“I know.” Grey squeezed Lauren tightly and then relaxed her hold, letting the redhead slip from her grasp.This is not goodbye. It’s just a see you later, she reminded herself as she watched Lauren trudge slowly down the stairs to her cabin to retrieve her bag.
Lauren looked around the cabin she had only stayed in for a few short days before she began spending her nights in Grey’s arms, and shook her head as she picked up her duffel. It was disproportionally heavy in her hand, as if the bag was protesting what was about to happen, and Lauren felt her heart lurch painfully in her chest when she returned to the salon where Grey was waiting for her. The sight of Grey standing there, back straight, her beautiful face twisted in a mask of resigned agony, made Lauren’s grip on her bag slip for the briefest of moments as the weight of what she was about to do made her knees buckle.
The voice of reason inside her head was resolute in reminding her that it was absolutely ridiculous to throw away her career for what essentially amounted to a summer fling. That no matter how much affection she felt for Grey, she would regret not returning to her life in New York. That two weeks of happiness did not constitute enough of a reason to throw away everything she had worked so hard for.
She did not want to leave, but she was going to. They would talk, get to know each other more, and in a few months they would see each other again. Somehow she knew that these next few months would do little to change how she felt about Grey, but she was determined to do the rational thing—no matter how badly she wished to be utterly irrational.
Grey tensed as she heard Lauren’s duffel hit the floor with a quietthud, and she drew a deep breath as she turned to look at her. Lauren was as beautiful ever, even with her lower lip trembling and tears pooling in her eyes, and Grey opened her arms, beckoning her closer with a look because her throat was too tight to allow her to speak.
Words were unnecessary as they held each other, their faces buried in the sweet curves where neck and shoulder met. Grey’s heart clenched at the feeling of Lauren’s tears soaking the collar of her shirt, and she swallowed thickly as she tried, and failed, to stem the tide of her own tears as she held her close. It was patently unfair that, after years of simply existing, she should learn to live again in the arms of a woman destined to leave her, but she had long ago learned that life was anything but fair.
The only bright spot in their situation was that it did not have to be permanent. It was not that final line demarking life and death that could not be crossed; it was just a few latitudinal lines on a map that would separate them. And those lines, while imposing, could be crossed.
But to cross that line, it had to be drawn, and Grey pressed her lips to the sensitive hollow beneath Lauren’s ear, lingering in the touch for a moment before she pulled away to look her in the eye. “Call me when you get to New York?”
Lauren did not bother to wipe at the tears running down her face as she nodded. “Of course.” She knew that she needed to go if she was to catch her plane. Knew that she had already stayedmuch longer than was prudent simply because she could not stomach the idea of actually leaving, but she could not move.
Grey smiled sadly and kissed away Lauren’s tears. “It’s okay, baby. You need to go if you’re going to get to the airport on time.”
“I know,” Lauren whispered. Her feet remained rooted to the spot as she kissed Grey softly, the gentle caress a promise that it would not be the last. “I’ll talk to you soon, okay?” she asked as she took that first small step away from Grey.
“Okay.” Grey wrapped her arms around her waist to keep from reaching for Lauren again.
“I…” Lauren’s voice trailed off as she bent down to pick up her bag. “Grey…”
The anguish in Lauren’s voice made Grey’s heart break, and she blinked hard as she tipped her head at the door. “It’s okay.”
Lauren knew that everything was as far from okay as it was possible to be, but she still gathered her bag in her hand and, with one last deep breath to steel her resolve, walked out the door.
It was, she deluded herself into believing, the right thing to do.
Two weeks was not nearly enough time to make any kind of life-altering decision. It was impossible to fall in love with somebody in such a short amount of time. It was all lies, but Lauren held onto them like they were the most impeccable of truths, needing the strength they gave her as she made her way down the stairs and hopped onto the dock. Her strength faltered at the sound of Grey’s agonized sob coming from inside the salon, the sound more akin to one a wounded animal might make than a woman, but she did not dare look back.
She knew that if she did, she would never leave.
She stumbled into motion, her footsteps slow and heavy, her body leaning forward in resistance to the force that tried to pull her back into Grey’s arms. She made her way down the dock,resolutely moving one foot in front of the other, determined to do the mature, rational thing—no matter how much it hurt.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
WHEN LAUREN HAD arrived in Manhattan at eighteen, she was young and the crowds and the noise were invigorating. It was a far cry from her quiet, suburban, Midwestern life, and she loved it. And after her first year in the city, she had grown so used to the hustle and bustle, to the screech of brakes and the revving of engines, that all of it had disappeared into the background. It was just life. Busy, chaotic, wonderful life that left her feeling like she could conquer the world.
Now it was just loud. Glaringly, gratingly loud. Even at one in the morning, as she made her way back to her apartment after her first shift back in the kitchen at Clarke’s since returning from the islands not even twenty-four hours earlier. She had stumbled through the day in a fog, her mind constantly replaying the voicemail Grey had left her when she slept through her phone ringing. Two weeks of minimal sleep, combined with a long plane ride and the emotional toll of leaving had left her exhausted, and she had not awoken until well after noon. Grey had not sounded upset at her not answering, more concerned than anything else, but when Lauren called her back it went straight to voicemail. She figured it was because Grey was busy sailing from one location to another, and she had left her a message promising to call again once she finished her shift.
The door to her building closing behind her muted the noises of the city, and Lauren sighed as she crossed the lobby to the elevator that rattled and clacked all the way up to the fifth floor. Her apartment was dimly lit by the city lights that burned outside the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the length of her apartment, leaving a crisscross grid of murky yellow light across the hardwood floors that were close enough in color to those on theVeritasto make her heart ache. She did not bother to turn on any lights as she toed off her shoes and left them on the mat beneath her hanging coats, content to let the cool gray dim of her apartment wrap around her like a blanket as she padded down the hall to her bedroom.
The shadows creeping from the corners, bleeding up over the ceiling and seeping in uneven pools across the floor reminded her of the way the salon of theVeritaswould look bathed in moonlight, and if she tried hard enough, she was almost able to pretend that she was not in New York.
She stripped off her work clothes as she stood in front of her closet, the bedroom lit by the same muddy yellow light as the rest of the apartment. The chill in the air had her reaching for her most comfortable pair of sleep pants, and her fingers automatically sought and found her favorite gray Henley. The one that still smelled like the detergent Grey favored. The familiar scent was both a balm to her battered soul and a knife to her heart, and she blinked back the tears that threatened as she climbed into bed, so that she could lie down as she talked to Grey and pretend that Grey was beside her, and not thousands of miles away.
Her call was answered on the first ring, and she smiled at the sound of Grey’s sleepy voice. “Hey, you.”
“Hey,”Grey murmured.“You home now?”
“Safe and sound,” Lauren assured her. “How was your day?”
“Long. Had to jump from Charlotte Amalie to Tortola to pick up the charter, and then over to Peter Island for the night.”
“That’s different,” Lauren said, closing her eyes as she leaned back against her pillows.
