I’m so sorry, Alex, but nothing is being reevaluated in six months.
The words are on the tip of my tongue, begging to spill over. But what stops them in the next moment is:What’s the big deal? Robert offered to help, and I figured, why not?
I can’t even get the synapses to link up in my head, can’t comprehend how my desperation to tell Alex the truth at all correlates tothatmemory. But I can’t make itnotcorrelate, either.
I think I might be in love with Alex Harrison. And I also think I don’t fully trust him.
“I’m so proud of you,” he says—still talking about London—and my confusion solidifies even further, pulled right from an emotion I can’t even name. I don’t know whether to love him for his unconditional support or ask if I mean so little to him that it’sthateasy to let me leave.
“I could wait,” I say. “I could wait until summer and take a different job.”
“Absolutely fuck that,” Alex says. He rubs a thumb along my jawline. “This job is, like, a novel described asperfect for fans of finance and new adventures.That’s you. That’s the book you want to read, Case.”
“It is,” I say, laughing.
Alex smiles. “Just lean all the way into what you like. The smile on your face right now is what’s telling me it’s the right move.”
I try to hold it, but my smile drops eventually. If I really did what he’s suggesting, I’d be leaning all the way into Alex, too. “How come you’re so eager to let me go?” I whisper.
He pulls back, sets his mouth into a grim line. Eventually, he says, “It’s not in me to be a tether.”
“Not even a little?” I ask.
“Not even a little.”
“Why not?”
Alex runs a hand through his hair, blushing at the ground. “Because nobody stays anyway,” he says softly. “But I didn’t want to admit that because I don’t want you to feel guilty, or sorry for me. Not when I want this job for you almost as much as you want it for yourself.”
Something clicks in my brain. A memory. An explanation.
Alex sinks onto the couch, and I kneel in front of him. “In the elevator, when I freaked out because I thought you were going to be with some other girl on my birthday,” I remind him. “You said the word ‘clockwork.’”
His eyes burn into mine. “Yeah. I thought you were giving up on us because of what we texted about earlier that day, the stuff about my dad. People always distance themselves from me at the same point. Like clockwork.”
“What point?” I ask.
He scratches at his jaw. “When they start to really know me, I guess.”
Another memory, another explanation: what Sonja said, about Alex not being the person she thought she wanted to date. Shethoughtshe was getting first-day Alex. Shiny Alex. Unbroken, world-traveling, extroverted Alex. When we started all this, I assumed he wasn’t interested in long-term commitment because that’s just who he was. But the truth is closer to what he’s been alluding to: it’s almost never his choice.
“I think some people just like me best at a distance,” Alex admits.
I have a pathological need to be liked,he once told me. Because he doesn’t think he’s capable of being loved.
I crawl into his lap and kiss him, because my heart is breakingand I can’t not. He’s hesitant at first but slowly opens up to me, teeth catching on my lips, hands rubbing along my thighs and up my back, breath coming more like a pant. Even his eyes are a little possessive.
“I like you better the more I get to know you,” I tell him, pushing closer the only way I know how right now. “That’s how it’s supposed to work. When you let the right people in, they’ll love you, and they’ll stay.”
Love you.Right there: I basically just said it.
He unbuttons my pants. “I appreciate the sentiment, but you’re leaving, so the point stands.”
“That,” I say, unbuttoning his, “is a technicality. I’m notgoinganywhere, not in a metaphorical sense, and I might not even get that job, which would make it in a literal sense, too.”
He stands, still holding me in his arms, and carries me to my room. “That specific job is neither here nor there,” he responds casually, but there’s a brokenness I can still hear in the tenor of his voice. “You’ll go. I know it in my bones. You’re going to eat atrocious pub food and delicious ethnic cuisine, and you’ll pretend to love trendy East London even though you’ll like the touristy neighborhoods, too. You’re going to see the White Cliffs of Dover, and then Scotland, Bath, and even Windsor.”
“Talk dirty to me.”
