When Mari woke up the next morning, she knew something was wrong. Linc wasn’t in bed beside her. He always waited until she woke up to get out of bed.

She brushed her teeth, pulled her hair back and wandered through the house until she found him.

Linc was sitting in his home office, there were papers strewn over his desk and his computer was on, but he sat tilted toward the window, his eyes on the evergreen trees in the backyard.

“Hey,” Mari said cautiously, trying to get a read on his mood.

He snapped around to look at her. “You slept late,” he said in a falsely cheery voice.

“Yeah, well it was a heck of a night. And then a long drive afterwards.”

“Big win for the home team.”

Mari nodded and slid into the seat across from Linc’s desk. Suddenly she felt as if she was at a job interview and she didn’t like it. She rose and walked around to sit right on top of the desk, papers and all. “It was really fun. Especially to be there with Eli’s dad. He was so frickin’ proud.”

Linc gave her the first genuine smile since she walked in. “I would have liked to have seen that.”

Mari nodded, laced her fingers together. She had to tell Linc. She had to explain that she was struggling with feelings for another man. Linc was organized, she reasoned. He had an answer for everything. He would know what to do. He would know exactly how to make things right again. She just had to spit the words out already.

“I’m sorry about last night,” Linc said suddenly. “I don’t know what got into me. I think I’ve just been all confused about this.”

“Yeah,” Mari said in a voice much quieter than usual.

Linc leaned back in his chair. “So.”

He knew she had something to say. Mari cleared her throat. “So. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

Linc’s eyes went distinctly dead. He looked like he was going to rise from his chair, but instead he didn’t. He just sat back further. “You, uh, you’re choosing him.”

“What?” Mari suddenly felt all the blood rushing to her face. “No! I—”

“Oh god,” Linc leaned forward, his elbows to his knees, and he clutched his chair. “Mari, I can’t believe that I have to be the one who is fucking telling you this, but yes, you are. You are choosing him. You’re choosing him every single time you have lunch with him, or smile at his texts or go with him to the goddamn Superbowl without me.”

Mari hopped up from the desk and paced away from him. There was rage and shame and confusion pumping through her veins. She was certain that he’d made a few good points but they were clouded by what she’d also thought were unfair points.

“What are you talking about?” she turned to him, her voice and color rising. “You told me to go without you. You told me this was all okay! You insisted, Linc! You insisted over and over that I needed to figure this thing out.” Her voice trembled with high emotion. “I took you at your word.”

Linc blanched. “I know. Okay? I know. And I have to live with that. But I was trying to do everything and anything I had to do to make you happy. So that you wouldn’t leave me. I’m the one who wants your happiness so bad, I even let you hang out with the love of your fucking life. God! I’m such an idiot. But I swear, Mari, I swear I only lied about being okay with it because I couldn’t stand the idea of keeping you in a cage.”

“What cage, Linc? We have a good life together!”

“Love can be a cage too, Mari. And I never want you to settle for me because I love you. That’s actually my worst nightmare.”

“But… but.” She sagged against the window, the fight leaving her as she was swamped with new information and confusion. “You always talk about how true love doesn’t exist, how you didn’t want some sweeping romance. You want a companion. A life partner. Someone you can trust and rely on. And now you’re telling me that you’ve been telling me this and that and that you don’t want me in a cage and that you, what? Love me more than I love you? Where the hell is this coming from?”

She was raging and only making partial sense, but in the way of a good fight, momentum was carrying her most of the way through. She felt a frantic storm rising within her. Suddenly, every time that Linc had held her while she cried was playing through her head. There had been a lot of times in that first year. She’d still been grieving Jay. Still living with the hurricane. She wouldn’t have gotten through without Linc. And now, here he was, eyeing her from that chair like she was an adversary.

