“I did. I wanted to see you. But then Jones ushered me onto a private jet.”
Something inside me homes in on that information. “Private jet?”
“I told him I was planning on coming here to talk to you, and he said he could help. He must have made a call to Huck because it looked a lot like the jet Huck borrowed from a friend to bring me back from tour. All silver inside.”
My narrowed gaze flicks to my father, catching him looking at us. He smiles knowingly, before turning his attention back to Halliday.
“Always useful to have friends willing to…help out,” I comment. “How did the meeting go?”
Tate breaks into a smile. “Really well. They agreed to everything I asked for.”
“They did?” My heart lifts. “Did you ask to work four days a week so you can come home for long weekends?”
I don’t catch myself quick enough to stop the word ‘home’ from slipping out.
Her eyes pinch. “No… I didn’t.”
“You didn’t?” A growing sense of dread starts winding its way around my windpipe, inching up slowly like a poisonous weed that’s determined to destroy everything in its path.
This is it. The final goodbye. She’s come to tell me it’s over. She doesn’t want to put us through the strain of long-distance, even though I’m more than willing to do whatever it takes to make it work.
I haven’t allowed myself to consider it not working.
I can’t.
“Tate—”
“I know we talked about it last time I saw you, but…” She sighs. “That’s not what I want, Sullivan.”
I struggle to hold it together as my breath comes in jagged pants.
I’ve lost her. She didn’t even want to try. I messed things up that badly that she couldn’t even bring herself to try in case I screwed up and hurt her again.
Now I’m going to have to explain to Molly that Tate’s gone again.
And just like the first time, it’s because of me.
She takes my hands and strokes them. I want to whip them away before the pain of knowing it’s the last time she’ll touch me takes over. But at the same time, I close my fingers around hers, pulling her closer until our bodies are flush, our chests grazing.
I don’t want to let her go.
“I understand,” I breathe, my throat burning as she looks into my eyes.
I can’t look away. I want to sear the sight of her into my soul, so I have something to remember her by when I go to hell after what I’ve put her through.
I ruined us. I broke us.
I deserve this.
I should be grateful that she came to break it to me in person. That’s Tate all over. Kind. Sweet. Thoughtful.
But all I feel is anger at myself.
“No. I don’t think you do,” she says, and it takes everything in me not to kiss her one last time. I haven’t felt her lips against mine since the night she lifted me up off the floor and held me together when I thought I was going to shatter into a billion pieces.
The last time I kissed her it was tinged with the salt of tears.
“Sullivan,” she urges, pulling me out of my head. “I didn’t ask, because I want something else instead.”
