“I suppose.”
He says okay, and I can’t read his expression or tell what he means. Then he speaks quietly. “He thinks we want to be over.”
My heart jams its way to my throat, as a cruel, fresh new realization sets in. Maybe this is fate. Maybe fate is trying to save me from jumping off the cliff. “We can be free now, I guess.”
“Is that what you want?” he asks, his voice sounding heavier than usual.
Tears sting the back of my eyes as a taxi down the block turns on its indicator light, signaling that it’s coming my way. “I want to be happy.”
I thought that was with him, but his happiness isn’t with me. It’s better I know that now, so I can keep moving forward. Absently, I run a finger over the taxicab charm necklace.
“You found it?”
“Diana, the other wife. She was in town. She brought it to me.”
He knits his brow. “That’s who you were seeing last night?”
“Yes.”
He shakes his head and drags a hand through his hair. “You didn’t tell me you were seeing her.”
“I planned to. I didn’t have a chance yet.”
“Listen.” His voice is heavy. “There’s a lot we need to talk about.”
I nod as the green car wedges itself along the curb next to me. “I’m sure we’ll have paperwork to file.”
He grabs my arm. “I’m not talking about paperwork. I’m talking about us.”
The cab driver honks, and that’s my cue. “Of course.” We need to define the terms of the untangling just as we did the entanglement. “I should probably focus on my new account, though, when I’m gone. How about we work out all that stuff when I return?” I paste on a cheery grin as I grab the door handle.
He grabs it too, reaching for my hand. “Let me ride with you. Let’s talk now. I can’t let you go on this trip with this hanging between us. Even if we don’t need to be married, I still want you in my life.”
Wanting me in his life isn’t the same. It’s not the same as what I want.
I want him. I want him as my husband, my Friday-night lover, and my business partner, all rolled in one.
And since I can’t have that, I don’t know if I can handle anything at all, even if the thought tears me in two.
I bite the inside of my lip. I can’t break down now. I can’t, and I won’t. “I can’t talk right now,” I say, pushing out the words so I don’t let loose a rainstorm.
The driver honks his horn again.
Christian lets go of the handle. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too,” I mutter, but I know we mean it in different ways. He’ll miss the sex, and I’ll miss the everything.
When I get in the cab, slam the door, and reach a respectable distance from him, the tears flow freely. Hard, heavy tears.
This isn’t how our part-time love affair was supposed to end.
36CHRISTIAN
Terms.
Deals.
Financing.
I spend the day enmeshed in them, working in the air-conditioned conference room at a bank. Translating money words all day long is literally the only thing that keeps me from thinking non-stop about everything that went wrong this morning.
There’s no space to think about yourself when you’re translating, and maybe fate was looking out for me, giving me this assignment on a day when I desperately need to keep my gray matter occupied so I don’t dwell on the complete U-turn my life took at a café this morning.
But once the day ends, and the client arrives at a tentative deal, thanking me for helping him converse, I’m free to go.
And my thoughts free-fall the second I leave the office building, the heat of the late afternoon slamming into me cruelly.
I drop my shades over my eyes, unknot my tie, and walk down the avenue. I weave through the throngs of businessmen and women in their suits and heels, chattering on their mobiles, dragging on their cigarettes.
I shove a hand through my hair and walk.
A few blocks later, I glance at the street sign on the building across the way.
I didn’t mean to head in this direction.
I meant to head . . .
Hell, I don’t know where I am or where I planned on going.
