“A life.” He shouted it, reaching for her. “Cinta, you are my life.”
She tried to ease away, but he was too big, too present, too much what she wanted. She accepted his arms around her. She’d been his willing hostage and he hers, but it was time to be free.
“Your life is only just beginning to fire, Mace. You don’t know where it will take you.”
He pushed hair behind her ear, rubbed his thumb over the curved edge of the helix. “It takes me where you are.”
That gesture, made from their first weekend together, almost broke her, his way of learning about her when she’d tried so hard to hold him at arm’s-length. Now the length of space and time between them would be fatal. “No.”
“If you won’t come with me, that’s it. It’s over. I’ll go. I’ll do what needs to be done to set Dillon up. I’ll quit and come home to you. I’ll still make a fuck-load of money and I’ll invent something else bigger, better.”
She closed her eyes because she’d seen his truth. He would give it up for her. He would walk away if she asked him to. But he was so close, so close, and she couldn’t be the one thing that stopped him making this whole dream come true. There was no something else as alive, as vital for him. And second shots like this just didn’t come along.
“No.” She made the word sound like a stone, sharp and heavy enough to sink them.
He let go of her abruptly. “What the fuck do you want me to do?” Anger flared but he reined it in as quickly as it saturated his face in hard lines. “You’re coming with me or I’m coming back as soon as I can.”
Go. She had to let him go. She placed her hand over his heart; it was pumping fast, like the meter on the taxi, like the end of their time together. “I want you to build your dream and I’ll build mine.”
The eyebrow lifted, stayed arched above his incredulous eye. “Perfect.”
“I’ve been offered a new job.”
“What?” He leaned into her. “When?” He stepped back, his hands going to his head as her words connected. “Fuck, when were you going to tell me?”
She watched him put this together. One, two, three racing breaths. He might hate her for this. She might come to hate herself for it.
“You fucking weren’t going to tell me. You were going to let me walk out that door and make whatever the fuck decision you want, then drop it on me when I’m halfway around the world. Shit. What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Nothing, it’s not about you.”
He looked at his watch, shook his head. He pulled his bag off the bed with a savage yank and too much force. It thumped to the floor and bounced. “So you’ll start the new job and I’ll come back and—”
“We’re over.” The last gift she could give him was his freedom. She needed to make sure he blamed her. That he’d cut clear and not look back.
He shoved the case out of the way, advancing on her. “You’re fucking ending us.” He snapped his fingers in her face and she started. “Like that.”
They were both breathing heavily. His shoulders were up, the tendons in his neck taut, but there was no violence in him, she had nothing to fear except existing without him. She’d hijacked him when he was a distraction she craved. He’d had a choice then. She was doing it again when he had too many constraints to fight his way through.
“It’s time.”
“You’re doing this now when I’m about to... Fuck.” His hands went to his head again. ”Give me a week. I’ll come back we’ll work this out.”
“No.” She swallowed around her panic, assumed authority lending her voice stability. They were different people now. He was about to realise his ambition. She was about to reclaim the part of her life she’d lost. “You’d destroy your dream for something that doesn’t exist anymore.”
He processed that between one heartbeat and the next. It played over his features like damage. “You’re saying you don’t love me.”
Oh God. She was about to lose the one part of her life she needed to be whole.
“Cinta, say it.” He wanted to shake her. She could see it in him, the need to hurt her like she was hurting him, but he walked away, put half a room between them. “I need your words.”
Oh God. She couldn’t send that lie into the world, but she couldn’t leave him doubting. “I won’t be here when you get back.”
His eyes shuttered. His fist clenched. His beautiful face turned to hardened steel. She could take it back. She could stop this. She could tell him she loved him, she’d wait for him, or forget the new job and go with him, they’d work it out somehow.
Except she loved him, so she had to let him go.
He pulled up the handle of his bag and wheeled it out of the room. She followed. His taxi would be waiting. In the kitchen, he shouldered his hand luggage. He took his passport off the table and slipped it in his coat pocket. He might still fight her. He was tenacious. He never gave up.