“Mari, you know I want something steady in my life. You know I do. I wasn’t making all that up. And if I found a woman who wanted, really wanted, that exact same marriage dynamic, I think I could be really happy. I don’t need high passion. My parents had that and their marriage was the worst, most brittle piece of shit legality that ever crossed a courthouse. So, yeah, it’s always been my goal to just find a woman who wouldn’t jerk me around, who wouldn’t fight for no reason, who wouldn’t need more from me than I could give. The problem is, Mari, you don’t want any of those things.”

“What?” That put the steel back in her spine. Mari felt like she could spit vinegar as she tried to process the reality of Linc telling her how she felt about something.

“I stand by it! You want romance, Mari. You want it. You don’t want to want it. But you do. Somewhere, deep in your heart, you prayed to find Jay. The man who swept you off your feet and saved your life and implanted himself in your heart forever. You want what, god, only he can give you. That feeling that had you sobbing and rolling around on the floor of a gala? You need that. And that means that I’m not the guy for you.”

Mari took a step backwards, the windowsill jamming hard into her back. She felt her life rushing up to meet her like water at the other end of a high dive. What was happening? What had she done? What was Linc doing?

“Y-you said that we’d figure it out. That you’d still want me even if I was all mixed up over him.”

Linc sagged backwards. “I do want you.” He laughed a mirthless, jagged laugh. “I want you so badly I’m fucking breaking up with you.”

“Okay. Wait.” Mari’s heart was swelling and shrinking, she could barely get air to her lungs. She spit the next words out even though it was like letting acid pass over her tongue. “What if I didn’t see Jay… for a while? What if we started over? We’ll focus back in on you and me.”

“I- I need a break Mari. From your brutal honesty at every turn. I need a break from watching you be in love with another man. And you think that’s going to just die if you decide not to see him for a little while? Mari, five years didn’t kill it. Say that you and I focus back in. We get back what we had. Ten years goes by and you run into him in the grocery. Or I stumble upon you staring out a window. Or crying. Don’t you know what I’m going to wonder? You can’t ask me to live my life in that kind of shadow. That kind of doubt.”

Mari trembled. She looked small, she felt small. She’d spent her life learning how to be strong, physically and emotionally, but suddenly she felt as if she could be swept away by a stiff breeze.

“Linc, I won’t lie. I do love him. But,” she winced just from how badly Linc winced. “You and I love each other, we’ve been together for years. We’re building a life together. We’ve made commitments. Linc, those things mean something to me. I would have stayed away from him if you’d asked. I would have.”

Linc leaned forward again, brushed the palm of his hand over his eyes. “I know, Mari. I know how good you are. I know that I’m the one who fucked all this up.”

“No!” She rushed to him them, pulled his hands away from his eyes. “That's not what I’m saying!”

He jerked back from her, the first time he’d ever done that. “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know. Maybe I never stood a chance from the second I met you. Maybe this was always gonna come back and end us. Or maybe if I’d played things differently when he first came back into your life. I don’t know. But all I know is that none of the three of us are getting what we want out of this situation. And this is the only way I know how to make you happy. We can’t be together anymore. It’s not fair to me or you.”

“But, but—” you’re my family. Mari couldn’t say the words out loud. Because suddenly she saw the raw truth of them. The unforgiving unfairness of them. She wasn’t about to say partner or fiancé or boyfriend. She was going to say family. Which was how she thought about Linc, she realized. As an endlessly giving, unconditional part of her family. Someone who would stand by her. And who she would stand by in turn. But she didn’t think of him as her person. And she realized, then and there, what staying with him would do to him. What he already knew. Staying with him would whittle away at him, every day. He’d love her and she’d appreciate him. And that kind of poison kills you slowly. Little by little.

Maybe he saw the defeat in her eyes, the logic of his words finally settling in. Or maybe he couldn’t stand to fight anymore. But Linc rose, clutched her to him, as gentle as always. “I’m not going to cut you out of my life, Mari.”

