“Don’t give me that shit, Gemma. Can you hear yourself?” He points to his ears. “Do you believe your own bullshit?”
“Go!” I shout, fighting back tears.
“Why are you doing this?” he demands. “After what you told me in the bath, you’re standing here telling me it meantnothing?”
“I’m doing what I should have done from the beginning. Chosen Anna,” I say, mustering as much strength as I can. “There’s nothing to fight for.”
He shakes his head, his arms dropping. “Nothing?”
“Don’t you see? You leave next week. What exactly are we fighting for? Long distance? When am I going to see you again? I can’t just drop my life here and fly over to New York whenever it suits you.”
“I’m not asking you to. You haven’t even given us a chance,” he says, drawing his brows together. “Is that what this is about? You don’t think I’d figure out a way to make this work?”
My shoulders deflate. “What’s the point?”
He steps forward again. “You’re the point, Gemma! This”—he waves a hand between us—“us!”
“No.” I wipe angrily at my tears. “Not with your life in New York and mine here—”
“Then I’ll stay here,” he says.
I scoff. “Don’t be ridiculous, Max.”
“I mean it.”
“And what? Throw away everything you’ve worked for?”
“No. It doesn’t need to be like that. I’ll handle it.”
My lips thin.
“You’re just scared,” he says, his voice barely carrying.
He’s right. I’m terrified.
He looks so unlike the Max I know. Younger. Smaller. As if all the fight has left his body. And maybe that’s what I need. I need him to give in. I need him to leave.
“Go, Max,” I bite back.
He blinks, staring in front of me. Muscles loose, eyes glistening with moisture.
“You don’t mean that,” he whispers.
Sucking in air, I straighten my spine. “Go, Max!”
The words hang in the air between us, and I see the moment they hit home.
I stay silent as he waits for a denial that will never come. When I stand my ground, his eyes harden.
“Fine,” he says, moving toward the door. Every part of me screams to stop him, but I stay silent.
“You know, I never thought you were a coward, Gemma,” he says quietly. “I guess that was my mistake.”
The door closes behind him, and with that, I gather what’s left of me and take my broken pieces upstairs.
The sobs I held back crash through me all at once, wracking my body until I can’t breathe, until I’m nothing but flayed skin and exposed nerves.
Sleep doesn’t find me quickly, but when it finally comes, I’m haunted by crystal blue eyes and the three words that died in my throat before he left.
