by Tawna Fenske
No, Sarah. I can’t.
I wait for him to clarify. To tell me he’s only suggesting we go inside where it’s warm to profess our love in the solitude of our romantic little cabin. Or maybe he wants to be the one to say I love you first.
I wait for it, knowing it’s not coming.
He says nothing. Not with words, but his eyes say plenty. I swallow hard to force down the lump in my throat. “Ian,” I say slowly. “We agreed to be honest with each other if our feelings changed. I’m being honest.”
“I know,” he says. His voice is hoarse, but his eyes are dry. “I appreciate that. I appreciate you. But—I can’t—I don’t—”
“You don’t love me.”
He closes his eyes for the longest time. When he opens them again, it’s like he’s aged a hundred years. “I can’t love you, Sarah. I thought I was clear about that.”
Rage starts to swirl in my chest. I don’t know where it’s coming from because he’s right. He was clear, with his words, anyway.
But I thought—
“I thought you were starting to feel the same thing I was,” I say. “The other day at the gym. Or back at your mom’s place. I thought we were both feeling that connection.”
“A connection, yes,” he says. “But not love. I’m not willing to do that.”
Tears pool in my eyes, but I will them not to fall. It occurs to me that’s not much different from Ian willing himself not to fall in love, and suddenly I’ve got hot, salty streams running down my face.
“You can’t just turn it off and on at will, Ian,” I say in a voice that’s so tight and sharp I don’t recognize it as my own. “Emotion isn’t a goddamn light switch.”
“It is for me.” He takes his hand off my knee, leaving the skin cold and bare. “I shut down completely when—when it happened.”
“You can’t even fucking say it,” I snap. “When Shane died. When your parents divorced. That’s what you mean?”
“Yes.” He presses his lips together and stares out over the lake. “I stopped feeling after that. There’s no reason for me to restart.”
“No reason,” I repeat. “Not even for me.”
He shakes his head, and the pain in his eyes is so intense that I almost want to take him in my arms.
Almost.
But I also want to knee him in the balls, and that feeling is a lot more intense.
How can he not see that what he’s feeling right now is evidence that he hasn’t shut down? Hurt, sadness, pain—all of those things show he’s capable of love, don’t they?
As much as he might believe he has, Ian hasn’t shut down emotionally. Not like he thinks.
Asshole.
Rage is an emotion, too, dammit. At least I’m in touch with my feelings.
I fist my hands in my skirt and will myself to keep breathing, to stay calm, to give him a chance to say his piece.
“Sarah, you’re my favorite person in the world.” His voice cracks on that last syllable, but he keeps going. “I care about you too much to let what we have get ruined. The kind of passionate love you’re talking about—that’s the kiss of death for a relationship. A union based on friendship and reason and mutual compatibility—”
“Is not enough for me.” I fold my arms over my chest and stare at him. “I’m sorry, Ian. I thought it could be.” My throat makes a clicking sound as I swallow. “I was wrong.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
That’s the hell of it. He looks sorry. He genuinely means it, but that doesn’t change things one bit. Ian Nolan doesn’t love me. He would if he could, but he can’t, so he doesn’t, and that’s that.
I rip my gaze off him, too hurt to offer comfort, or to seek comfort of my own in his arms. “I think you should go.”
From the corner of my eye, I see him nod. “If that’s what you want.”
Of course it’s not what I want.
None of this is what I fucking want.
But right now it appears I’m not going to get what I want, so I’ll settle for self-preservation. I have to protect my heart, to keep myself from falling deeper for this man. If he stays the night, if we share a bed or make love even one more time, I swear to God I’ll break to pieces.
I clear my throat, all business now. This is the way Ian wants it, so I can manage that. “In the morning I’ll tell everyone that you had to race back before brunch to get ready for your presentation,” I say. “And next week we can call your mom and let her know the engagement is over.”
