I had no idea what was happening, and I hated the feeling of dread that had washed over me. Had we been found out? Did Katherine know what was going on with us? Had she fired Elisa? Is that why she’d flown to Nevada – to tell me that she was done and she wasn’t going back on tour with us? I felt like I was going to be sick.
“So, I had lunch with Katherine this week,” she said, and my heart sank.
“She knows, doesn’t she?”
Elisa hesitated, but then she shook her head. “No, she doesn’t know.”
The relief I felt was palpable – at least for a few seconds.
“Okay,” I said, prompting her to continue, since from the look on her face, I knew the other shoe hadn’t dropped yet.
“Well, she told me how impressed she was with my work. She said I’d done a phenomenal job over the past three months. She said I’d exceeded her expectations.”
“That’s so great,” I told her, taking her hands in mine.
She pulled them back and let out a long, slow breath. I blinked a few times, not sure what was happening.
“Elisa, what’s going on?”
I saw tears fill her eyes, which did nothing for my nerves that were already firing at random.
“She said she was proud of me and that she felt like I had a really great future in PR. She said I was mature and intelligent, and she knows how hard I work for my clients. Then she said how glad she was that she could trust me with such a big job. She talked about how few people she could trust in our business, and she was glad she could count on me.”
That all sounded good to me.
“And that’s good, right?” I prompted.
Elisa gave me a desperate look. “Van, I’m lying to her. I told her flat-out that you and I weren’t even friends. I betrayed her when I told her nothing was going on with us. She can’t trust me.”
“She asked about us?”
Elisa shook her head. “Not recently, but at the launch party, when she asked if anything was going on with us, I told her no.”
“Nothing was going on with us then,” I defended.
She gave me a knowing look. “It doesn’t matter. I told you, I gave her my word that our past wouldn’t interfere with the tour.”
“It’s not interfering – at all. In fact, I think you’ve been working harder since we started seeing each other. You’re doing an awesome job. We’re not the ones who are fucking everything up. Phillip gets that honor at the moment, and his issues have nothing to do with us.”
“Van, that’s not the point,” she said sharply.
I watched her for a few seconds, realizing fairly quickly that there was no point in arguing. It was clear she’d made her mind up about whatever she was thinking long before she’d left California. She wouldn’t have come all this way if she was still vacillating.
“Fine, Elisa, then what is the point? Why did you come here?” I asked her, already knowing what she was going to say. I could read her too well.
“I think we need to cool things off.”
“No,” I said automatically. “Absolutely not.”
Her mouth opened, but it seemed like she might have been too stunned to speak right away. I knew how that felt. Even though I’d known it was coming, I still felt like I’d been punched in the gut by her words.
“I wasn’t asking your permission,” she finally said, in a voice barely above a whisper.
“So, that’s it? You just want to end things, break up, because your boss might find out?”
“Van, it’s not that simple. I’m lying to her. This is a big deal. I can’t treat it so flippantly. It’s my career.”
“And you can treat us so flippantly?” I questioned. “That’s bullshit. You act like I’ve done something wrong, and I haven’t. I told you I’d do everything in my power to not affect your career, and I’ve kept my word. Quite honestly, I think we’ve done a damn good job of keeping what’s going on between us a secret.”
“Van, you haven’t done anything wrong,” she said in a voice that sounded pained. “And yes, we’ve gotten away with sneaking around for the past month, but that doesn’t mean it’ll continue. We have four more months of the tour to go. I can’t lie to Katherine that whole time.”
“So you’re willing to just cast me aside?” I questioned, feeling my face get hot.
“No,” she said softly. “You can’t think of it that way. I don’t want to end things with you, but I’m not sure I have a choice. I just started thinking what a big risk this is, and as much as I don’t want to do it, I don’t think I have another option.”
“You do have another option,” I told her through gritted teeth as I shook my head. “I can’t believe you came all the way out here just to break up with me. That’s shitty, Lis.”
She closed her eyes for a few seconds, and when she opened them, the tears that had been hovering at the surface spilled over. “Van, I’m so sorry.”
“No,” I said firmly. “You don’t get to be sorry. This is bullshit. I can’t believe you came all the way to fucking Nevada, practically in the middle of the night, to tell me you don’t want to see me anymore.”
“That wasn’t my intention,” she insisted, the tears now streaming down her face. “I wanted to talk to you, to tell you what I was feeling. I wanted us to have one last night together. I wanted to say goodbye – for now, but not for good. We can be friends and then be together when the tour’s over.”
I shook my head, the anger I was feeling about to boil over. “Fuck that,” I told her and watched her swallow hard.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I guess it was stupid of me to assume anything. I can just leave. You probably don’t even want to look at me right now.”
I watched her looking down at her hands as she wrung them together. I tried to figure out what to say next, to stop this, to fucking get us back on track. Everything had been great ten minutes earlier. Hell, not even four days earlier, she’d agreed to be my girlfriend, and now this shit. No way. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.
