“I want to be with you, and you want to be here. It’s simple. You’re the one who’s always had the power between us.”
My eyes fell shut, and for a moment I allowed myself to consider this enormous sacrifice he was willing to make for me. He’d give up everything he loved... for me.
No, I yelled against the weak, greedy, and selfish part of me. I’d moved across the country for a man, taken the job he wanted me to take, and let him make decision after decision for me. And I would go to my grave resenting both him and myself for it.
I’d be damned before I’d do that to Shawn.
“I will not allow you to do this, do you understand? You love your job, and you’re too good at it to resign.” He opened his mouth to protest, but there was too much passion filling my soul to contain. “I want to hear you say it.”
“Excuse me?” He was less than thrilled at my tone, and yet I could see it turned him on, ever so slightly. He loved control. But he loved me controlling him even more.
“Tell me that you’re going back tomorrow.”
“Not without?—”
“Yes, without me. I love you, and we’ll figure it out, I promise we will. But if you stay, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Again, he took a deep breath with his gaze unwavering.
“Please,” I said.
“I don’t want this.”
“I know you don’t. I’m sorry.”
He said a whole bunch of things to me in German then, things he wanted to say but didn’t want me to know. When he was done, he looked defeated. “Fine.” His voice was quiet and heartbreaking. “I’ll go back tomorrow. Alone.”
45
SHAWN
My jet wasover the Atlantic. I had a glass of bourbon in one hand and Kara’s wedding rings in the other, and although there were three other people on the plane with me, I’d never felt so alone in my entire life. It was my third glass of bourbon, and the hope was I’d stay drunk until there wasn’t enough fuel left to turn around.
She’ll change her mind, I kept telling myself. She’d wake tomorrow and call me, and I’d have her on the first flight to Munich I could get.
Once I landed, it got worse.Scheiße, she was everywhere. My plane, my apartment, my office... my head. I couldn’t escape. The press interest waned considerably when I returned to my apartment alone, another knife in me when they hounded relentlessly about where I’d been and where she was.
New York was the answer.
Like me, she wanted to lose herself in her job while we were apart. Our first conversation with an ocean between us was a failure. All it did was intensify my misery and remind me that, for once, I did not have what I wanted.
By the sixth day, we’d fallen into a routine. She’d call me on FaceTime and eat lunch in the same spare office she’d had that day I’d come for her in the rain, while I ate a late dinner at home.
“Paul got on the elevator this morning,” she said. “He didn’t realize I was there until it was too late, and it looked like he couldn’t breathe.”
“Great,” I replied, flatly.
She frowned. “I thought that’d at least get a smile.”
“It reminds me that he gets to be closer to you than I do.”
“Yeah, well, you look sexy when you’re jealous.”
I couldn’t help but reward her with the smile she wanted.
“I see you’ve made significant progress on your apartment,” she continued.
“Yes,” I said, panning the phone around so I could show her. “I moved this box from the counter to the floor.”