“Sarah, please—” He cuts himself off there, and I wonder how he meant to finish that plea. Please what? Stop burdening him with my messy displays of emotion?
No fucking chance.
I turn back to face him, knowing there’s no way to keep the pleading intensity from my eyes. “I need you to go now. Please?”
I hate that it sounds like I’m begging, just like I hate the thought of Ian driving away in the dark to go back to Portland. But I need this to be a clean break. I need to pull off the Band-Aid quickly. If he stays, if he touches me even once, I’ll be consumed by this stupid flicker of hope that maybe he’ll change his mind.
But I can see from the stony set of his jaw that isn’t going to happen.
“Okay.” He unfolds himself from the seat and stands there watching me for a moment. When he leans down to kiss me, I almost jerk away.
But the kiss glances off my cheekbone, soft and sweet and completely platonic.
That’s all he ever promised. You’re the dummy who expected more.
I know then that it’s over. Ian looks at me for a long moment, then sets his nearly-full champagne flute on the porch railing. “Goodbye, Sarah.”
Then he turns and walks away.
No one suspects a thing at brunch the next morning.
That’s what I assume, anyway, until Lisa comes and finds me in my cabin as I’m packing up to head home. She’s wearing tailored black shorts and a top so blindingly white that I wonder how she keeps it clean. Her sandals are sparkly and kitten-heeled, and her blond hair is pulled back in a ponytail.
“Hey,” she says, rapping lightly on the frame of my open door. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
She watches me from the doorway as I pack clothes into my suitcase. I don’t meet her eyes, intent on mashing a lavender wrap top into something resembling a neatly folded garment.
Finally, Lisa can’t stand it any longer. She clicks across the floor and tugs the blasted shirt I’ve been folding very, very poorly for the last ten minutes. She sets to work creasing and pressing and turning my top into something that belongs on a display table at Nordstrom.
“Something happened, didn’t it?” She tucks the crisply creased shirt into my suitcase and picks up the knee-length pencil skirt I wore for the rehearsal dinner. “With you and Ian, I mean.”
She seems perfectly nonchalant as she folds the skirt into an origami rectangle. If I didn’t know Lisa, I’d think she’s just making casual conversation.
But I know Lisa, and there’s nothing casual about her. She knows exactly what’s up.
I stare down at the black lace bra I bought for this trip with thoughts of Ian peeling it slowly off me. I’m overwhelmed by the urge to light the damn thing on fire. “I’m fine.”
“Not an answer to the question.” Lisa grabs a rumpled T-shirt off the end of the bed and uses her palm to smooth it flat. “Want me to guess, or do you want to just tell me?”
For some reason I appreciate that she doesn’t give me the option of not talking about it. That’s off the table, and a small part of me is glad she won’t let me burrow into my sad little cave to lick my wounds. Won’t let me retreat into avoidance the way Ian would want to do.
“I’m sort of curious what you’d guess,” I admit. “What you’ve observed.”
Lisa studies me a moment longer, then starts to fold the shirt. “I’ve seen the way you look at Ian,” she says. “I know you’re in love with him.”
I flinch, noticing
she’s picked up on the one-sidedness of it. I love Ian. Ian doesn’t love me.
Has it been obvious to everyone but me?
“And I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” she continues. “With absolute terror.”
“Terror?” I frown and fiddle with the nametag on the handle of my suitcase. “Is this supposed to be helping?”
“He’s terrified that he loves you,” she says. “For a guy who likes to be in control, it’s horrifying to realize he has so little control over his own emotions.”
“He seemed pretty in-control last night.” I frown as I pick up a white ankle sock and start searching for its mate. “I practically threw myself at him, and he just sat there.”
All right, that’s not exactly fair. Even I can acknowledge he was more sensitive than I’m making him out to be.
But I’m too hurt to focus on anything besides the fact that I’m aching and that Ian had a role in that.
And also that I can’t find the damn mate to this sock. Where the hell did I lose it?