“You can’t break up with me,” I told her, hearing the desperation in my voice.
“I have to,” she said, her voice sounding shaky.
“But I love you,” I said in disbelief, my voice breaking on the last word, the most important one, as I said out loud what I’d only thought before.
Elisa looked up at me in confusion. “You what?”
I wasn’t a crier by nature, but as soon as what was happening hit me and mixed with how I knew felt about her, I couldn’t hold back the tears. “I said, I love you,” I mumbled, and then I turned away from her, not wanting her to see me lose it.
I had no idea if my words even mattered, but I had to say them. I’d had no intention of telling her so soon, but now it felt like the only logical argument I could find. If I loved her, she couldn’t leave me. It was that simple.
With that in mind, I figured, to hell with my pride, and turned back to her. Let her see what she was doing to me. When I met her gaze, she was staring at me like she wasn’t sure what to say.
“I said, I love you,” I repeated, more forcefully that time. “I love you, Elisa. I’ve loved you for years, but I never knew how to show you or tell you. I didn’t even know for a long time that what I was feeling was love, but once I realized it, my feelings never wavered. I just figured you should know that if you’re going to end things. You should know that it’s pretty much the last thing I want.”
I watched the tears stream silently down her cheeks as she stared at me. Her face had softened, and she was processing everything I’d just said, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I wanted so badly for my words to make a difference.
I felt so helpless in that moment, and the restless feelings vibrating through me wouldn’t let me sit still. So I did the only thing I could think of and leaned forward and kissed her, pushing my weight into her as I pressed her back against the bed of the truck and covered her with my body. I kissed her, putting every si
ngle thing I felt for her into the kiss, feeling the wetness from her tears mixing with my own where our lips met.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t react. She was breaking my heart.
“Fucking kiss me back,” I told her as a sob escaped from my chest.
It felt like I was fighting a losing battle. I was about to pull away, to accept defeat when Elisa’s arms slid around my back, and suddenly she was kissing me. She was crying, and I was crying, and we were kissing, and I’d never experienced a more intimate moment in my life.
“I love you,” I told her.
Now that I’d said the words I’d been afraid to say for so long, they just seemed to roll off my tongue with no effort at all.
“I love you too,” she said, and I froze.
I pulled up to look at her, not sure I’d heard her correctly. “Did you just say you love me?”
“Yes,” she said, the word sounding thick and heavy.
“Did you mean it?”
My heart was pounding practically out of my chest as I waited for her to respond. She looked up at me and nodded as more tears slid from her eyes and cascaded down her temples.
“You really love me?”
“Yes,” she said, her eyes welling up with fresh tears.
“Then why are you doing this?” I asked her, the pain I was feeling making my heart ache worse now that I knew how she felt. It was like being slowly tortured.
“I don’t want to do it,” she sobbed.
I kissed her again, harder and more forceful than I had before. “Then don’t,” I said against her lips. “Please. If you love me, don’t do this.”
“I feel like I don’t I have another choice. I feel trapped,” she said, and I pulled back to look at her.
Then pick me. Choose me.
In that moment, as soon as the words were out of her mouth, I knew exactly what she was thinking. She wanted me, but she also wanted her job. Circumstances wouldn’t let her have both, so she was making a choice. And it was the wrong choice.
With my heart a lead weight in my chest and my gaze locked on hers, I said, “It’s just a job, Lis.”
Aren’t I more important than a job?
I didn’t ask the last part, possibly because I was afraid to hear her answer, but I selfishly wanted to be the most important thing in her life. I wanted to be more important than her job, no matter how much she loved it. I wanted her to love me more.
She watched me, her watery eyes still locked on mine. “It’s also my integrity,” she said softly.
“I love you,” I said, my voice hoarse. “I know I should say that, because I love you, I’ll take a step back and let your job come first. I should tell you I’ll wait for you for as long as you need me to, but I’m not that guy. I guess I’m selfish, but that’s only because I know what it’s like to lose you, and I don’t want to do it again. I just got you back in my life. I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to wait four months to be with you. I don’t want to wait four days. I don’t ever want to be without you again, Elisa. That’s the truth, so I’m asking you to please, please don’t do this. Be in love with me, be with me. Don’t push me away because you’re scared of something that may or may not happen.”
“Van, it’s not that simple,” she argued.
“It never is, but we agreed to do this together. And I get it. I know how big of a risk this is for you, but believe me when I tell you that I’m going to do everything in my power to minimize that risk. I’m not going to let you fall, Lis.”
“But what if Katherine finds out and she fires me?”
“Then you’ll apologize for being human and find another job. If she’s that much of a callous bitch that she can’t see that you’d never let what was going on with us affect your work, then she doesn’t deserve to have you working for her.”
“Finding another job might not be possible. She could blacklist me from the industry,” she said morosely.
“Then we’ll figure something else out,” I said softly.
“We?” she questioned.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told her.
