She kissed him, the softest brush of pretty lips and he strained to get the words out. “It’s me who’s proud of you, though why you’d want my opinion now, I don’t know. You were magnificent when I met you, so strong and focused, but you had that severity, that sadness from too many parts of you denied. You’re not severe anymore, you’re whole, you’re stronger and lighter and more and more brilliant to me.”
He’d made her cry again. He pulled her to his chest and she gave him a watery smile. “When you get around to it you can say the nicest things.”
But he’d wrecked his chance to learn to do that more often. He stroked her hair, damp from the rain, and he held her like he used to when he didn’t know this end was written for them.
He lay awake for hours, feeling her breathe, and when she stirred he let her roll away. And she took part of his heart and all of his hope with her.
39: Forget
Jacinta knew he’d gone before she woke. She dreamed it in a palette of bruised colours and hard-edged shapes with no proper form that dripped and splattered cold, and rose up as menacing black shadows before they sealed tight on her arms and legs, making them heavy and impossible to move.
She woke up sobbing.
She loved Mace, but she wasn’t strong enough to hold their relationship together when he’d wandered so far from the idea of permanence. She had to make a choice. She could stay with him and wait until he had time for them, hope that when he did, they’d both still want to be together, or she could move ahead with her own life. She couldn’t do both. And her own life was about to restart.
It took her a long time to get out of bed and she had no desire to leave the loft. Mace had left a note. He’d be home as soon as he could get away. They should talk. He loved her more than he’d ever have the words to say. He was sorry he’d ever given her cause to doubt it. He would find a way to make it up to her.
That only made it worse, because she knew what was coming and he didn’t. The regular trickle of apologies, the broken promises, the separation, wretched loneliness and anxiety. Then resentment, anger, blame and ultimate disinterest.
Oh, he was wiser after last night, but she’d seen this from a long way off, when the possibility of her return to work was a distant hope. And she’d watched the marriage breakdowns of dozen of career track colleagues, men and women like Aaron, who failed to juggle work and partners, whose relationships went sideways into affairs or ended bitterly in division and divorce.
When Mace got home, he insisted on cooking, acting as thought they’d find their way again, but he was uncertain with her, craved her closeness. He didn’t understand how much his life was about to change, how little say in it he’d have if he wanted to succeed. And he did want that, you could see it thrumming in him, the hunger, the determination to build his dream. She could never make him choose. She’d eat the broken promises for dinner, stomach the resentment, and carry the weight of the blame first.
They passed the week in a haze of hesitancy and tenderness. Mace came home, came to bed, and lay next to her, but when he thought she was sleeping he’d get up and work again. He knew he wasn’t fooling her. She let it go.
It was the beginning of letting him go.
She did her research for the new job and had lunch with Constance, reluctantly put her business suit back on and attended the first interview. The job was interesting. She’d feared it might only seem so because of the long absence with no real prospects. The headhunter laughed when she said that was a concern. He told her about four other roles in the pipeline she could write her own job description for. He had every intention of making a fat commission out of placing her in a job that would make her famous.
She’d settle for productive, stimulated, engaged, motivated. She’d settle for less money and more control, a smaller playground and a bigger scope. By the time the fourth and final interview rolled around, Mace was ready to fly out to San Francisco and she was close to throwing off her concerns about the job.
She’d be working hard again. This time starting as an unknown quantity without the support of the family name, diving into corporate politics she had no way of understanding clearly, running agendas she was yet to formalise with staff whose skills and attitudes she was unfamiliar with. It’d be a wild ride, an intense first hundred days, and as long as the final meeting with the board ticked all the right boxes, she’d be starting within the month.
And yet for all it made her brain fizz, woke her competitive spirit, she was aware of what it would cost. There’d be little time for leisure, little energy to paint; the idea of taking commissions was a laugh. She’d lose contact with the art crowd, and she’d be alone, so very alone, because the cost of holding on to Mace was to repress the ambitious parts of them both. The only choice she had to make was how she let him go.
She watched him finish packing his suitcase. The date of his departure for San Francisco had moved dramatically forward, like all things with a start-up, subject to radical change. His cab would be here soon.
This time he’d be away longer, an unspecified amount of time. He said it was fluid, that nothing was fixed, that he’d come home immediately if she needed him, but he packed almost every piece of clothing in his functional wardrobe, and he must’ve known in his heart she wouldn’t call him back.
When the taxi drove away, the only remaining trace of him would be the furniture he’d set them up with, the photographs changing in the digital frame, his old car in the garage and the painting of him he’d never seen on her covered easel.
He was agitated, unsettled; anxious about the trip, setting up the office and leaving her, but excited about going and apprehensive about showing it.
“You’re going to be fine.”
He sat on the bed, looking at his shoes. “I have no idea what I’m doing. We should’ve let Anderson hire a new CEO when he wanted to. We could lose all this so easily.”
She stayed by the wardrobe. She’d steeled herself these last few weeks to limit her proximity to him, because the need to be in his arms was so compelling and he was so willing to have her there, but too hesitant to force the contact.
