Chapter Twenty-One
Rolf’s next few days were a series of meetings with the board. The town’s business community made a presentation, someone from the state’s tourism branch came in to talk about how welcome Whiskey Jack was to their interests and, most importantly, the police chief showed up for a closed-door, ten-minute meeting in which he said he’d made some arrests on the vandalism.
“The brothers who were fired from Basco Construction?” Glory asked as she finished getting ready for dinner. She was looking hot in another of what she kept calling her ‘conference outfits.’ This one was a black mini skirt and a purple top with a turned-up collar and a plunging neckline.
“That’s them.” He looked for the schnapps he’d left in here, then decided against it. This was the last night here for the board. They’d be tying one on, now that business was done. Rolf would have to pace himself.
“So they’ve backed down and you can do what you want? Skip the T-bar?”
“Yes, but I’m going back to Germany with them. I want to get those procurements started before these turds get out on bail and do something else to cause the board to get cold feet.”
“You’re leaving, like, tomorrow? Morning?”
“I know.” He lifted his empty hands, guilt cutting hard into him as he took in her alarm and disappointment. “It’s been a crappy week.” He’d hardly seen her except when she helped him entertain the board. It was a tall order, given Haven’s cultural fabric consisted of karaoke Thursdays and cow tipping. “But Nate’s following me in a week. I could get you a ticket to come then, too. How are you making out with hiring a manager?”
“I thought…” She set down the earrings she was holding and moved to the chair, sinking into it. “I was waiting for them to leave. I thought we’d have all next week to talk.”
“About?” A sensation like a bucket of ice water hit him and rolled down his skin in a way that had him catching his breath and suppressing a shiver of premonition. “Are you pregnant?”
“What? No! No, I started the pill after my last period.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“You have to use condoms for the first month anyway. And I felt better having things really foolproof. I don’t want to fall into motherhood before I figure out what else I’d rather be doing. That’s what happened to Mom. Which…” She rubbed her forehead. “I kind of think I figured some stuff out. I, um, can’t go to Germany. I’m going to Atlanta.”
“Atlanta.” He folded his arms and leaned on her desk, ankles crossed, brain racing while he reminded himself to keep it together. Even though he felt like a bullet train was headed straight at him. “What’s there?” If she spoke a man’s name…
“A writer’s conference.”
His tension drained away into something like disappointment.
“The money issues with this place are that bad?” He hated himself for wondering if that’s why she’d been sleeping with him, dismissing the thought almost as quickly as it formed because she was obviously trying to do something about it in her own way, but he still wound up feeling put upon. He was going to have to bail out Marvin, one way or another. That was clear to him now.
“It’s not—I’m going for myself. I wrote a book.” She sat on her hands and bit her lip.
“That’s what all the typing and slapping closed of the laptop has been?” Why did that feel like a kind of infidelity? Whatever guilt he’d felt at neglecting her these last few days broke into grit that churned in his gut. He started to feel like there were a lot of things she hadn’t been telling him. While he’d been doing his best to open up, she’d been keeping things to herself. That inequality tasted a lot like betrayal.
“I was worried about Dad and the lodge and whether he would be able to make a go of it so I wrote a book and thought I would publish it under Mom’s name.”
She said it so fast, he hadn’t even absorbed it all when she continued.
“But when I sent it to her editor, she knew right away it wasn’t Mom’s work. She still liked it. Mom used to tell me to write my own books, but I didn’t think I was any good.” Her gaze dropped. “I thought she was biased. And I’ve always been so afraid, you know?” She rubbed her nose, then tucked her hand beneath her again. “Also, who wants to buy a book from a nobody?”
Her chin stayed tucked while her gaze came up, eyes huge and uncertain. Wary. Deeply vulnerable.
“I honestly do not want to hear the comparisons and it’s inevitable. But when I said as much to Barb—she’s the editor—she said I built Mom’s platform so I should damned well harness it for my own titles. She said my tagline should be, ‘Not my mother’s romance.’” She chuckled dryly, but he didn’t get the joke. “She thinks I should talk to an agent. So, I’m going to Atlanta to meet up with her and an agent she knows.”
Wow.
“So the whole time we’ve been here, all this time we’ve been sleeping together, you didn’t once feel you could tell me any of this?”
She shrugged, looking as though she was being eaten from the inside. “You’re not going to say, like, ‘congratulations,’ or something?”
The way she was looking at him had him feeling as though she already knew he hated the idea. He didn’t know what he thought.
“Sure. Congratulations. I still don’t know why you didn’t tell me this. What exactly does this mean for the lodge?”
She turned her head, cheeks tinged with an angry pink. Her mouth was pinched.
“It means I probably won’t be here when you get back from Germany.”
That struck like a kick in the testikel. “Why not? Where will you be?”
“Back in Seattle, probably. I can’t…be here. You know what Dad is like. This is what I want to do and if I’m here, he’ll just suck me back into all of this.”
“You’re leaving.” He said it aloud, but couldn’t grasp it. “Because you want to write books instead of run the lodge.”
“Yes.”
“And this?” He motioned between them.
She cocked her head in a way that was rather patronizing. “You know this was never going to work. Not long term. We—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he cut in. “You kept all of this from me, including the fact that you weren’t even buying in to this relationship? Who’s giving and who’s holding back here? Do you know how angry I am with you right now? What happened to trying?”
“What does that even mean?”
“Opening up! Do you think I’m like this with anyone else?” In the world. “You’re the first woman I gave more than the bare minimum to and you’ve been… What? What has all this been, Glory? I need to know what I’ve just wasted all my time on.”
She gasped and jerked back in her chair, then rose with temper, face flashing to bright red.