Elisa closed her eyes for several long agonizing moments, and then she opened them, meeting my gaze. I could see pain in her eyes that I wanted to take away however I could.
“I want to be with you, Van,” she said, the emotions she was fighting coming through clearly in her words.
“So be with me,” I pleaded. “Stay with me.”
“Okay,” she said after hesitating for several agonizing seconds.
As soon as she said it, all the fight seemed to drain out of me, and I let my head fall into the crook of her neck, my forehead resting on the blanket. It was rough to the touch, the wool scraping against my skin. Elisa’s arms wrapped tighter around me as she pulled me close, and I let my weight settle on top of her.
“I love you, Van,” she murmured.
“You have a funny way of showing it,” I told her, my words muffled against the blanket.
I probably shouldn’t have been making sarcastic jokes, but I was just so relieved that she wasn’t walking away that I couldn’t help it. The tension that had consumed me for the past ten minutes was finally starting to ebb.
Elisa hugged me tighter. “The last thing I want to do is break up with you.”
“Then you shouldn’t have tried,” I told her. “I honestly want to hate you so much right now, but I don’t.”
“I probably deserve it,” she said morosely.
I pulled myself up, so I could look her in the eyes again. “You don’t deserve it. Just do me a favor and don’t try to break up with me again unless you really want to. If you fall out of love with me, if you decide that you want to be with someone else, then do it. You’ll break my heart, but at least you’ll be honest with yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Don’t be sorry,” I told her. “If this happens again, talk to me. Don’t keep me in the dark and shut me out. It sucks, and I don’t want to experience it again.”
I sighed as I rolled off of her and onto my back, looking up through the canopy of trees above us, the sounds of the water rushing from the river a few feet away mixing with the Stars of Track and Field song that was playing from my truck’s stereo, serving as a calming mechanism for me as I took a few deep breaths.
Elisa curled up against my side and laid her head on my chest. “I can go,” she offered.
“Jesus, woman, did you not hear a word I just said?”
“Yes, and it’s obvious that regardless of how you feel, you’re mad at me.”
“I’m not mad,” I corrected her. “I’m hurt.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I know, but you did. You also made me say ‘I love you’ before I was ready, and I didn’t even get to say it how I wanted. Trust me when I tell you that desperately blurting it out wasn’t my intention.”
“How did you want it say it?” she asked as she splayed her hand on my chest.
I hesitated before resting my hand on top of hers.
“Well, for starters, I wasn’t going to tell you anytime soon, because I didn’t think you’d actually say it back. But, when I was finally ready, my plan was to come up here, go on a hike, and then when we were overlooking the valley below, I’d tell you.”
“That sounds amazing. I’m sorry I ruined it.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said, but it was only a half-hearted complaint.
As it stood, I honestly didn’t care how we’d said it. Now that I knew how she felt, and that she didn’t want to end things, nothing else really mattered.
I looked up and met her gaze. “Can we pretend we’re saying it for the first time now?” I asked, probably sounding like a total chick, but I didn’t care.
Elisa lifted her head and looked down at me. She reached her hand back and ran her fingers through my hair, her hand coming to rest on my cheek. Then she leaned down and kissed me, soft and sweet. When she pulled back, she said, “I love you, Van
Salvatore, with all my heart.”
I smiled. “I love you too, Lis.”
Then I kissed her.
“I really am sorry,” she said as she rested her head on my chest, right on top of my heart.
“I can’t believe you flew all the way out here to break up with me – when you didn’t even want to,” I said in disbelief.
“I know,” she said morosely. “It’s been a bad week. I missed you, and things with Amy are still so shitty. I told my dad about us, and he cautioned me about the chance I was taking with my career. Then I had lunch with Katherine, and after what she said, I got scared. It was like everything sort of came to a head.”
“You missed me, so you thought you’d break up with me. That makes great sense, Lis.”
“I told you I didn’t want to,” she defended.
I sighed. “You are so making this up to me.”
She nodded. “I’ll do anything you want.”
“Awesome, then you’re going to stay the night, in my bed, and spend all day tomorrow with me.”
“I would love to do that, but isn’t the band at your house?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, they don’t know we’re together.”
I shrugged. “They’re going to find out soon enough anyway, so who cares.”
“How?”
“I think we need to come clean,” I told her. “I think you need to tell Katherine that you’ve fallen madly in love with me, that we want to be together, and that you want to be honest with her before the tour goes any further. Then we can tell everyone else.”
“Really? You want me to tell her?” she asked, seeming shocked that I’d suggested that.
“I think you need to. After what just happened, I’m not going to let you go on feeling guilty about being with me for the next four months. And you’re right, for as lucky as we’ve been, that luck might not continue. The last thing I want is for us to get caught.”
“She might pull me from the tour.”
I sighed. “And that would suck, but I’d rather that happen than anything worse.”
“You’re right. Okay, I’ll talk to her.”
“And we’ll deal with the fallout however we need to,” I promised.
Westside Series Box Set Page 68