“He wasn’t sick?” Her nose scrunches.
“Nope. The timing of the heart attack was … ironic, I guess. But I confirmed with Lisette and his team of doctors that he had no underlying issues he was being treated for, chronic or otherwise.”
“Wow.” She glances down, stuck in the moment. “All right, you going to answer my question or what?”
“I was going to fire you, Keane, because I wanted to date you.” I say.
She’s quiet for a second. “Okay, but I don’t understand.”
“I know how uncomfortable it made you, how unprofessional you felt,” I say. “And I didn’t want to be another Welles executive, banging his assistant on the weekends. I wanted something real, Aerin, because you’re the realest thing I’ve ever known.”
“You couldn’t have waited two more weeks?”
“No. I couldn’t. That’s how crazy I am about you.”
Aerin keeps her distance, her arm flush against the open door, just a couple of feet between us, though it might as well be an ocean.
“I was going to pay you out for the second half of your contract,” I say. “Maybe replace you with a temp. I know you were bored as hell, Aerin. It was torture for you. After everything you’ve done for me the past couple of weeks, I figured you could use a break from the grunt work. That or I’d be happy to find some executive-level duties to keep you occupied.”
“Calder …” She tries to speak but nothing comes out. And then her dark eyes seek refuge in mine. “It’s too much. You don’t need to buy me out. You don’t need to give me anything. All I wanted was you.”
“Wanted …” Past tense.
“I’m flying back to LA on Saturday,” she says. “I think it’s for the best if we go our separate ways. All of my client contacts are on the West Coast. And I don’t love New York. Everyone’s so moody and serious, and you can’t even see the sun half the time because of all the buildings …”
She goes on, listing the tiniest, most mundane reasons she couldn’t possibly see herself living here.
“Keane,” I cut her off. “You’re scared. I get it. You have your perfectly little orderly life back in LA. New York represents the unknown to you, chaos, but I promise your business will flourish just as much if not better than it would in LA. And if you miss the sun? We’ll hop in my plane at a moment’s notice and go somewhere warm.”
“Two weeks, Calder. You’ve known me two weeks. How can you stand here and promise me the world when you hardly even know me?”
“Because I know enough to know you’re unlike anyone I’ve ever known. Because you keep me grounded and because when I look at you, it’s the only time I’ve ever believed everything’s going to be okay.” Fuck it. I step into her apartment and she lets the door close behind me. “We’d be so good together, Keane.”
I cup her cheek in my palm.
“And what if we’re not? What if we destroy each other?” she asks.
“I would never destroy you,” I say before winking. “Hell, I might even let you organize my apartment again if it’d really mean that much to you.”
She fights a smile, her ruby lips twisting as she glances down.
“You make it sound so beautiful, so easy,” she says, her honey gaze lifting onto mine. “But I think we’re kidding ourselves here. I think we’re caught up in … everything … and we’re not thinking clearly or rationally.”
Aerin steps away, running her fingers down my forearm as it falls from her sweet face.
“I’m sorry, Calder,” she says, eyes misty and blinking. “You should go now.”
CALDER LEAVES WITHOUT A fight, though I think he’s in shock.
I watch through the spy hole until he disappears down the hall, and then I slump against the door, my chest tight and aching. I miss him already, but this is how it has to be.
We’re all wrong for each other. Polar opposites everyway. Riddled with issues that are only going to get in the way of everything.
Plus, what kind of woman would I be if I took him up on that offer? Not to mention, I can’t just uproot my life because I met some guy in New York whom I’ve known all of two weeks.
That’s something my mother would do—not me.
It’s the grief speaking. He’s not thinking clearly. His proposition sounds like heaven, and I’m sure he means every word of it—now. But once the air clears and he gets settled in his position at WellesTech, his priorities are going to shift, the excitement of whatever this is will wear off …
I refuse to uproot my life just so I can wait for the other shoe to drop.
Because it will.
It always does.
Especially when you least want it to.
I STAND AT THE PODIUM, glancing at the sea of black before me. There must be thousands of them filling this auditorium that NYU was all too eager to loan us, all of them coming to pay their last respects to a man they only knew in publicity releases and flattering Time Magazine articles.