She pushed him away. “You want me to give up my job for you?”
“We’re worth it. That’s what you’re saying. You’re angry because we’re over, so stay and we won’t be.”
She backed away, forgetting the glass door was behind her and bumping against it. “I can’t believe you’d ask me to do that.” Bastard. “I hate you for it.”
“You want a commitment from me. You want me to take the wheel. I love you. I’m in love with you. I’m asking you to stay so we have a chance to make something that lasts out of all this.”
“I’m going to my dream job.” He was standing too close. She turned her face away so he wouldn’t see the moment her ambition and her heart crashed together and tore an irreparable hole in her life. “You never wanted this enough for me to give anything up for you. I can’t stay. I won’t.”
He put his hand into her hair and cupped her skull, brought his forehead down to her temple. “I know, I know.” He sounded just as broken. “I don’t know what else to ask.”
“Come with me.” She broke his hold, put her hands to his chest where his lungs were working overtime. “You have no reason not to.”
He took her mouth, a crushing, biting kiss, brief and shockingly hard. “I can’t.”
She tried to push him away, but he was a mountain in her path. She couldn’t get past
him. “You won’t.”
“I can’t.”
What did he mean? What was holding him? Just his stubborn inability to see other ways to live, to let himself love her enough.
“I got the job.”
She almost missed the words because he sagged forward, one hand smacking on the glass behind her, the other wrapping around her back. “Tom.”
“Harry is out at the end of the quarter. I’m the new MD of Rendel Chicago. It’s announced Monday.”
“Oh my God.”
His head was lowered, his chin almost on his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed her forehead to his, and held tight. Now they were over. Now they were done. Now they were occasional humorous text exchanges, late-night Messenger chats, and canceled plans for fly-in weekends full of catch-up sex that would never happen, until other people came between them, other lives. She kissed his jaw, his cheek. She loved him. She hated him. He pulled her hard into him and she sobbed the hurt of that into his chest.
“Please, Flick, please don’t cry.”
“I need you.” She’d lost him, and not to any decision she could fault.
“I’m here. You have me.”
“Don’t be gentle. You’ll break me.”
“Ah, my darling. You’ll break me too.”
That endearment was a dagger. She struggled free of his arms, and wiped her hand over her eyes. “It’s just a coupon, it’s a game and it has an end date. We know how to please each other with coupons. Let’s play.”
He rubbed his face. “I don’t—”
She put her palms against his stomach and shoved him. It didn’t move him, but it shut him up. “Come on. We chose. This is where we are. Who we are.” She grabbed his shirt front in both fists and yanked on it. “No refunds. No rain checks. No exchanges. Nontransferable. Fully consensual. Offer expires.”
He tried to turn away, but she held on.
“Do it, Tom. Congratulations. Happy Birthday.” She let go and backed up against the glass wall. “Come unwrap your present.”
She must’ve been a sight. Eyes red, cheeks tear-stained, hair mussed by his hands, one breast exposed. Desperate, desperate to feel anything but the hollowness of this new loss.
Tom swayed on his feet, his breathing heavy, his mouth was a severe line, his brows drawn. Under them his eyes were mirrors, reflecting nothing but the city behind her. “Did I ever tell you I was scared of heights? Scared of going too fast, of being out of control.”
He’d never mentioned it. But speed, a car crash killed his mom. In one way, they were close enough to live each other’s hopes and in another they were still strangers. She rolled the back of her head side to side on the cool glass.