“Good for you for having such precious time, Rolf. I’m honored you spent any of it on me. Okay? Is that what you need to hear? Because my time means nothing. It was just here for you to pick and choose how much of it you wanted. I am very much here for your pleasure and what I want doesn’t matter. What a selfish bitch to even think it could.”
“I thought you wanted this.” He pointed at the floor between them.
“What is it? What are we doing? Do you really see this turning into marriage and kids and happily ever after? You see yourself with me for the rest of your life?”
He let his arm drop back to his side, clenching his jaw as he looked toward the window. He hadn’t got that far in his head. “At least I didn’t come into it with an expiry date in mind.”
“Neither did I! But what would you do in my position? What did you do? I waited twenty-six fucking years to find the courage to go after what I really wanted and it turns out it might actually pay off. Damn you, if you got the call today that said, You’re ready. Come ski this race because you have a shot at winning, what the fuck would you do, Rolf? You’d say, ‘Thanks for the sex, Glory. See ya when this ride is over.’ I know you would. That’s why you’re divorced. Because you had something that mattered to you and it needed your attention more than she did.”
Each word was a slap of truth. Now, however, on the other side of that… His chest was on fire, his throat raw with words like, You can write anywhere.
“Please don’t say this isn’t the same. It is to me.” She sniffed and used the back of her hand to swipe at each of her cheekbones. “And this wasn’t wasted time for me.”
He closed his eyes, wanting to eat those words.
“I needed to feel—” She swallowed and took a breath of gathering composure. “I needed to feel something besides sadness. And I needed someone to show me that it’s okay to go after what you want. That trying and failing is better than not trying at all.”
He wasn’t feeling that one right now. He knew what the selfish choice was and wanted to make it. Desperately. But he couldn’t.
“Go, then.”
“What?” The words sounded punched out of her.
“If you want to go write books, go. Don’t draw it out. Make it happen. Trigg can help your dad. They signed that deal. If things fall apart, it’s on them. Go after what you want and quit worrying about what might happen here.”
Her mouth quivered and her brows pulled. “Just like that?”
“That’s how you do it. No distractions.” He pulled all of his hard-earned ability to focus around him now, making the one thing happen that needed to happen.
“You’re not angry? Because I don’t want to part on bad terms. I don’t want to leave you thinking—”
“We’re fine.” He held every single muscle in tight control, breaths deliberate. Even his heartbeats were somehow held to a slow, steady pound like nails into a coffin. “You’re right. I didn’t let anyone get in my way. I’m not going to stand in yours.”
Her eye twitched.
His blood was thin on oxygen, highly acidic, running hot and cold through his arteries. It took everything in him to walk across, cup her hair against her neck, and kiss her crown.
“Good luck.”
“Do you want this room?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Only if you’re in it. That’s what he wanted to say. He walked out and slammed the door.
*
Glory cried all night, hypocritically, since it was mostly over the fact he had claimed he would try to make their relationship work, but in the end, he hadn’t fought for them at all. What had she expected, though? It sure as hell wouldn’t have made any of this easier.
Was she making it harder than it needed to be, though? She had agonized all week about whether leaving was the best course. She always came back to how her father would react and when she sat him down after Rolf was gone, she knew she’d been right. This was the only way.
“If this is why you’ve been after me about hiring a manager, fine. Hire one. But you don’t have to leave.”
“I’m telling you to hire one, Dad. This is your lodge. Your dream. I want to pursue my own.”
“You’ve proven you can write around what you do here. Glory, this is our time. I want you here.”
“Dad…”
She was sitting on the petitioner’s side of the desk again. He was in the new chair he’d bought to replace the one Rolf had taken to his office at the base. She lifted her head out of her hands.
“I feel like you’ve been waiting for me to be eight again, so we could do everything we used to do while Mom was busy writing. I know it felt like I was choosing Mom when I went to work for her. I’ve always felt pulled between you two, but that’s not what this is. I’m not choosing Mom. I’m choosing me.”
“Are you?” His bushy brows came together in a pained peak.
Her lungs shrank and the insides of her cheeks hurt where she bit down on them.
“I am, Dad. And it’s time for you to quit acting like there’s something dirty in what your wife did for a living. If your academic friends don’t like what your daughter writes, fuck ’em. Okay? You don’t even see them anymore. Why does it matter?”
“It matters if it’s taking you away from me.”
“The way it took her away?”
“That was different.”
“How?”
He sighed and looked out the window.
You didn’t love each other, did you? That question had smoldered inside her for years. She’d never once had the nerve to ask it aloud. Her parents had stayed together for her, which was why she felt so responsible for their happiness or lack thereof.
It was why she couldn’t stay and fall more in love with Rolf, putting her own needs on a shelf so she could someday blame him for all the things she hadn’t done.
“I’m a grown-up, Dad. It’s time for me to cut the cord and act like one. I have to move out from living with my parents. I have to stop living for them. If you feel like Mom held you back from doing something like this—” she waved at the lodge “—that’s fair. Now you get to do what you’ve always wanted. But she didn’t hold you back from me. I didn’t let you in because I didn’t think you’d support me in what I wanted to do.”
It hurt her a lot to say that. The way his face spasmed told her it hurt him to hear it.
“Well,” he said in a choked voice. “I’m your father. I love you. Of course, I’ll support you.”
He sounded so baffled and sad, she almost fell apart and relented. But there was an element of enabling if she stayed. She wasn’t the only one who had to grow up.
“Thank you,” she said in a thin whisper.
“But what about Rolf? I thought… Well, a grandchild would be nice at some point.”
“Oh my God, Dad.” She could have laugh-cried over that, but only said, “I love you. Thank you for understanding.” She went upstairs to pack.