“I would’ve made sacrifices for him, but not that one.” Irina shook her head.Not that one.
Courtney opened her mouth, then shut it. Then opened it again. Finally, she said, “Someone who really loves you, would never ask you for something that would make you miserable. They’d try to find a way to compromise.”
“Like fly all day to seeyouonly to turn around and fly back to perform,” Becca said, offhandedly.
“Like take the break from filming and make the effort to go where he is,” Courney added.
Irina deflated because she and Knox were already compromising, and it didn’t suck. It had worked. It’d been hard, but it had worked.
“I think I complicated things,” she whispered.
Becca highlighted a passage on the pages in front of her. “Because you want to have a careerandhave him? Did you ever tell Knox you want both?”
“Of course not, I can’t tell the guy he has to make sacrifices so we can be together, and I can also have my career.” That wasn’t nice, and it’s what her ex had done to her. She gulped.
Becca looked up then. Set the papers aside. “Are you still willing to make sacrifices forhiscareer?”
“Like going on tour and stuff?” Irina asked.
Becca nodded. “Like if he’s got a big career thing, are you willing to make it so he can have his moment if he’s willing to do the same for you when it’s your turn?”
“Of course, I just can’t ask him to give me my turn.”
“Why the hell not?” Courtney’s frustration was clear in her tone and the way she smacked herself on the forehead.
“Because it wasn’t what we agreed on!” And now the headache would probably truly start in earnest.
Becca stood and headed to the kitchen. “But what you agreed on is making both of you miserable.”
“He’s miserable?” Irina didn’t want him to be miserable. She figured he’d have moved on by now. It’d been a few weeks and she’d spent every second of those weeks convincing herself that he didn’t really loved her. That the feelings were the passing through kind. Not the stay forever kind.
“When I’m in Denver, I miss Los Angeles,” she said. “When I’m in Los Angeles, I miss Denver. I can’t win.”
“When do you miss Knox?” Becca asked, but she wasn’t being a therapist. She was being a friend.
“Whenever he’s not in the room with me,” Irina confessed. “Messaging me. Calling me. Sending me random MyTube videos he found and thought I’d enjoy.”
“I think you broke his heart.” Courtney sighed. “It doesn’t matter where you are in the world—Denver or Los Angeles—you’ll always be the one who got away.” She paused. Licked at her lips. “That’ll be who he is for you, too.”
“Unless,” Becca put her forearms on the counter. “You go back and tell him you are ready to have a marriage where you both decide things as you go, and not with predetermined contracts at the beginning.”
“You are clearly not a fan of predetermined contracts…”
“You got that, eh?” Becca shook her head a little. “They never work out.”
“I never actuallymadehim pie.” Irina dropped to one of the counter stools. “I bought him pie. I always promised to bake, and he did write me a song. Yet, I didn’t do it.” Oh great, now the tears would come. “I owe him so much pie.”
“For clarity’s sake, are we being literal here or is this a metaphor?” Becca asked in that way of hers that was both pure calm and also frustrated query.
“Literal.” Irina could not believe she’d messed things up so badly. She couldn’t even blame the fall. Could she? “Can I blame the knock on the head for this lack of judgement?”
Courtney and Becca both gave her matching you’ve-got-to-be-kidding glares. Of course she could. This was Knox and she loved him.
“Okay, so I need to start baking and figure out how to get to Amsterdam.” So she could make things right with the guy who actually might want to be with her forever.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
KNOX
