Katie’s hands flew up and flattened against his pecs. “What?”
“Come to C-california with m-me.”
He loved her. He thought she felt the same, or that she might eventually. They hadn’t been together all that long, but they had something.
“When? Why?”
“T-tomorrow would be n-nice.”
She blinked, momentarily dazed, and then she pushed him away, her palms exerting a surprising amount of pressure. As soon as he rolled off her, she stood and began pulling up her jeans, her movements jerky and uncoordinated. The set of her lips told him what she wasn’t saying. He’d taken a serious wrong turn.
Regret soured his mouth. He’d picked the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong tone for this discussion. But the weight on his shoulders never lifted anymore. The claws had sunk down to bone, where they scraped at him so he was always shrinking away from pain, bleeding every time he opened his mouth. The board of directors would meet the day after tomorrow and he needed to be there, really be there, and be done with this place.
He and Katie had cleared out nearly everything. He would leave the rest of it for someone else to throw away. He would walk away from the black insufficiency he’d been wallowing in for months, and if she would have him, he would take the best part of Camelot with him.
The only possible solution.
Except she hated it.
“What about the wedding?” she asked.
“I have a board m-meeting in Sssan Jose I c-c-can’t m-miss. I’m guh-going to try to sell the board on a p-program ssssimilar to what I did for Juh-judah. Internet sssurveillance for highprofile p-people and c-c-c-corporations, that sort of thing.”
She didn’t respond. She just stood there, turned slightly away from him, crumpling her hands into fists.
“Say something.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I wuh-want you to say yes, but I’ll sssettle for a c-c-conversation. Juh-just t-t-talk to me.”
“Somehow I doubt you want to hear what I have to say to you right now.”
“Sssay it anyway.”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“I’m n-not a child. Stop fucking sheltering me and talk.”
“Fine. Why don’t you tell me what you really want? If I come to California with you tomorrow, how big a bag do I pack? You want to be my long-distance boyfriend? You want to swap visits, San Jose to Camelot and back? Because it’s thousands of miles between California and Ohio, and this is the first time you’ve said anything about this. It’s not a good sign, Sean. It’s the kind of sign that makes me skeptical about our chances. Actually, it makes me a lot more than skeptical. It makes me whatever’s on the other side of skeptical. Somewhere in the kingdom of not-fucking-likely.”
He’d really pissed her off.
How could he make her understand this was harder than it should be, because the pressure on his shoulders, the pressure in his chest and in his head had become a relentless, pounding demand that stole his breath and exhausted him? He was so fucking tired of fighting it all the time. So beat up by not being able to speak a single clean sentence, by his failure to infuse his voice with any of the strength he’d depended on for so many years.
He hated this place. Hated what it did to him, what it made him feel, how it made him sound. Weak. Worthless. Perpetually coming up short, no matter what he did.
She forgave everyone else their weaknesses, but damn it, he wasn’t one of her charity cases. He didn’t want Katie’s mercy. He wanted her.
“I’m n-not guh-going to c-c-c-come back. After I leave, that’s it. I wuh-want you to leave with m-me. To live with me.”
She twisted around to see him better, her expression so hurt, it was as if every word he’d said was a rock he’d flung at her. “In California?”
“Yes.”
“Sean, I can’t move to California. I live in Ohio. My family’s here. Caleb and Ellen and Henry … and I’ve got my parents to look after, all my friends … I live in Camelot. It’s where I’m supposed to be. I don’t even know who I’d be in California. I don’t know what I’d do.”
“Yuh-you c-could do wuh-whatever yuh-you wanted.” He moved closer and grabbed her upper arms. “Or n-n-nothing at all. I have muh-money, sssso it d-d-doesn’t really m-matter—”