“You go back to Berkeley and I go back to New Haven. That’s for the best, don’t you think?”
“No. No, I don’t think that’s for the best. Please tell me you aren’t being serious. You know there’s something more between us. I don’t know why we didn’t see it before.”
“We’d never work, Corrie. You know that. We’d end up arguing all the time,” he said as if exhausted, then resumed getting dressed.
“So what? Maybe that’s exactly why wewouldwork. They say opposites attract.”
“But we’re not opposites. We argue because we’re both stubborn, egotistical know-it-alls—”
“Who happen to understand each other better than anyone has ever before,” she said, inching closer still and tracing her hands along his chest and collarbone. She gazed at his face, twirling her fingers along the nape of his neck and into the wet tips of his hair. Warmth spread over her body as he wrapped his hands around her waist and succumbed to their magnetic energy. Yes... he wanted it, too.
“What if I took a sabbatical? Moved to New England for a few months.” The words came out of her mouth without any forethought, but it felt right hearing them aloud.
A life with Ford no longer seemed an impossibility.
It seemed a necessity.
“Corrie, what are you saying? Are you saying you want to move... move for me? Because I thought you didn’t do relationships.”
“I don’t. Or at least I didn’t. But at least over these last twelve years, maybe that’s because deep down I always wanted you. You’re the only person who can occupy my mind, no matter how much I’ve tried to keep you out. The only person I’ve ever truly wanted to know. And the only person I’ve ever wanted to know me.”
He brought his hand to her cheek, brushing his fingertips across her warm skin, flushed from her reveal. She hadn’t intended to tell him all that. But something told her she needed him to know.
“I...” he started, staring into her eyes. “I want those things too...”
Corrie’s heart warmed, soaring with elation. She’d finally opened her heart to someone else and they’d reciprocated.
“But,” he continued, sending a sinking knot into her stomach, “we can’t be together. I’m not the man you think I am. You deserve better.”
He pulled away from her, leaving an emptiness in her arms.
“That’s not true,” she said. “Ford, I know you. The real you.”
“I wish that were true.”
“Then tell me.”
“Corrie, please don’t make this any harder than it already is,” he said, his voice exasperated.
“Harder? Ford, you’re literally breaking my heart right now,” she said, her voice shaking. “Why are you doing this? Why are you pushing me away when a few hours ago you were pulling me closer? What happened between then and now?”
“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. At the airport on our way back to the US.”
“The airport?” She cocked back her head and stared at him incredulously. “Ford, no. Whatever it is, I want to know now. There’s no reason this has to wait.”
“Yes, there is. Because once I tell you, you’re never going to want to speak to me or see me again.”
“So instead you’re going to leave me to fret about it all night? How can that be better?”
“It just is.”
“But how?”
“Corrie, let it go.”
“No, Ford, I can’t let it go. I have to know now because... because... because I’m in love with you!” she blurted out.
Silence fell over the tent as they both froze. He then hung his head and spoke. “Please don’t say that.”
