“That’s not what I—”
“Then why are you asking me this? I can’t believe you’d trust those gossip magazines over me.”
“I don’t trust them at all. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“But I’ve already told you. I told you my father was a stupid, gullible idiot. I told you those websites and magazines were poison.” He jerks his hand through his hair. “I thought you, out of everyone, were on my side.”ad either doesn“I am on your side. I’ve been on your side the entire time.”
“Then how could you ask me this? How can you think I’d keep something like that from you?”
That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. The words bubble up before I can stop them.
“Maybe that’s because you lied to me about your financial position in the first place!” I say. “And the only reason you admitted anything at all was because Garrett ratted you out. Even now, you’re keeping secrets from me—taking mysterious calls while we’re on dates, skipping out of town and refusing to tell me why, blowing hot and cold and closing off whenever I try to be supportive. What am I supposed to think? You’re obviously hiding something.”
My words hang between us. Part of me wants to take them all back, shove them right down my throat again. I don’t want to fight. Not now, not ever again.
But they needed to be said. I’ve kept my thoughts and fears bundled up inside of me these past few weeks, and I don’t want them hanging between us anymore. They just weren’t supposed to come out like this.
“I don’t mean it like that,” I say. “I just—I can sense there’s something you’re not telling me. Even now.”
I wish I could read his expression, but the moonlight casts strange shadows across his face.
When Calder finally speaks, his voice is solemn, resigned.
“We need to learn to trust each other,” he says. “Without trust, without understanding, we’re just two people fucking.”
I flinch. We’ve had this conversation before, and it hurt just as much then.
“That’s why I wanted to hold off on sex,” he continues. “I wanted to prove to myself that this was something beyond the physical. Something beyond the games.”
And all this time I’ve been doing everything in my power to make those aspects of our relationship front-and-center. across my breastit10
“It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” I say. “There’s no need to deprive ourselves while we’re learning more about each other.” Hell, I learn as much about him during those intense physical moments as I do sitting down over dinner. Our bodies speak to each other, even when our mouths can’t find the words.
“But what happens if we’re forced to be apart for a while?” he asks. “What happens when we’re forced to be a normal couple?”
“Maybe we’re not supposed to be a normal couple,” I reply. “This certainly doesn’t feel like any relationship I’ve ever had before.”
“You don’t—you don’t understand.” He sighs. “But I guess that’s my fault. You’re right. I haven’t told you about everything that’s going on.”
The air rushes out of my lungs. Now that this moment has come, I’m afraid to hear what he has to say.
“I’ve already told you I’ve been working with a man named Tim Renley to settle my financial affairs,” Calder says. “He was a close friend of my father’s, and he heads up a consulting firm up in New York. Obviously this whole thing hasn’t been a completely seamless process, but it would have been a lot worse without Tim.”
My fingers dig into the dirt on either side of me. I don’t understand. Why would he feel the need to hide something like that?
“As I said, he was a close friend of my father’s, and maybe he feels that he owes me something. But he lost his own son several years ago. Deacon would have been about my age now, and I think Tim sees a little bit of him in me.” He pauses and looks down at his hands. “Tim’s been telling me all along that he admires my business instincts. He says that I’m the opposite of my father, that I actually have a knack for handling all these sticky financial situations.”
I’m still not sure where this is going, but I reach out and lightly touch Calder’s arm.
Calder lets out a long breath. “Lily, he’s offered me a job.”
“A job,” I repeat.
But that’s good news, right? It’s exactly what he needs—a purpose, a project, a place where he can Wentworth Cunninghamw would grow and excel. It’s the first step to starting this next phase of his life. The first step to starting over and feeling like his life has meaning again. He’s intelligent, confident—and, as I know from personal experience, incredibly persuasive—and I have no doubt he’ll be brilliant at it.
“Lily,” Calder says. “The job is in New York.”
Oh.
New York is almost a thousand miles away.
“It’s only an entry-level position,” Calder says. “He’s taking a great risk offering me a job at all, considering what the greater part of the world thinks about my family right now. But he’s already arranged for an apartment, for everything.”
My stomach is sinking lower with every passing second. “Have you accepted the position then?”
“Not yet.” He rubs his face. “But Tim is persistent. He calls me constantly—offering more money, better benefits, anything he thinks might persuade me.”
Something in his voice makes me pause.
“Do you want this job?” My own voice is hardly more than a whisper.
He doesn’t say anything for some time, just continues to shred the grass in front of him. Finally he looks over at me.
“I thought about asking you to come with me,” he says. “But then I realized that meant asking you to leave the Center. I wouldn’t force you to make that choice, even if I thought you’d consider it.”
I’m having trouble forming a coherent response. This isn’t how this was supposed to go. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be with us.
“We—we can still be together,” I say. “Tons of people have long-distance relationships.”
But how long can we last like that? We’ve only technically been dating for a couple of weeks, and even that has been rocky. Can we really expect to make things work from a thousand miles apart? And how long should we expect to go on like that? Eventually, one or the other of us will have to move—but I doubt I’ll be any more willing to leave the Center in the future than I am now. And Calder, if he does well Wentworth Cunninghamw would in his new position, might be working his way up at the company, building a new life for himself—how could I ask him to give that up?