ABBY
HANK IS TALKING a mile a minute, leading me back into the living room so he can pull some file up on his computer to show me more about this joint project, but all I’m hearing is that the deal that was going to take him away from Chicago is back on.
I knew this would happen, or at least that something would pull him away eventually. I just thought I would have more time. That we would have more time.
I can barely breathe, my chest hurts so bad, but somehow I manage to hold it together. Somehow I manage to smile and scrounge up enough air to push the words past my lips I need to say.
“That’s incredible, Hank.”
It feels like time has folded back on itself. Like I’m reliving that moment eleven years ago when everything changed. When the world I’d only recently learned to have some faith in crumbled beneath my feet. Back then it was Hank banging at my door, cheeks flushed and eyes so bright I was laughing and jumping with him before I even knew what had happened.
“MIT, Abby. A full ride!”
It was everything Hank deserved, but of all the things he’d imagined, everything he could visualize, he’d never seen this. Never believed he’d had a chance.
My heart had broken that minute, but I didn’t dare let Hank know. I couldn’t let him see. Because I wanted everything for him and I wouldn’t be what held him back.
So I threw my arms around his neck and closed my eyes as he spun me around. I kissed him with everything I had when he finally took a breath. And when he fled from my house like a bat out of hell because he was going to be late for his job… I went up to my room and cried for the rest of the night.
Because I knew what I was going to do. And I knew what I wasn’t.
I didn’t tell Hank. For seven months I pretended everything was fine. For seven months I savored every moment, carefully wrapping them in tissue paper to save and protect. And then the day before he left, I went to his house.
“I can’t wait for you, Hank. It’s not what I want for my life and it’s not what I want for yours.”
He didn’t understand. He begged me to reconsider, told me he wouldn’t go. He promised it wasn’t the end… because he loved me.
But I’d had months to prepare for that moment, and years to figure out how Hank Wagner thought.
I was ready for every argument, fix, and rapid-fire solution he launched at me.
“Don’t see this as the end for us. Look at it as the beginning for you. I want you to do big things and to leave your mark, Hank. But I don’t want to be the girl waiting for you to remember to call. I don’t want to be the one wondering when you’re going to come back. Wondering if you’ll come back.”
“Have a little fucking faith in me, Abby!” He’d been livid, but I was calm.
“I have all the faith in the world in you, Hank. I know you’re going to be okay.”
“Don’t do this,” he’d begged, holding on to my hands as I pulled away from him. As I told him I needed him to let me go. As I made him promise he’d give me the clean break I needed to move on. Here. Without him.
“Please, Abby. Don’t.”
It was that last part, when he knew it was over but couldn’t stop trying, that haunted me. For years, those were the words I heard in the middle of the night when I woke up with tears on my face. When I came home from a date and wondered why I felt more alone than I had before I went out.
It haunted me, but I never, for even one second, doubted what I’d done.
Would it be different this time?
I’ve known since the first day this thing with Hank couldn’t last. That this lull in his life was a gift I couldn’t keep. But I haven’t been able to resist taking what time we could have, accepting how much it would hurt when it was over but knowing it would be worth it until then.
Until now.
Or tomorrow. Soon.
“What should we do to celebrate?” I turn toward the kitchen so he doesn’t have a chance to see my face. “I saw a few bottles of champagne in your fridge. Should we open one?”
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“Abby?”
Don’t look back. “Or we could go out. Let me take you out for a change.”
I’m almost to the kitchen when he catches me by my elbow and turns me to face him. Once again I’m reminded that this isn’t the same boy from ten years ago. His brows are pulled forward, his eyes dark and accusing.
He knows.
“Jesus Christ, Abby. Not again.”
I straighten my shoulders and take a deep breath, ready to give him the easy out I’ve been saving on the tip of my tongue since that first kiss, but before I can manage the first word, he’s got me by both shoulders, his grip gentle but firm.
“Don’t even think it,” he warns, bringing his mouth down on mine in an insistent kiss that has me opening beneath him with a moan.
I won’t push him away. I don’t want to resist.
If I could have my way, I’d have this kiss forever. But as it is, I’ll take the now.
His hands are warm against my cheeks, his fingers threading through my hair as he holds me in place for his kiss. Licks into my mouth and nips tenderly at my bottom lip.
He pulls back to meet my eyes again, and my breath catches at the intensity in his.
“No.” The guttural word is a stark contrast to the light brush of his thumb across my cheekbone. “Do you understand me, Abby?”
I understand that he’s moving to Florida. In two months. I understand that he’s once again teetering on the brink of a new frontier. I understand that the next generation is going to know a world I couldn’t have imagined as a youth, and it’s going to be because of the boy I loved… because he could imagine everything.
“Hank, you—”
Another searing kiss, this one deeper and longer than the last. Harder. Like he’s trying to press his will upon me.
“Abby,” he groans against my lips when I slide my fingers into his hair. “I’m not going to let you do it to us again.” His mouth moves down my throat to the sensitive spot beneath the hollow. “Not again.”
