They passed the week in a haze of hesitancy and tenderness. Mace came home, came to bed, and lay next to her, but when he thought she was sleeping he’d get up and work again. He knew he wasn’t fooling her. She let it go.
It was the beginning of letting him go.
She did her research for the new job and had lunch with Constance, reluctantly put her business suit back on and attended the first interview. The job was interesting. She’d feared it might only seem so because of the long absence with no real prospects. The headhunter laughed when she said that was a concern. He told her about four other roles in the pipeline she could write her own job description for. He had every intention of making a fat commission out of placing her in a job that would make her famous.
She’d settle for productive, stimulated, engaged, motivated. She’d settle for less money and more control, a smaller playground and a bigger scope. By the time the fourth and final interview rolled around, Mace was ready to fly out to San Francisco and she was close to throwing off her concerns about the job.
She’d be working hard again. This time starting as an unknown quantity without the support of the family name, diving into corporate politics she had no way of understanding clearly, running agendas she was yet to formalise with staff whose skills and attitudes she was unfamiliar with. It’d be a wild ride, an intense first hundred days, and as long as the final meeting with the board ticked all the right boxes, she’d be starting within the month.
And yet for all it made her brain fizz, woke her competitive spirit, she was aware of what it would cost. There’d be little time for leisure, little energy to paint; the idea of taking commissions was a laugh. She’d lose contact with the art crowd, and she’d be alone, so very alone, because the cost of holding on to Mace was to repress the ambitious parts of them both. The only choice she had to make was how she let him go.
She watched him finish packing his suitcase. The date of his departure for San Francisco had moved dramatically forward, like all things with a start-up, subject to radical change. His cab would be here soon.
This time he’d be away longer, an unspecified amount of time. He said it was fluid, that nothing was fixed, that he’d come home immediately if she needed him, but he packed almost every piece of clothing in his functional wardrobe, and he must’ve known in his heart she wouldn’t call him back.
When the taxi drove away, the only remaining trace of him would be the furniture he’d set them up with, the photographs changing in the digital frame, his old car in the garage and the painting of him he’d never seen on her covered easel.
He was agitated, unsettled; anxious about the trip, setting up the office and leaving her, but excited about going and apprehensive about showing it.
“You’re going to be fine.”
He sat on the bed, looking at his shoes. “I have no idea what I’m doing. We should’ve let Anderson hire a new CEO when he wanted to. We could lose all this so easily.”
She stayed by the wardrobe. She’d steeled herself these last few weeks to limit her proximity to him, because the need to be in his arms was so compelling and he was so willing to have her there, but too hesitant to force the contact.
He looked over, his expression torn between excitement and longing. “Come with me. Throw stuff in a bag now and come with me.” He stood. “Fuck, just come as you are and we’ll buy what you need.”
Stunned, she shook her head. He’d suggested this when the trip date firmed, but vaguely, as if he was more afraid of her saying yes than no, but maybe she’d misunderstood him, because there was no ambiguity in him now. Her breathing stalled. She folded her arms across her ribs. He was offering her another choice. What if she took it?
“Cinta, come with me.”
“No.” It was too late. Mace was trying to hold on to something that had already slipped away.
He stepped in front of her, put his hand to her face. “If not now, tomorrow, this week, next week, whenever you’re ready.”
Cat with a mouse, she felt cornered. She’d be torn apart whichever way she ran. “No.”
“Why not?” His voice got sharp. He looked at his watch. “What’s stopping you?”
Her choices had narrowed suddenly, shockingly. The option of letting their relationship continue to drift, to shake loose slowly, and inevitably end softly with the fondness they deserved to have for each other was closing out.
She couldn’t afford to be the mouse anymore. She had to roar. “It would be the same thing in a different city.”
He stroked his thumb across her cheek. “We’d be together.”
She looked into his eyes and wondered if this would be the last time. “No, you’d be working, and I’d be waiting for you to have time for me.”
He dropped his hand in frustration, smacking it on his thigh. “That’s the whole problem isn’t it? You say you love me, but you won’t wait for me.”
“As I would never have asked you to wait for me.” Oh God, this was hard, much harder than she was ready for. “And if you were thinking clearly you would
n’t ask me to do it for you either.”
“I’m thinking clearly and I’m asking.” He frowned. “Again. I’m asking again. We love each other. We’re stronger than this. Come with me.”
She wasn’t—she couldn’t stop her own life in sacrifice for his. She couldn’t spend it waiting for him, or have him lose his dream and wait for her. They didn’t get together because they couldn’t survive alone. They couldn’t stay together because it was no longer better than being alone.
“We’re not meant to be, Mace. Our timing is off. We were a night that accidentally became a weekend that became—”