She felt everything crashing down around her. She knew it wasn’t fair to keep Linc hostage the way she’d been unintentionally doing. But without him, she suddenly realized that she had no family again. Just one aunt and uncle back in Sioux Falls who could barely figure out their Colombian niece. Who loved her, but looked at her like she was speaking Greek.

Every feeling she’d had when she realized that Jay hadn’t gone to the hospital on Grand Bahama, that he could be anywhere in the world and she’d probably never see him again, it all came rushing back to her. A grand aloneness. It was just Mari and her feelings again. Alone.

“Say something,” Linc whispered into her hair. “Mari, say something. I won’t abandon you. I promise. I just—I can’t keep loving you like this. It’ll kill me. And then I really won’t be around for you.”

He smiled weakly at his own joke and pulled her back by the shoulders to look at her face. She was pale and unseeing. Her eyes searched his face, for something, anything, but apparently didn’t find what they were looking for.

***

 

Hours later, Mari sat in a daze in Linc’s kitchen, unconsciously mirroring a pose that she’d held a few weeks ago, after the gala. A half eaten apple sat listlessly in her hand, she gazed out the back window to the evergreens that whipped and shivered in the cold winter wind.

And again, that’s how Linc found her. The pain was there for him, searing and poisonous, but right now, it was hidden underneath a glassy calm. He was relieved, in a way, to know that this was probably the last time he’d walk into a kitchen and see Mari lost and confused, dreaming of another man while still shackled to him. Linc felt like he was using feet to walk with that he hadn’t used since before he met Mari. They were sore and stiff and he’d hoped like hell to never bring them out of retirement. But they worked.

“I won’t kick you out, you know. Ever.” He stood in the doorway of the kitchen looking at her.

She turned and looked back at him, dazedly. She shook her head as if to clear it. “I’m not going to keep living here, Linc. You have to get on with your life.”

He noticed that she said you and not we. As if she had absolutely no idea how to get on with hers.

“Well,” he spoke softly. “I’m going away for a few months. London again. And then Seoul. You can stay as long as you like.”

She looked like a lost little kid.

“We, uh, don’t have to tell anyone yet, if you don’t want,” he said, wanting to do almost anything to soothe that look that lined her face.

“I’m not a kid, Linc. I can handle it. We don’t have to hide it from anyone.”

“Alright,” he said, making the decision right then and there to keep the news to himself for as long as she needed to get used to it.

“I’m gonna go on a trip too,” she said quietly. “I’m gonna go surfing somewhere for a couple of weeks.”

“Not alone.” It was a statement, but Linc could hear the unwilling question in his own voice. He really, really didn’t want to ask if she was inviting Jay. But he also really, really didn’t want her to go alone.

“Yeah,” she shrugged. “I’ve gone on trips alone a hundred times. I won’t surf alone, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She’d learned her lesson on that one.

He shifted his feet. “I’d really rather that you find someone to go with you.”

She said nothing. Just looked back out the window. And he knew they were both thinking the same thing. Who?

***

Well, he’d had a good run. A good, semi-long, sane life. And now that was over. Jay was losing his royal mind. It had been five days since their kiss at the Superbowl and Jay hadn’t heard a word from Mari. Christ.

He’d blown it. Marcus had been right the first time. Long game. Or he should have told her how he felt. Full on feelings. No touching. Just here’s how I feel. Your move.

But instead he’d gone with this murky amoral middle ground that had her skittering away from him so fast he couldn’t even see the trail she’d left behind.

Five days.

Five of the longest days of his life.

Jay pedaled home after work and even in the frigid winter air, he was sweaty. He’d biked as hard as he could intentionally. Trying to work any of this insecurity and fear off his shoulders.              

Jay biked directly into his detached garage and didn’t see the little figure huddled on his front porch.

He did when he walked around the front though, his work back pack on one shoulder, out of breath from how fast he’d been riding. He stopped in his tracks, however, the second he saw her.

Mari. She had a wool cap on her head, a winter coat, and she had her eyes closed as she reclined on a big suitcase.