He’s not ready to hear what I have to say. So I don’t say anything, but Hank has gotten where he is by reading people.
“You don’t get to decide for me, not this time.”
He doesn’t bother to ask if I understand. He kisses me again and again.
“I won’t let you.” His hands are on my hips, his fists clenching in the fabric of my skirt to pull me against him.
I tip my hips into the contact, eagerly taking the kisses he can’t stop giving me. Giving myself over to his touch the way I wish I could give myself over to his words. But I know better. I know myself. And I know that even after all the years, after living through losing this man once before… I still can’t allow myself to be the one who is left waiting.
HANK
I WAKE UP to empty arms and an empty bed, and swear, cursing myself for being stupid enough to fall asleep. To let my guard down when I should have known she’d run. Only then I hear it, the muffled clanking from the kitchen, and I let out a breath filled with more relief than I want to admit.
After throwing on my sleep pants, I cut through the apartment like I’m expecting her to make a break for it before I can get to her.
I need to pull it together.
Be cool. Calm. Reasonable… so I can show Abby how fucking unreasonable it is for her to even think about ending this thing we’ve only just gotten back.
Another clank and Abby lets out a frustrated growl that, in spite of everything, almost has me laughing. She’s staring at the coffeemaker I broke trying to get to work without reading the instructions and still haven’t had fixed.
“It took a swing at my ego and I killed it,” I say, propping a shoulder against the wall.
Yeah, look at me, comfortable and easy. Totally relaxed, even though my molars feel like they’re about to grind down to dust and my heart rate is probably somewhere around 207.
I’m fine.
Abby looks over her shoulder, confusion in her eyes. “This is why you’re always ordering coffee? You, a leader in technology and next-level engineering, can’t work your… coffeemaker?”
“Way to rub it in.” That thing is more complicated than the latest schematics SpaceWalk shared with me.
The moment is light, but my gut is steadily working itself into knots because it won’t last. In fact, based on the way those big blue eyes are shifting away from me, I would say it’s already slipping through my fingers.
I wait, say nothing, just hope Abby has more sense than she did ten years ago.
The silence grows and she walks past me, heading back to the bedroom, where she starts getting dressed while I watch. The fact that she’s not just sitting back against the headboard and tucking her bare legs beneath the covers doesn’t bode well for the conversation to come. She wants to be ready to leave.
“It’s just Florida, Abby. And yeah, the first month or two will probably be intense, so I might not be around as much as I have been.” I definitely won’t be. “But I’ll make time. I’ll fly up here every week or two. I’ll bring you down to me. Or to Paris or London or Rome. Anywhere you want to go… we’ll go there together.”
Her tights and skirt are already on, and she’s pulling her sweater overhead. “Hank, I know you would make time for me when you could. I know you’d fly me wherever I want to go. But… I’m not interested in a long-distance relationship. I’m sorry. I’m just not built that way.”
The apology in her eyes ought to do something to me, but all I’m feeling is angry. Because this can’t be happening again.
“You’re not built that way?” I challenge, not able to process what I’m hearing. The casual dismissal when I know we’ve left casual behind, hell, maybe before we even started.
Her words come back to me from that night at the lagoon. “I can’t be casual with you.”
“Abby, haven’t the last ten years changed anything?”
“Of course they have—but they haven’t changed this. You’re leaving. This week it’s for a few days. But in a month or so, it’s going to be for good. Or at least for the foreseeable future. And then I won’t even be the woman you’re coming back to. I’ll be the one you’re finding time to visit.”
“So come with me. Be the woman I come home to in Florida.” Be the reason I go home at all.
She lets out a slow breath and shakes her head. “Hank, my life is here. My mom and dad. My career.”
“You could teach anywhere. They could come with us. Abby, I’m not the same kid who left ten years ago. I have enough money that I could relocate everyone in Bearings to Florida and not blink an eye over the cost.”
I would. Even fucking Wilson.
“And then what? I can barely see you for a few months, try to settle in to some new place, and maybe once it finally starts to feel like home… I can start wondering when I’ll have to give it up for the next new place. Hank, I know you don’t see it the same way, but for me, that sounds an awful lot like the way I spent my ten years in foster care before I met you.”
I feel the ground beneath me give. I want to argue with her. Tell her she’s wrong. But I can’t.
I know what finding a real home meant to her. I remember that first year she was here, and how she told me she probably wouldn’t be around very long and that I was wasting my time trying to get to know her. Christ, I can still see the hurt and doubt in her eyes that didn’t fully go away until almost two years later.
My throat feels like it’s coated in gravel. “We could get out a calendar. Set up a schedule right now. I could be here every weekend. I only have to be a part of the project at the beginning, then I can start getting out. Leave it to someone else.”
I can see it in her eyes. She’s made up her mind. “Hank, I couldn’t be happier for your success, but you and I want different things for our lives. We always have, whether we realized it or not.”
Always? A thought comes to me, but I don’t even want to think it, let alone voice it. Only I have to.
“Abby, did you ever think there was a chance for us?”
The look in her eyes tells me everything I need to know.