I would have laughed, but my heart was cracking in two.
“As you wish,” I said, brushing the hair back from her forehead before forcing myself to face forward. If I didn’t, we’d never leave.
Winona was right, the sandwiches were delicious. We lingered in the booth long after we’d finished eating.
I told Winona about the lawyer I’d lined up for her to help navigate the technical registration of her collective and everything that came after, on the advice of my foundation’s legal counsel. I’d found the best one nearby, up in Montpelier, and had paid them enough to cover her costs for the next five years. I told her all that so I didn’t have to tell her about the text just yet, or how forty-eight hours from now I’d be overseas. I knew it was a cruel deception. But maybe I was still a selfish man when it came to her.
As we walked out of the diner, I handed the keys to Winona.
She raised an eyebrow. “You want me to drive?”
“I want you to give me a tour of this town. I’ve been here eight months and I think I’ve barely scratched the surface. I want a tour from my favorite local.”
My favorite everything.
So that’s what we did. Winona drove us around in that ridiculous car. On my request, she took me to all the places that mattered to her: the red bridge where she said she and her brothers used to make wishes with pennies when she had no money for Christmas. To the Rolling Hills resort, which Blake always talked about and my future sister-in-law owned, but I’d never seen. To O’Malley’s pub, where we stopped inside so she could show me its sticky floors and temperamental jukebox where she played meJoleneand serenaded me on the dance floor.
Each place we went was another piece of Winona, this time outside her person. I loved every moment, every point of her finger and quick jerk of the wheel to stop somewhere else.
But each stop was a painful reiteration of why Winona could never leave this place, even if she could fulfill her promise to her mother from away. This was her home. The people were her family. The collective she was launching would keep its roots here.
Winona couldn’t leave, and she’d never be some arm candy on my elbow. That wasn’t her. She needed this life, and I needed to honor that.
I wasn’t giving up on us, I couldn’t. But I didn’t know how to fix it right at this moment.
Finally, as we drove over the bridge for the second time, she looked my way, her expression no longer mirthful.
“Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”
I closed my eyes, then opened them. She could see right through me now.
“I have to leave tomorrow. And there’s no more putting itoff.”
I told her about the text. About how the trip to Zurich would likely keep me overseas a few weeks. When I came back, there would be intense, heavy, time-consuming work in Seattle.
She nodded, mouth closed, eyes straight ahead. “Okay,”
But I could see the set of her jaw, the way it pulsed. The way she blinked a few times more than was necessary.
Fuck, I hated this. I wanted to tell her to pull over. To pull her into my arms and make her all the promises in the world.
But I couldn’t do that. Not yet.
“You could come, you know.” My voice was gritted down to nothing. I knew she wouldn’t, but I couldn’t not say it.
She smiled. “You know I can’t.”
She was going to see her brothers in California next week. Then there were a few months left at the hotel job. After that, Heartbreaker. Her life’s dream and her promise to her mother.
Maybe, in another life, our moms could have been friends.
We stopped on the side of the road by the bridge, and walked over the span hand in hand on foot. It was sunset, and we stood in the middle, watching as the golden orb began to waver on the horizon, lighting the river below in oranges and pinks. The first of the stars were beginning to show—just white pricks of light against the navy sky, but still a wonder.
“Winona,” I said.
“Yes?”
I could hear the tears in her voice, and clutched her hand harder.