Lisa picks up a pair of yoga pants off the floor and begins folding them into a perfectly proportioned rhombus. It’s like fucking geometry for laundry.
“Fear, hurt, vulnerability—these things don’t tend to bring out the finer qualities of the opposite sex,” she continues. “Ian’s not the first guy to panic and run when he realizes he’s in over his head in a relationship.”
“That doesn’t make it easier to be on the receiving end.”
Lisa knows what she’s talking about. I helped her pick up the pieces when Dax cut and run.
“It’s different with Ian and me,” I continue. “At least you and Dax had the starting point of a normal relationship. All Ian and I had was a business agreement.”
Lisa shakes her head a little sadly. “If that’s your idea of a business agreement, remind me never to leave you alone in a meeting.”
I sigh and keep hunting for the sock. “He left—just walked out the damn door after I told him I loved him.”
“Did you ask him to leave?”
I bite my lip. “Maybe.”
“Look, sometimes guys need a while to figure things out,” she says. “To process their emotions, or even acknowledge that they have emotions. Give him a chance to do that.”
“If you love someone, set him free and all that?”
“Precisely.”
I shake my head, not wanting to argue, but knowing she’s wrong. Ian made it clear what he wanted. I’m the one who tried to change the rules. When I stop being hurt, I’ll probably be willing to admit that.
But not now. I feel like someone slammed my heart in the car door.
“It’s okay,” I tell her, sounding anything but okay. But I force out a hollow little laugh anyway. “A month ago I wasn’t engaged at all. I was totally okay with turning thirty and knowing marriage wasn’t on the horizon any time soon. I can just go back to that.”
Lisa watches me with such pity that I have to break eye contact. I need to keep searching for this damn sock anyway. I’m sure I would have spotted it by now if it weren’t for the stupid haze of tears in my eyes.
“You can’t go back, Sarah,” she says with achingly soft kindness. “Some relationships change you to the point that there’s nothing left of the life you knew before. Of the person you were before.”
A tear slips down my cheek, and I let it fall. “This really isn’t helping,” I say. “What if I liked things the way they used to be?”
“Did you?”
“I thought I did!” I snap my eyes back to hers as the words burst out shrill and achy. The missing sock is getting to me. “I thought my life was complete,” I insist. “And then he came along.”
“And he was the missing piece,” she says, carefully tucking my off-white cardigan into the suitcase. “The part you needed to feel totally whole.”
Another tear slips down my face. “Is this how you felt? When you and Dax split up, did you feel like someone filled your chest with hot sand and then kicked you in the head?”
Lisa places the cardigan in my suitcase and flips the lid closed, revealing one crumpled, solitary white sock underneath. I start to reach for it, but Lisa steps around the bed and pulls me into a hug.
“Yes,” she says. “That’s it exactly. And if you’re meant to be together, it’ll happen. It may not look pretty, and it may not go the way you pictured it in your head. Remember that, okay?”
As tears run down my face, I let myself be held and I wait for her words to sink through my soul and comfort me.
But there’s only hollowness and hurt, and the knowledge that Ian Nolan isn’t going to be my husband.
Chapter Sixteen
Ian
“And that concludes my presentation.” I clear my throat and press my hands on the boardroom table as I glance around the room. “Are there any questions?”
Dana Peschka stares at me like she’s waiting for the punchline in a horrible racist joke. She glances at Walter, and they exchange a glance that tells me what I already know:
I’ve just blown it.
“Thank you, Ian,” Dana says with a crisp professionalism that borders on pity. “We’ll be in touch.”
“Right. Thank you.” I stand there like an idiot for a few seconds, trying to come up with something else to say. Some way to make up for the fact that I just delivered a presentation with the emotional depth of a snack-sized Ziploc bag.
Dana shifts in her seat, and Walter just stares. My palms are sweating, and I struggle to come up with some way to connect with my audience. For crying out loud, we’ve worked together for weeks. We’ve shared a staff bathroom and eaten dinner together.
