GABE
I stood on her porch, stunned and reeling. I rang her doorbell again and again, but she wouldn’t answer, and I finally walked back to my truck in a daze. She’d drawn the blinds in her apartment and closed them tight. I wanted to drop to my goddamned knees right there on her front lawn, but instead I slipped my keys from my pocket, got in my truck, and sat there with the engine off.
“Motherfucker,” I growled as I whacked the steering wheel hard with my palm. I’d lost her before I’d even really had her. Goddamn it.
The pain I’d seen in her eyes was what really wrecked me. Seeing her cry, seeing her hurt, seeing her decide that she wouldn’t take a chance on us was what split me right in two. I had fuckall experience with rejection and even less with this kind of pain. It both devastated me and pissed me off; I’d put it all on the table for her and she’d pushed me away.
I turned over the ignition and looked at her door one last time, like I was willing it to open—willing her to run out to me. To come to her senses. But she didn’t. Instead, the mailman trundled up with sagging pants and stuffed her mailbox full of junk and then shuffled off.
Peeling out with the engine damn near redlining, I found myself heading back to the Willows. If she wouldn’t let me be with her, at least I could go back to where I’d gotten so close to her. We’d been in such a hurry that morning, I hadn’t even bothered to shorten the reservation, so the house was still mine to use. It was a far cry from actually being with her—her touch, her smell, her laughter—but it was something, at least.
But when I walked into the kitchen, I felt a gut punch of anguish that knocked the wind out of me. I slammed the kitchen door and braced myself on the countertop. I tried my damnedest to man up, but it was no use. Ten minutes away from her and I was a fucking mess.
What I’d said to her was the goddamned truth. If she’d asked, I’d have given it all up for her. The show, the travel, anything she wanted. But I couldn’t give it up if she wouldn’t be waiting for me on the other side. I couldn’t jump from that cliff without knowing that she was going to be there at the end of the dive.
I couldn’t face this, not here—maybe not ever. Before she’d come along, the thing that defined me was my work. And with her gone, it was the thing that defined me still. So I grabbed my phone, turned it back on, and called Markowitz.
“Powers? What’s the hell is going on? Been getting alerts up the yin-yang to tell you to check in for your flight!”
I looked out at the yard, where I’d imagined her with a garden and a dog. I looked at the island where I’d taken her. I looked at the kitchen table where we’d eaten together for the first time. “Get me the hell out of here.”
For once, he didn’t launch into a bunch of bullshit questions. I heard the sound of him typing and he asked, “One ticket . . . or two?”
I hung my head over the sink and shut my eyes, blocking out the light from the window and all the fucking memories. The ones we had. And the ones we’d never have. “One.”
He let out a groan. “I’m awfully sorry to hear that, buddy.”
Christ almighty, I loved her. I didn’t want to let her go, but I wouldn’t fucking stay where I wasn’t wanted either. “So am I,” I said as I pushed my tears away from my eyes.
There was a little more typing on the other end of the line, before Markowitz finally said, “Savannah to JFK, JFK to Edinburgh. Seven thirty tonight. Gives you two hours before you gotta be at the airport. That good with you?”
I braced myself on the kitchen table and stared at the houseplant that she’d used as a makeshift candelabra on that first night we spent together. “It’ll have to be,” I said to Markowitz and ended the call.
For a few ticks of the grandfather clock, I didn’t move a muscle. I had that feeling like this just all had to be a nightmare, like I’d wake up any second with Lily in my arms. But this was real. It had happened. And another red-hot flash of anger came over me. Without even thinking, I shoved the potted plant off the table, sending it flying onto the floor. Shards of terra-cotta poked out from the dirt and flowers scattered all around the kitchen.
Wreckage from beauty. Misery from happiness.
Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all was completely full of shit.