“Reality is you in your world and me in mine. Separately. It’s you in your political career. It’s me in my position at MCS.” She shrugged, hoping to unshoulder her hectic, confusing emotions. No such luck. “It’s time for me to leave. You know it. I know it.”
“You don’t know what I know, Mimi.” He returned his hands to her hips, more intimate now that they stood chest to chest.
“Oh? And what do you think you know?” She shouldn’t ask, but couldn’t help herself.
“My mother was wrong. She thought you were stubborn and headstrong. She said you were blindly in love with the idea of who I would become. She saw a woman who wanted me for my wallet.”
Even though his mother wasn’t a part of her life, that hurt.
“I never saw you as any of those things,” he continued, his tone softer. Gentler. “You were carefree. Independent. And not because you were trying to be. You just were. Are,” he corrected.
Some of the stiffness went out of her shoulders.
“When I drove you to the airport and put you on a plane back to Bigfork it wasn’t because I agreed with my mother. It was because I agreed with you—agreed that we had a future.”
“You did?”
“I did.” His voice was low, like admitting it hurt him as much as it hurt her to hear. “I knew you would’ve moved to Texas, because the stage was set for my future. And because you loved me, you would’ve come with me.”
“I did come with you.”
“Don’t hide behind glibness.” He took a breath. “Maybe my mother was right about you being stubborn, but that’s an asset. It was to me...and it is to whomever you choose to share your life with.”
She sort of hated how well he knew her. But he did know her. It was as inexplicable now as it was then. As if they were a reincarnated couple who’d already lived out this romance in another time. It was like she knew how it was supposed to end...and they weren’t destined to be star-crossed lovers.
“You’ve grown from an incredibly intelligent, beautiful twenty-three-year-old into an incredibly intelligent, beautiful thirty-three-year-old. Every attribute you possess fits into my life.”
Wait. What?
He released her hips and straightened away from her. Away rather than toward, the opposite direction his words had suggested.
“Years ago, I sent you away not because I didn’t think you were an incredible woman, and not because my mother is a puppet master. I did it to protect you. From all the things you couldn’t protect yourself from. You would’ve done anything for me—to your own detriment. That’s how much you cared.”
It was as honest a statement as either of them had made since their reunion.
“I wanted you to know that before you left.” He jutted a thumb toward her bedroom door. “I’m going to eat. Join me?”
“All I do is eat.” Her teeth found her bottom lip. “Well, not all.”
“No. Not all.” He smiled from the doorway, but didn’t come to her to seal his comment with a kiss. His distance felt wrong, as wrong as what he said next. “I won’t bother you any more while I’m in Bigfork.”
“Clean break?” she asked, lobbing his words from ten years ago back at him. She half expected an argument. Or maybe she wanted one.
“The cleanest.” He dipped his chin in agreement.
With that, the conversation ended. A conversation so filled with unexplored topics she’d lost count. But one thing was clear.
Their time was up.