Of all the pigheaded, shit things to say. “Why does this have to be so bloody complicated? We don’t ever need to worry about money. Shouldn’t that be a good thing?”
“You can’t seriously think I’m going to live off you for the rest of my life!” he says, raising his voice. “I can’t do that. Not if I’m going to have an ounce of pride left.”
“I’m asking you to give up the illusion that money will somehow make you worthy of me, when the truth is, you already are.”
He shakes his head. “Money is only an illusion to people who’ve never had to worry about it. For the rest of us, it’s really fucking real.”
His words cause my stomach to turn to stone. “So, we have to be like everybody else? Worrying about other people’s opinions about our relationship and wasting our time building our own fortune when we already have one just sitting waiting?” I take two steps toward him and put my hand on his arm. “Can’t we be different?”
“No,” he says. “We can’t. I’d never be able to look at myself in the mirror if I was sponging off your family.”
I slide my hand down to my side, and in that moment, I know the truth that I’ve been avoiding for weeks. And it’s all suddenly and horribly obvious. This isn’t going to work. “So I guess you’ve got your mind made up then. There’s no room for negotiations on this one.”
“I’m sorry, but I refuse to be a leech. If you can’t understand that, I don’t know where we go from here.”
“I do.”
“Yeah? Where?” he asks in a nasty tone.
“We have to end it.”
“Are you serious?”
Tears of frustration fill my eyes. “I am. You’re treating me exactly like my family does—like a child.”
“Just because I want to earn my own money?” He lets out an angry laugh. “This is insane, you know that, right?”
“It’s not just that,” I say, feeling suddenly very sober. “First you tried to hide the truth about the recordings, then you signed me up to film another series without asking me, and now you’re refusing to even consider building this life together on terms that are acceptable to both of us.” My voice cracks but I continue on, forcing myself to pull it together. “You pretend you believe I’m so strong, but deep down, you see me as weak. As someone who needs to be shielded from bad things, someone who can’t handle knowing what’s really going on in my own life.”
My heart pounds in my chest as I realize what I have to do. “This isn’t going to work,” I say finally, and I can literally feel my heart breaking when the words come out.
“Come on,” he says. “This is just a fight, but it’s nothing we can’t solve.”
I shake my head. “No, we can’t. I love you, Will. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone, but we don’t want the same things. I want someone who shares everything with me and respects me utterly and completely. You want someone who wants to let you make all her decisions and who wants to be sheltered from reality. I’m sure she’s out there somewhere, but she certainly isn’t me.”
“Don’t say that,” he says, walking toward me and putting his hands on my upper arms. “We’ve been through worse things. We’ll get through this.”
“I’m afraid we won’t. The truth is, when we were in the jungle, the only reason we got through that as a team was because you had a broken leg. Otherwise, you would’ve taken the lead the entire time, and you would’ve loved having me following you.”
“What are you talking about?” he says, wrinkling up his nose. “That’s not how it happened. You rescued me out there—you did what you had to do to save my life. And I just did what I had to do to save your family. That’s what people do when they love each other.”
“They also work as a team. They don’t keep secrets. They trust each other to be capable enough to handle things so they can take on life together.”
“We can do that,” he says, rubbing my arms.
Tears slide down my cheeks but I leave them there. “I don’t think we can. You’re never going to see me as an equal partner, which means I’m not the right one for you.”
“No, that is not true, I promise you,” he says, crouching slightly so we’re eye-to-eye. “Remember the conversation we had on the plane coming back from the Caribbean? We knew this was going to be hard. We knew we’d be tested to our limits with the media and your family and whatever tricks Dylan had up her sleeve. And we promised each other not to give in or let them ruin what we had.”
“This has nothing to do with the show.”
“Are you kidding?” he asks, straightening up. “It haseverythingto do with the show. Don’t let them win. Come on, I’m never happier than when I’m with you and I know you feel the same way. We have some things to sort out, for sure. But we’ll manage. We just have to survive the next few weeks, then we can get back to where we were.”
He pulls me in for a hug, and I inhale the scent of his skin, my heart squeezing at the thought that I’ll never be in these arms again. “What we have only works when we’re alone in the jungle or on a yacht in the middle of the sea, which isn’t how life is. Real life is filled with obligations and responsibilities and compromise…and…we’re just too different, Will.”
He pulls away, letting his hands drop and stares at me, his face filled with pain. “So that’s it then?”
I nod. “I’m sorry. The thing is, I’m only just beginning to find my strength, Will, and if I’m with someone who puts me back in my safe little box, I’ll never find out who I can really be. If I stay with you, I’ll let the person I truly am die. And I can’t do that, Will. I’ll end up hating myself and you.”
