’d have asked. If you loved me,” her voice cracked, caught loss in its tone and went soft, “you’d have chosen differently.”
He closed his eyes. Hers were wet. She stood so close he could smell her floral perfume under the caustic paint fumes. He’d forfeited his right to touch her, but if she touched him, maybe they could find their way back.
But in the stillness she moved away. He was alone. The music stopped. Other people witnessed her triumph tonight; other people had seen her vulnerability, her warrior brave, and her creative essence. Had someone loved her better tonight, and for all the nights and days he’d been a ghost? He followed her into the other room.
“Are you fucking Alfie?” The words came as sharp as the thought, as an arrow of torn pain.
She sighed. “No, but in the interest of full disclosure, I went to dinner with him tonight and he kissed me.”
“Did you kiss him back?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck! Why?” As if he deserved an answer.
“You have a demanding mistress, Mace, and she’s a dream you don’t want to give up. I was angry and lonely. I just wanted a kiss to feel good for a moment on a night that was spoiled because you weren’t there with me.”
Christ, that was a fatal knife slash to his jugular, but bleeding out was too good for him.
She left him standing there, went to the bedroom and turned off the lights. She knew he wasn’t going to come to her easily there. Holding her at night had taken all his confusion and irritation and smoothed them away. He wasn’t fit to hold her and everything he faced now, he’d set in motion. There was no surprise, no place for anger, just the wretchedness of having reached an inevitable conclusion of his making.
He needed air. What was in his chest was foul and suffocating. He went to the balcony and wrenched open the doors. Cold night and open sky, the smell of soft rain on the sleeping city. He breathed deep and let the spray sprinkle him. When the front of his shirt was stuck to him he took it off.
He’d hit the hanging punching bag enough times to have split one knuckle before he realised he was doing it. You didn’t get to change what other people did because it hurt you. Otherwise there would be no accident taking his mother away, or the illness that got to her first. Now he couldn’t breathe for another reason. He could hit that bag till his hands broke. It didn’t bring Buster back and it wouldn’t bring Cinta back either. The bag swung at him and he stopped it, hugging it, he held on and leant his head against it. His face was damp, rain, sweat, tears like acid on his cheeks.
“Enough, Mace.”