He looked over, his expression torn between excitement and longing. “Come with me. Throw stuff in a bag now and come with me.” He stood. “Fuck, just come as you are and we’ll buy what you need.”
Stunned, she shook her head. He’d suggested this when the trip date firmed, but vaguely, as if he was more afraid of her saying yes than no, but maybe she’d misunderstood him, because there was no ambiguity in him now. Her breathing stalled. She folded her arms across her ribs. He was offering her another choice. What if she took it?
“Cinta, come with me.”
“No.” It was too late. Mace was trying to hold on to something that had already slipped away.
He stepped in front of her, put his hand to her face. “If not now, tomorrow, this week, next week, whenever you’re ready.”
Cat with a mouse, she felt cornered. She’d be torn apart whichever way she ran. “No.”
“Why not?” His voice got sharp. He looked at his watch. “What’s stopping you?”
Her choices had narrowed suddenly, shockingly. The option of letting their relationship continue to drift, to shake loose slowly, and inevitably end softly with the fondness they deserved to have for each other was closing out.
She couldn’t afford to be the mouse anymore. She had to roar. “It would be the same thing in a different city.”
He stroked his thumb across her cheek. “We’d be together.”
She looked into his eyes and wondered if this would be the last time. “No, you’d be working, and I’d be waiting for you to have time for me.”
He dropped his hand in frustration, smacking it on his thigh. “That’s the whole problem isn’t it? You say you love me, but you won’t wait for me.”
“As I would never have asked you to wait for me.” Oh God, this was hard, much harder than she was ready for. “And if you were thinking clearly you would
n’t ask me to do it for you either.”
“I’m thinking clearly and I’m asking.” He frowned. “Again. I’m asking again. We love each other. We’re stronger than this. Come with me.”
She wasn’t—she couldn’t stop her own life in sacrifice for his. She couldn’t spend it waiting for him, or have him lose his dream and wait for her. They didn’t get together because they couldn’t survive alone. They couldn’t stay together because it was no longer better than being alone.
“We’re not meant to be, Mace. Our timing is off. We were a night that accidentally became a weekend that became—”
“A life.” He shouted it, reaching for her. “Cinta, you are my life.”
She tried to ease away, but he was too big, too present, too much what she wanted. She accepted his arms around her. She’d been his willing hostage and he hers, but it was time to be free.
“Your life is only just beginning to fire, Mace. You don’t know where it will take you.”
He pushed hair behind her ear, rubbed his thumb over the curved edge of the helix. “It takes me where you are.”
That gesture, made from their first weekend together, almost broke her, his way of learning about her when she’d tried so hard to hold him at arm’s-length. Now the length of space and time between them would be fatal. “No.”
“If you won’t come with me, that’s it. It’s over. I’ll go. I’ll do what needs to be done to set Dillon up. I’ll quit and come home to you. I’ll still make a fuck-load of money and I’ll invent something else bigger, better.”
She closed her eyes because she’d seen his truth. He would give it up for her. He would walk away if she asked him to. But he was so close, so close, and she couldn’t be the one thing that stopped him making this whole dream come true. There was no something else as alive, as vital for him. And second shots like this just didn’t come along.
“No.” She made the word sound like a stone, sharp and heavy enough to sink them.
He let go of her abruptly. “What the fuck do you want me to do?” Anger flared but he reined it in as quickly as it saturated his face in hard lines. “You’re coming with me or I’m coming back as soon as I can.”
Go. She had to let him go. She placed her hand over his heart; it was pumping fast, like the meter on the taxi, like the end of their time together. “I want you to build your dream and I’ll build mine.”
The eyebrow lifted, stayed arched above his incredulous eye. “Perfect.”
“I’ve been offered a new job.”
“What?” He leaned into her. “When?” He stepped back, his hands going to his head as her words connected. “Fuck, when were you going to tell me?”
She watched him put this together. One, two, three racing breaths. He might hate her for this. She might come to hate herself for it.
“You fucking weren’t going to tell me. You were going to let me walk out that door and make whatever the fuck decision you want, then drop it on me when I’m halfway around the world. Shit. What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Nothing, it’s not about you.”
He looked at his watch, shook his head. He pulled his bag off the bed with a savage yank and too much force. It thumped to the floor and bounced. “So you’ll start the new job and I’ll come back and—”
“We’re over.” The last gift she could give him was his freedom. She needed to make sure he blamed her. That he’d cut clear and not look back.
He shoved the case out of the way, advancing on her. “You’re fucking ending us.” He snapped his fingers in her face and she started. “Like that.”
They were both breathing heavily. His shoulders were up, the tendons in his neck taut, but there was no violence in him, she had nothing to fear except existing without him. She’d hijacked him when he was a distraction she craved. He’d had a choice then. She was doing it again when he had too many constraints to fight his way through.
“It’s time.”
“You’re doing this now when I’m about to... Fuck.” His hands went to his head again. ”Give me a week. I’ll come back we’ll work this out.”
