All the Way (Romancing Manhattan 1)

“Now I’m in a relationship with a man who is wonderful. But he wants to buy real estate and sell my house behind my back. I’m not a weak woman, Finn. I’m actually kind of badass, but it feels like everyone treats me as if I’m made of glass.”

“I don’t see you as weak,” he says, shaking his head. “I just want to take care of you. Is that wrong?”

“Yes, sometimes. I don’t need you to take care of me. I can take care of myself just fine, as you saw last night. I need a partner. You called me your partner a minute ago, but this is not how you treat your partner. You include her in decisions, and you work together.”

“So, locking yourself in my guest room last night was us working through this together?”

Oh my God, I want to strangle him.

“No, this is a valid question, London, because you don’t get to have this both ways. We’re partners until you decide that we’re not?”

“That’s not what I did,” I reply, but feel a little nudge of guilt because it’s kind of what I did. “I just wanted one night to process everything. To think it through. So I could come back to you and we could talk everything out.

“We aren’t being productive right now. We’re just fighting and hurting each other, and it sucks.”

“Okay.” He holds his hands up in surrender. “You tell me what you need from me, or need me to do, because I’m not losing you.”

“I told you what I needed last night,” I say again, and shrug a shoulder, but then decide that if he’s going to make decisions without giving me a choice, I’m going to do the same. “And you’re going to give it to me.”

And with that, I turn and walk back into his condo, collect my bag and shoes, and leave.

As I walk to the front door, he’s standing in the living room, his hands still in his pockets, staring at me with a mixture of sadness and frustration.

But I walk out and don’t look back, tears already falling down my cheeks.

“The storm is rolling in,” I say into the phone. I’m sitting on the sun porch at the house on Martha’s Vineyard, watching the clouds rage over the ocean, and I can’t help but feel that it’s a perfect mirror for the conflict happening inside me.

“Are you okay?” Sasha asks. We’ve been on the phone for over an hour. I’m in my favorite chair, with a blanket and a box of tissues because I just can’t stop crying.

“Do I sound okay?”

“I meant with the storm,” she says softly. “I know you hate them.”

“I do, but I’m not afraid. The last storm we had when I was here earlier this summer was a shit show. Finn sat with me, and watched the storm with me, and then he made love to me.” The tears start flowing again. “Maybe that good memory has replaced all of my fear where it comes to storms.”

“Maybe,” she says. “So you seriously just walked out on him today?”

“Yeah.” I dab at my eyes with a tissue. “I just wanted to be alone, and he wasn’t having it. He’s not the boss of me, Sasha.”

“Right.” She clears her throat, the way she does when she doesn’t agree with me.

“Say it.”

“Well, he’s not the boss of you, that I agree with. I mean, even when you’re in a relationship, you’re still you. But he loves you, London, and he was probably super worried about you. I have to say, I wouldn’t have been comfortable with you going to a hotel either.”

“It’s not like I was going to hurt myself.”

“Of course not. But you had just been through something traumatic, and as someone who loves you, I would want to make sure I was nearby in case you needed anything.”

“I’m not sick either. I’m just so angry. And I’m sad. Why am I so sad about Kyle? I should hate him.”

“He’s your brother.”

“I mean, I knew that he was a jerk. I didn’t know he was clean, and let me tell you, that was a blow.”

“Yeah, that’s just weird.”

“Well, he clearly has mental health issues,” I reply with a sniff. “And I am so fucking pissed at him for killing my mama and dad. Sasha, he killed them.”

“I know, sweetie.”

“I keep saying it to myself, but I don’t know if I believe it yet. He’s a class-A jerk, but I never would have thought that he’d hurt any of us. Not like that.”

“You’re grieving for all of them,” she says, and I nod, even though she can’t see me.

“It’s not fair. They didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong.” I can’t stop the tears now, and they’re flowing freely. I’m a snotty mess. “And now, I have to deal with the fact that my brother, who I’ve never been particularly close to anyway, is permanently out of my life too, as if he died with them.”