“I—” Clutching the squared-off armrests, she tried again. “Peter, I can’t...”
His dark eyes were pinned to her face, narrowed and mean and distrustful.
And to her shame, she began crying.
There was no passing these tears off as coughs. Not with her ragged gasps for breath and her rough sobs and her face crumpled in distress behind the trembling shelter of her hands. She bent at the waist, the ache in her heart literal and so painful she wanted to keep collapsing in on herself, tighter and tighter, until she disappeared entirely.
He’d never seen her like this before. No one had, outside her family.
It was humiliating. She hated it. Hated herself. Hated him for witnessing it from across the room, already so unbearably distant before he’d even stepped foot on an airplane.
Only he wasn’t across the room anymore, because he’d somehow dragged her out of the chair and onto the couch. Onto his lap. Into his arms, which closed around her securely.
His palm cradling the back of her head, he pressed her face into his neck and held tight.
“Sweetheart...” It was a ragged murmur. “For fuck’s sake. I have no idea what the fuck’s happening here, butpleasedon’t cry. And i-if”—his voice wavered and broke—“if you l-love me even a little bit, even afractionas much as I love you, please don’t fuckingleaveme.”
At that, she jerked her head up and back. “I’mn-not the one leaving, Peter.”
“We both know that’s not true.” His own eyes wet, he simply looked at her, his arms still supporting her as she nestled in his lap. “I’d never leave you.Never, Maria.”
To him, it obviously wasn’t a lie. Which meant his definition of leaving didn’t match hers. At all. And maybe, if she could make him understand . . .
“Then tell me something.” She cupped his face in her hands, willing him to hear her. No, more than that. Tolisten, even if he wouldn’t like what she was saying. “If you’d never leave me, why will I be spending most of the next three years alone?”
His head gave a little bewildered shake, his beard abrading her palms.
“But that’s not leaving you. That’s doing my job.Ourjob.” Ducking his head slightly, he looked her dead in the eye and kept making promises, so many solemn promises, and none of them were the ones she needed. “And when it’s over, or anytime I have more than a day or two off, I’ll be right back by your side. Or you can come live with me there if you want. That’s fine by me. I’ll be making enough to support us both.”
When she closed her eyes in frustration and grief, tears leaked out from beneath her lids. “I—I don’t want you tosupportme, Peter. I like working. I like having a career of my own. I just want you tostaywith me. To notleaveme for three fucking years.”
“We’re working actors, Maria.” His voice was very gentle as his lips captured her tears, one by one, and kissed them away in a gesture so loving, more promptly appeared. “When an opportunity like this comes around, we have to take it, because we might never get another offer that good again. Not even if we audition the rest of our lives. You know that. Please tell me you know that, after all this time.”
Gods above, he still thoughtshewas the one who didn’t get it.
She might not have spent two decades in Hollywood, but she comprehended the nature of their profession. Its inherent instability. The challenge of career longevity in a youth-obsessedindustry. The extent to which any actor’s success, in the end, depended on luck and timing and privilege of various sorts as much as talent.
But she also comprehended her own nature, in a way he evidently didn’t.
“I get that work is important to you, and I get why. It’s important to me too, although I know you have trouble seeing that.” Letting go of his face, she knuckled away her tears and tried to explain herself as plainly as possible. “But I need to be your priority. Not something you squeeze in between jobs, stowed safely away until the next time you’re available.”
His voice held the faintest hint of an edge. “It’s not like Iwantto be separated from you, Maria.”
Beneath her, his thighs had gone rigid. Steely.
He was bristling instead of listening.
“I know that. I understand why you want this role. I even understand your decision to accept the offer, no matter what it means for us.” Unwilling to give up yet, she spoke carefully as his sharp eyes bored into her, demanding she concede her position, when she couldn’t. Not without conceding herself too. “But I want a real home. A shared home. I won’t accept spending most of my time alone after I moved halfway across the world for you. I also won’t uproot myself to follow you every time you land a new role. Not even if I love you, and Ido, Peter. More than I think you understand. If I loved you less, I wouldn’t need you this much.”
So much it frightened her sometimes.
He went silent. Bit his lip, thinking, before he spoke again.
A wild burst of hope made her tremble in his arms. Because his eyes had gone cloudy with concentration as he considered her words, and maybe he grasped what she was saying now, maybe—
“Is this about what happened with your ex?” His hand clenchedagainst her back, then flattened and stroked. “Because, sweetheart, I’d never cheat on you, and I thought we already—”
He understood nothing.