It occurs to me these bits of trivia are not helpful, and also that Dana and Walter are waiting for me to leave. The sinking sensation in my chest isn’t unfamiliar, and neither is the knowledge that someone wants me to go.
Sarah.
I swallow back the lump that’s not new. It lodged itself in my throat Saturday night and hasn’t gone anywhere since.
Struggling to maintain some shred of dignity, I start shoving papers into my briefcase. “If you need to reach me, you have my phone number and email and—”
“We know how to get ahold of you.” I look up to see Dana pressing her lips together in a tight line. “It’s been a pleasure, Ian. Thank you for fulfilling the terms of your contract.”
“Not a problem.”
If I needed any further indication that their decision is made, that would be it. My contract is up this Friday. There won’t be a job offer on the table at the end of it.
I give a curt nod, then lift my briefcase and shift it to my left hand. “Thank you for the opportunity,” I say to Dana as I shake her hand. “Good luck with everything.” I extend the same handshake to Walter before turning and striding out the door.
So that’s it. That’s how it all ends.
I knew from the start that I was bombing my presentation. My words came out stiff and meaningless. There was data, but no heart. Flowcharts, but no emotion.
I might be emotionally stunted, but even I realize that’s not the way to win a job.
It’s how you blew things with Sarah, too, you idiot.
Gotta appreciate a subconscious that kicks you when you’re down.
I’ve made it halfway to the elevator when I hear the tap of high heels behind me. I almost don’t want to turn around. If I can just get to the elevator and shut myself inside, I can close this door behind me and—
“Ian, wait.”
I freeze with my hand on the elevator button. Closing my eyes, I take two deep breaths. Then I turn to face Dana Peschka.
“You don’t have to say it,” I tell her. “You’re going with another candidate.”
She doesn’t argue. “Look, Ian—you’re a great guy,” she says. “It’s just that our company culture here at Wyeth Airways requires something a little—different.”
“Different,” I say, pivoting to face her. “You want the guy I was at dinner
two weeks ago. That guy would have gotten the job.”
She levels me with a frown like I’m the D student blurting a rare correct answer in class. “I can’t say for certain, but yes—the personality you showed us that evening was much more in line with what we need for Wyeth Airways. What’s required to take our company to the next level.”
“And therein lies the problem.” I take a deep breath and let it out in a heavy sigh. “That’s not me. Not the real me.”
She frowns and folds her arms over her chest. “Pardon me for saying so, but I think you’re wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m saying you’re wrong.” Her frown is chiseled in place, but there’s warmth in her eyes. “I’ve been running companies for a long time, and I know people. That guy you showed us at the restaurant a few weeks ago? That’s more the real Ian Nolan than you realize.”
I can’t hold back a snort of disbelief. “You’re saying that you know me better than I know myself,” I say slowly. “That I’m mistaken about who I really am.”
“No,” she says, drawing out the syllable like she’s talking to an ill-behaved teenager. “I’m saying sometimes people shove their heads so far up their own asses that they lose the ability to see the light.” She taps one stilettoed foot on the tile floor. “That’s my professional assessment, take it or leave it.”
My mouth drops open. I can’t believe she’s talking to me like this. I can’t believe—
“I can’t believe I let Sarah get away from me.”
Dana doesn’t blink. It’s like she expected me to say this all along, and I wonder whether we’ve been talking about work or my love life this whole time.
Maybe both.
I’m still too stunned to speak, which is fine since Dana isn’t through. “You want to know why we offered you this contract in the first place?”
I open my mouth to answer, but she doesn’t give me a chance.
“We liked you because you were tenacious,” she says. “You’re hardworking and dedicated and have a track record of making smart business decisions. You want to know why we considered taking you on full-time for Wyeth Airways?”
“Because you wanted someone passionate and emotionally present, and you mistakenly thought that was me.”