“I shouldn’t have said that.” This wasn’t what he’d wanted to say, or the way he’d hoped to say it. “I’m sorry. I know how arrogant that sounded. I can’t accept losing you, sorry.”
She offered a weak smile, as if to say she accepted his apology.
“I don’t want our relationship to end, Maisy,” he whispered, his anger dissipating before he ruined everything. He was desperate to make her understand how much she meant to him, how deeply he loved and needed her.
“I wish it could be different,” she said, sounding sad and miserable.
“It doesn’t have to,” he insisted.
She shook her head as if to say their relationship was a lost cause. “I should have listened to my brother…to my own heart,” she said, sounding dejected and deflated. “We were never meant to be, Chase. As much as we want to be together, it would never work with you and me. I don’t fit into your world, and you don’t fit into mine. You live in Chicago and my entire life is here with my family.”
“We can make this work,” he insisted. “Everything you’ve said is an excuse. What happened to the positive, confident woman I met on the plane?”
Maisy ignored the question. Instead, she threw his own words back at him. “You said it yourself: We should be grateful you took care of our problems. For the record, we sincerely are. In the process, however, I woke up and faced the truth. We were never meant to be together.”
“That’s not only untrue, but it’s also unfair.”
“I have nothing to say to that,” she said. “We both know what you did, and while it was all meant for good, it made me realize how useless it is to hold on to any hope that we can be together.”
Gritting his teeth in frustration, he tried again. “How manytimes do I have to tell you I had nothing to do with this windfall of good fortune? If I were to wager a guess, I’d say my father might have had a hand in this.”
She shook her head. “He isn’t here to say otherwise, is he?”
“Why won’t you believe me?”
“Maybe it’s because this has shown me what I’d been unwilling to admit earlier. Please, Chase, leave it as it is. I wish it could be different, I sincerely do, but it’s over.”
Chase looked up, fighting off his frustration. “You can’t mean that.”
“I do, I’m sorry. This isn’t easy for me.”
“It doesn’t need to be this way.” His hands became clenched fists at his sides. There didn’t appear to be any hope of reasoning with her.
“Your coming here makes it even more difficult. Please just go and don’t make this any harder than it already is. Nothing you have to say is going to change my mind. I’d rather do this quickly and have it done. Otherwise, it will drag out and the pain will linger for us both. I don’t want that for you or for me. Please accept that I don’t want to see you again.”
From the set of her mouth, Chase recognized she meant every word. She was determined to end their relationship. Her resolve stunned him. Maisy fully intended to cast him out of her life, as if everything they shared meant nothing. She stepped back into the house and closed the door.
This was it.
The end.
“This is nuts. I can’t believe you’re doing this.” He stared at her door as if he needed time to accept that she wasn’t going to change her mind. “I don’t understand you,” he called after her.“Every woman I’ve ever met considered my wealth a bonus…but not you. Perhaps someday you’ll recognize that you’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life by refusing to accept that I was telling you the truth.”
—
The next couple of weeks were a nightmare for Chase. Pride carried him for the first week, but that quickly dissipated as time dragged on. He’d been convinced Maisy would come to her senses and realize how wrong she was. That hadn’t happened. She sincerely wanted nothing more to do with him.
As a result, he was completely useless at work. Somehow he managed to get through each day. The nights were the worst. He missed Maisy. Missed their nightly chats. The thought of never seeing her again plunged him into a deep, dark well he found impossible to escape.
Instead of heading home to a silent, empty condo, Chase stopped off at the country club. He sat at the bar nursing a drink, when he heard Astrid’s laughter behind him. She was with friends, but broke away when she noticed him.
“Chase,” she said, as she slipped onto the chair next to him. “I haven’t seen you since our lunch.”
He lifted his drink and gestured to the bartender for another. “Can I get you anything?” he asked.
“No, thanks.” She paused and then frowned. “Why the glum face?”
He’d rather not talk about Maisy, and he sipped his drink as soon as the bartender delivered it.