“No.” She swallowed around her panic, assumed authority lending her voice stability. They were different people now. He was about to realise his ambition. She was about to reclaim the part of her life she’d lost. “You’d destroy your dream for something that doesn’t exist anymore.”
He processed that between one heartbeat and the next. It played over his features like damage. “You’re saying you don’t love me.”
Oh God. She was about to lose the one part of her life she needed to be whole.
“Cinta, say it.” He wanted to shake her. She could see it in him, the need to hurt her like she was hurting him, but he walked away, put half a room between them. “I need your words.”
Oh God. She couldn’t send that lie into the world, but she couldn’t leave him doubting. “I won’t be here when you get back.”
His eyes shuttered. His fist clenched. His beautiful face turned to hardened steel. She could take it back. She could stop this. She could tell him she loved him, she’d wait for him, or forget the new job and go with him, they’d work it out somehow.
Except she loved him, so she had to let him go.
He pulled up the handle of his bag and wheeled it out of the room. She followed. His taxi would be waiting. In the kitchen, he shouldered his hand luggage. He took his passport off the table and slipped it in his coat pocket. He might still fight her. He was tenacious. He never gave up.
She willed him to fight so she could give in.
“Do whatever you want with the furniture, the car. Give the lot to charity. I don’t care.”
She gasped. She’d succeeded. He was going because she’d sent him away, and he wasn’t coming back because she’d scorched the earth behind him. He opened the door. He didn’t look at her. He stepped outside and it swung closed behind him.
And she wanted to take it all back, every word, every avoided glance, every confused gesture. Run screaming into the stairwell and tell him she’d lied, that she loved him, would risk her career, her heart and her sanity for him.
She staggered to the table and sat, too numb to know how to feel, her head dropping onto her folded arms, but she heard the door, his key in the lock, she sat upright. The door opened and he stepped inside, striding towards her.
She stood, he’d come back for her. She said it without thinking he’d give any other answer, hope putting light in her voice. “What did you forget?”
His eyes flicked to her then away. “Nothing.” He tossed the keys he wouldn’t need again on the table’s warm, worn surface and he went out again.
Everything lost colour, lost shape, lost meaning.
It was three days before she got out of bed, showered, ate, dressed. Another two before Jay came to see her, and she felt strong enough to leave the loft, go outside in the sunshine and start her life over.
40: Ambushed
Mace leaned across the table and knocked Dillon’s shoulder roughly with his fist, after trying to get his attention by less subtle means. The music was loud and the punky blonde with the pierced tongue sitting in Dillon’s lap was pretty much all Dillon could see.
Dillon looked around her. “What?”
“I’m out.”
“Ah, you can’t go yet, it’s early.”
It was 1am. Mace was knackered, unsure how he’d managed to stay awake this long, and this was the first weekend he’d had off for—who knew how many days, weeks straight they’d worked, it was pages and pages of a project Gantt chart. There’d been a season change, so it was a long time. But they were done with the set-up phase. Monday they were officially fully operational. He had a weekend to sleep and that’s what he planned to do with it. Hit the sack, make like a coma.
“One more drink, dude.”
He’d had one drink to Dillon’s three. Dillon was wasted. He was a cheap drunk on adrenaline and long-term sleep deprivation. And Punky would work out any minute h
e was going to be a dead lay as well. Except they were in some trendy private San Jose club called Flip, where you had to be a 3.0 billionaire or beautiful like Punky to get in, so she might overlook the fact Dillon was a slurring drunk if she thought he was loaded in another way.
“We’re going to get our own membership here,” Dillon told Punky. They’d coasted in on Jay’s nod to celebrate another milestone, but he’d gone hours ago. Mace watched Punky’s face to see if Dillon had just shot his own dick off.
“Babe, you can come in on mine any time you like,” she said.
Jesus. Mace signalled a waitress, because that deserved another drink.
“What do you do?” Dillon asked.
She made pistols of her hands and pointed them at him. ”I write game software.”
Dillon patted her spiky hair. “I’m keeping you.”
“Until you get your payday you might have to, ‘cause baby, no one gets in here if they’re not, you know.” She shrugged.
They weren’t, but they would be soon. Mace had to get used to that. Odd how the knowledge still ambushed him.
“I knew who you guys were the minute you walked in.”
No way she could. They were banned from talking to the media or analysts until Monday. They’d kept a low profile. No time for any other kind.
Dillon didn’t buy that either. “Oh yeah.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not because you’re that cool. You’re the guys behind Ipseity. You’re hot. Everyone in this place knows who you are.”
He looked at Dillon and they both did impersonations of carp, mouths dropped open. There were famous faces in this room and they were imposters. Jay had warned them it was going to get extreme in a different way when the money started to flow, but the true money didn’t happen till the next capital raising closed and that was another month off, and the truly big time—a stock exchange listing—that was years off, if ever.
Mace had a how did I get here moment while the waitress put their drinks down. They’d been so busy since they arrived it’d been all about the work. He’d not seen anything other than the glass walls of the new office, the shuttered windows of his apartment, the screens at the gym and the blurry scenery out the window of the car he drove everyday from home to the office.
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