“You’re a beautiful dancer, Carly. I already knew that, but watching you tonight, with the lights, and the music, it’s … you’re a gorgeous dancer.”
“Was. I was a gorgeous dancer. This was my last show. I’m taking a job in the administration next month. I’m moving on.” She glared at him, hoping her meaning was perfectly clear.I don’t think about you. I don’t miss you.
“That’s fantastic, congratulations,” Nick smiled, and she felt her glare waver. How dare his smile still make her pulse flutter like that? How dare he look so happy at her success? “But I’m not.”
“Not what?”
“Not moving on. I mean, work is fine; it’s better than fine. I’m having a good time and taking good pictures, and the response has been really positive for the first two issues. I thinkVoguewill keep me on for another year, if it keeps up like this.”
“Did you pay a scalper all that money just to rub your success in my face?” Carly interjected. “Because you could have waited at the stage door and done it for free.”
He smiled to himself, as though he’d known exactly how she’d respond to his showing up out of nowhere. The sight of his smile made her stomach swoop with pleasure, which was quickly chased by irritation at how well he knew her. Then an ache. Heknewher. He watched her silently and ran a hand over his hair. His hair was a little shorter than it had been in Sydney, and to her irritation, it suited him even better now.
“No, I didn’t. I wanted to see you dance. And I wanted to tell you something, which is that I fucked up and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you, or to everyone. I was insecure and jealous, and I decided that was more important than being honest with people. But I’m not doing that anymore. I’m telling the truth even when it’s frightening, even when I’d rather hide from people. Which is why I’m here.”
Carly crossed her arms and said nothing, so he kept talking.
“I spent all that time in Sydney with you, walking around this place that used to be my home and feeling like I didn’t belong there anymore. And then you left and I realized that home doesn’t have to be one place. It can be two different places, or five. It can be wherever you feel safest or wherever you became the version of yourself you always wanted to be. Or it can be the place it hurts the most to leave. And nothing ever hurt like when you left Sydney. And for a while I couldn’t figure out why, but then I realized it was because I was at home with you.”
Carly had a sudden vision of the lost, confused look on his face the day he’d gone looking for the old photography shop and found a café in its place, and felt her heart squeeze in her chest. She crossed her arms tighter, wishing his words hadn’t moved her at all. She didn’t want to be moved by Nick Jacobs.
“It was just a fling, Nick,” she said firmly.
Except, that wasn’t true, was it? It wasn’t everything, but it wasn’t nothing, either. What she had felt for Nick, what she still felt now, despite all her efforts to move on, it wasn’t nothing.
“And even if we’d had more time,” she barreled on, determined to make her point, “it was never going to last. We had fun, until we didn’t, and if it had lasted any longer …”
She didn’t finish the sentence aloud. If it had lasted any longer, he would have tired of her, would have realized that she wasn’t enough for him. That was the Carly Montgomery story: kind of a lot, but never enough.
“If it had lasted any longer, I only would have fallen deeper in love with you,” he said, taking a few steps into the room, but stopping well short of close to her. He swallowed hard, and she remembered what he’d said about telling the truth even when it was frightening.
Except that he’d had so many chances to tell her the truth, and he’d wasted them all. And now he was back here, just as she was moving on with her life, telling her he still wanted her?
“It was just sex, Nick, okay? And it wasn’t even real sex.” It didn’t even count.
“You know that’s not true. You know what we did was real. It was sex, and it was more than just that. It … it meant something to me. It made me want more of you. All of you.”
“You can’t have all of me. No one can.”
“Not like that. I don’t want you like that. I want you like this. Mad, and stubborn, and making me be better, and making me work to be all the things I want to be. I want you. I want to love you. That’s the truth.”
Carly’s eyes had filled with tears, but she blinked them away, her heart suddenly raw and throbbing like it had been the day she left Sydney. She wanted to believe him—she hated that she wanted to believe him—but she’d believed him before, ignored all her instincts in order to trust him and let him under her skin, into places no one else had seen before. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“It’s too late, Nick. You had your chance. We had our chance, and it didn’t work.”
“Carly, please,” his voice cracked a little.
She tightened her arms across her chest and stared at the floor between his feet, too exhausted to yell or stalk away. Too tired to go through all this pain again.
“Just go, Nick. I need to finish packing.” She turned away and went back to pulling photos and good luck cards off the mirror, arranging them carefully in the box so that she only heard, and didn’t see, when he backed out of the room and turned down the hall.
She kept piling things into the box, trying to ignore the tremble in her hands and the ache in her chest. They would fade. They’d faded last time. She’d come back to New York and begun building herself a new life, something she once thought she didn’t know how to do. But she’d done it, just like Heather had. Just like Nick had. He had a new life full of real glamor and real success. All the things he’d pretended to have. He hadVoguemoney.
But he’d come here to tell her that none of it was enough if he didn’t have her. That he didn’t want to build his new life without her. Carly looked up and stared at her face in the mirror. Even the warm light from the yellow-gold bulbs couldn’t conceal the pink rimming her eyes. She looked like a mess. She remembered what Nick had told Ivy Page about all the photos he’d taken of her.Even the bad ones are good.Even when she was a mess, when she was angry and hurt and storming out of rooms, he still saw her. Saw who she was trying to be, even when she fell short.
It was just sex, she repeated to herself. But that wasn’t true, was it? In only having the sex with him that she really wanted to have, she’d ended up being far more intimate with him than she’d been with any other partner. He hadn’t had all of her, but he had seen all her. He knew all of her. And he still wanted her.
I want you like this. Mad and stubborn.
