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About his dad. About his desire to make a legacy. I could tell him about the project I’ve finally finished, but I’d rather show him than tell him. And right now I’m not done having my say.
“But what kind of legacy do you want to make, Shane? Is being great more important to you than being good?”
“Why should I have to give up one to be the other?”
“You don’t.” I let myself lift my hand to his face. “I see the goodness in you. I’d let myself think it wasn’t there anymore for a while, but it’s never left, even if you want to stuff it into a box. I’ll be damned if I’m going to keep sitting at the window and waiting for you to come back to me and Izzy. I might have accepted that for myself, but I won’t do it for her.”
He releases my shoulder and smooths his tie, his face barely registering the mess I know is going on underneath. “This morning was a mistake, a fuckup, but I am going to have to work long hours, Ruthie. You know that.”
“There’s a difference between long hours and living at the office. I understand one, but I don’t understand the other.”
He watches me for a long moment, his eyes sad.
“I’m worried you’re going to lose yourself again,” I tell him. “It’s already happening. I can’t just stand by and watch.”
“Please don’t do this, Ruthie,” he says, as if I’m the one who’s doing it. “Let me make it up to her.”
“You will,” I say. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to keep staying with you.”
“That’s not what I want,” he says, reaching for me again. I let him, because I want him to keep reaching for me. For us.
“No,” I say. “But for right now, that’s how it’s got to be. I have to protect her.”
And I have to protect myself.
Because Tank’s not right, but I know he’s not altogether wrong either. If I let myself keep playing house with Shane, pretending that our life together is real, it’s going to hurt even more if he chooses to leave us behind. If he decides he’s more interested in what he’ll look like after he’s dead than about being alive.
“Are you saying we’re through?” he says, his voice rough. “Just like that?” His eyes are pleading, and I’m tempted to tell him to forget it. We’ll stay. We’ll see what happens together. But I can’t.
My hand finds his tie, and I give it a tug for old time’s sake, my fingers shaking. “I don’t know, but maybe it’s time for us both to think through what we really want. And it’ll be easier to do that if we’re not living together.”
“I don’t want you to go,” he says. I know how much it costs him, I do, but it doesn’t matter.
He still plans on taking that job for all the wrong reasons, and it’ll still be a mistake—maybe the kind of mistake that will ruin him.
I can’t bear to have a front-row seat to that. I won’t.
But I haven’t given up yet.
I have one last play, and I’m hoping—I’m praying—it will win the game.
Chapter Forty
Shane
I’m at work, but I’m only physically present.
Izzy’s surgery went off without any complications, thank fuck, but I could tell Ruthie wasn’t the only one I’d disappointed. I talked up the sleepover plan, but Izzy insisted she didn’t feel like doing it anymore. We went out for ice cream, and I overcompensated by getting her three pints to take home, but everything felt off. Tainted. Poisoned.
I was the only one who ended up sleeping in the living room. By myself. Even Flower left me for the bedroom.
Then, this morning Ruthie told me she was going to take some of their stuff back to the apartment. Starting tonight.
I’m going to lose them.
It’s a thought that makes everything inside of me quail. Because I can’t lose them.
I’m so fucked up that when Freeman calls me into his office, I don’t so much as flinch. Even though I’m pretty sure I know what it’s about.