Jay’s heart stopped. First, just because he was seeing her there, in front of him in real life and she was so beautiful he wanted to swallow her whole. And then because he realized she was sitting on a big suitcase. Which meant she was going somewhere. And the idea of her going somewhere made him want to puke.

“Mari?”

Her eyes flung open. She looked tired. Deeply tired. And sad.

Jay kicked himself for doing this to her. He’d kissed her out of turn and now she was all screwed up over it.

Don’t make me hate myself.

Those words still echoed in his head. If he’d made that happen, he’d never forgive himself.

“Hi,” her voice was so little and she shivered.

He rushed over to her, taking her freezing hands and guiding her to the door. He unlocked his house, a burst of warm air coming out over them. Jay shoved her inside before going back for her bag.

“How did you know where I live?” he asked, then shook his head, realizing that wasn’t the question he’d wanted to ask. “I mean, how long have you been sitting out there?”

“I like your house,” she said, her voice still quiet as she turned a circle, taking in every friendly inch of it. “It’s very you.”

“Yeah.” Jay stepped forward and took her hands again. He found he couldn’t stop himself. “Mari, what’s going on?”

She cleared her throat and a little bit of her old fire and steel came back into her eyes. “I came over to tell you that I’m going away for a little while. An unexpected vacation.”

“Oh?” He absently rubbed her cold hands between his warm ones. “Where?”

She cleared her throat. “Hawaii. I’m gonna surf for a few weeks.”

About eighty things tumbled around Jay’s brain. And he was shocked when this one came out. “You’re kidding. Marcus, Eli and I are headed to Hawaii to surf in just a few days.”

While it was true that the three men had agreed to go on a surfing trip sometime in the near future, they hadn’t discussed when or where. Jay knew it was a simple matter of explaining exactly what was at stake to get them to agree. Jay just wished he knew what was at stake.

“Which island are you going to?”

She furrowed her brow, ignoring his most recent question. “Are you kidding me? You’re going to Hawaii in a few days?”

“Yes,” he replied easily, already accepting it as a truth. “Which island are you going to?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Which island are you guys going to?”

Crap. “Kauai.” He tried his hardest not to make it sound like a question.

“Oh.” She looked surprised. “Me too.”

Score! The universe was on his side right now. “Where are you staying?”

“At an AirBnB I found. Not far from a surf spot I really like. You?”

“Oh,” Jay thought fast. This was harder to fudge later. Be vague! “I’m not sure, Eli figured that part out. He’s the high roller with expensive tastes, so he usually just takes care of lodging for us.”

That was true enough about times they’d traveled in the past. Eli just didn’t know that it was happening again.

A terrible thought occurred to Jay all at once. What if she wasn’t traveling alone? What if Linc was going to be there? Oh lord. What the hell had he just done.

“You weren’t planning on surfing alone again, were you?” He disguised his real question in a layer of a different kind of concern.

“No,” she wrinkled her nose. “I learned my lesson on that one. I’m traveling alone, but I’ll make sure to surf with people. People I meet on the beach or wherever.”

“Or with me?” he couldn’t help but ask.

Her eyes were still so distant, so strange. He couldn’t help but feel like she was utterly disconnected. From the world, from him, even from herself.

“Sure,” she said absently. She cleared her throat. “Well, I came to say goodbye, but I guess I’m really just saying see you later.”

“Yeah,” he couldn’t help but grin. “See you in a few days.”

She left in a cab for the airport just a few minutes later. And Jay’s heart was beating a mile a minute. There were a million reasons why he knew this was a terrible idea. The first of which was that he knew that if he saw her in a bathing suit for the first time since the hurricane, he was likely to propose to her. Not to mention the fact that she was engaged to another man. God, his heart was going to get absolutely pummeled.

He opened his phone and dialed a number he knew by heart. The other line connected. “Hey,” Jay started without preamble. “You know all that money you’re always trying to spend on me and Marcus? I’m about to ask you to spend a shit ton of it.”