Anda threw her pack on the floor while Ethan did the same, then slammed the door closed behind them.
“You were reckless.”
She looked up at the ceiling, counted to three, then turned to face him. “No, I fucking was not.”
“You were. You could have gotten yourself killed. You could have gotten me killed.”
She shook her head. “I did nothing I haven’t done before. The only difference is you actually saw me this time. We got the intel, we completed the mission, end of story.”
“You know it’s not that simple.”
This is what she’d been afraid for the last six months, really since the start. She’d worried that eventually what she had to do as part of her job would become too much for him, and all her fears were being realized. “If you had been in my position, what would you have done? Admit it. You would have done exactly the same thing.”
“I wouldn’t have, though. I would have found another way, one that didn’t include using my body and basically cheating—”
“Don’t fucking go there. I didn’t use my body. I flirted with a guy in order to get close enough to lift his key card so that we could complete the mission. Which, by the way, is not unlike what I did in Budapest and Barcelona and other places.”
He ignored her comment about their previous missions. “You were practically making out with him.”
“We didn’t even kiss!” Suddenly the anger drained out of her along with any fight she had left.
She sat down on the bunk they shared. It was barely big enough for both of them, but they’d always snuggled together so it hadn’t mattered. “This isn’t working out, is it?”
“You just need to look for alternate methods when we’re on missions, that’s all.”
Ugh! Men. “I’m not talking about the fucking mission and, by the way, fuckface, no, I’m not going to change methods that get the job done. I flirted, I didn’t fuck him. I meant us. We’re not working out. We’re done.”
“What?” He stalked towards her. “You’re ending things? That’s it? No discussion, no conversation, not even a fight? We’re over because you say we’re over?”
“Point of clarification, we are fighting. We’ve been fighting. This issue has been popping up on missions over the last six months. Today might have been the first time a mission landed us in the same room at the same time—usually, I’m working the mark, while you’re getting the intel or vice versa—but my methods have been the same on several missions.”
“Just because you’ve always done it, doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do it. There must be other ways.”
She growled internally. The man had been an agent for six months, while she had been one for over a fucking decade. She had more experience but apparently her vagina cancelled that out. “That’s bullshit and you know it. I know what I’m doing because I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you.”
She let out a frustrated sigh. “When we were in Masillia, I asked you to make absolutely positively sure that you would be okay with what I needed to do on missions. But you’re not. I’m just making you miserable and that’s not a relationship. The problem is you can’t seem to separate work from who we are together.”
“I shouldn’t have to separate the two. We’re still a couple, even at work.”
“But we’re not. Think of it as if you’re an actor. You have no problem at all when you need to use your ‘masculine wiles’ to get something from a mark. You’ve flirted with women on missions. I may not like it, but I understand that it’s a part of your job. Yet I do the same, and suddenly I’m cheating on you, and I don’t value our relationship, and I don’t value or respect you. That’s a double standard and it’s not fucking fair, and I can’t live with that anymore. You know how much I care about you, how much I love you. I don’t just love you, I’minlove with you. But sometimes you make me feel like a piece of shit just for doing my job, a job you’ve known about almost since we first met.”
It was time to end this.
“Look, you’re never going to be able to accept who I am and what I do. You want to be an agent, fine. Be an agent. But you’re not going to be my partner anymore, not at work, and not away from work, either. There’s no point anymore, is there?”
His body sagged a little and he sat down next to her, close but not quite touching. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make you feel like…shit. It’s just hard for me to see you with another man.”
“That’s bullshit, too, and you know it. You’ve seen me with another man before. We’ve been together for almost two years and I’ve had three movies come out in that time, and two of those involved a love story between my character and another. That was acting, which you seem to accept, but not the acting I do as an agent? Why?”
“To be honest, if I’d been on set with you the days you had love scenes with other men, I probably would have handled it just as well as I’ve handled this. I love you.”
Her heart soared just as it did every time he said those words to her. It had been over a year of hearing it, and the happiness they brought her had not changed.
Yet,shehad changed. They both had over these last two years. In some ways they’d changed together, and in some ways it seemed they’d drifted apart.
She looked him square in the eye to prove to him she was serious about her next words. “We need time apart. We need to break up. We’re not healthy for each other right now.”
He immediately started shaking his head. “I don’t agree with that. I think what we need is to spend more time together, just us without work.”
