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He winced. “You’re too smart for your own good.”
“We got it from our parents,” she teased. He could picture her sitting on her couch, her legs folded in front of her, twirling a piece of hair as Brett sat beside her, holding the remote after having paused whatever they were watching on TV. “Are you two an item?”
“Uh…” He dragged his hand down his face, fighting off a yawn. He’d told Shel he was working late, that she should head home and chill, but right now he just wanted to walk the hell out of here and hold her in his arms for as long as he could before she walked away from him permanently. “That’s a tricky question.”
“Not really,” Anna said. “Either you’re an item, or you’re not.”
“I guess we are.” He let out a breath. “Have been for a week or so, but she’s leaving.”
“What do you mean? Where’s she going?”
“Nowhere, yet.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “But she’s looking for a new job, in a small town, far away from here. She hates living in the city.”
Anna made a whistling sound. “Crap. So you’re just, what, messing around until she gets an offer?”
“Pretty much.” He dropped his hand to his lap and stared at his closed office door. “I really like her, though.”
“Maybe she’ll want to stay if you tell her that,” she offered.
“No. Absolutely not.” He shook his head. “I promised her I wouldn’t make her want to stay. I swore not to make her change her mind, and I won’t.”
“God.” She laughed. “What are you going to do, then?”
“I guess I’ll wave good-bye as she drives away.” He frowned. “It’s what I promised to do, after all.”
“But what if there was another way?”
“Like what?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe you were looking for a way to make this all work, so you called me, one of the only other Hamiltons in the family who is in a relationship”—he winced at that word. Relationship. It was such a weighted word—“because you wanted to see if I had any advice.”
Eric reclined and pushed his chair back so he could rest his feet on his desk. Well, she had a point, damn it. Maybe he wanted advice because he wasn’t ready to let go of Shelby, and there had to be another way, a secret that only happy couples knew about, to make it work. “Do you?”
“Well, since you won’t ask her to stay—” she started.
“Hell no,” he agreed.
“Then there’s the possibility of you going with her…”
“I just made junior partner and signed a contract, and I don’t even know where she’s going. Not to mention, we literally just started sleeping together. I can’t leave my job on a whim any more than she could stay here for me,” he said, his shoulder deflating.
“Then there’s option number three.” She got silent for a second, and he gripped his thigh over his dress pants. “Long-distance.”
He swallowed hard. “Those fail.”
“Sometimes. But sometimes they don’t.” She let out a sigh. “If you do it for a little bit, it’ll let you know whether what you have is real or not, and if it is, then you can decide where to go from there. Kind of like…a pause button. You don’t split up, and you spend a lot of time on FaceTime, and then see where it goes.”
“Well, shit.” He closed his eyes and reclined his head back over the top of his chair. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess it could work. Or I could just let her go like she asked me to before I ever touched her.”
Anna made a sound of agreement but then followed it up with, “But, then again, as you stated, that was before. Maybe she’s changed her mind, too, like you have.”
Did she? Could she, maybe, want to continue whatever the fuck they were doing, even after she left, and see where it went? Or was he a complete and utter fool for thinking that was possible?
“I don’t know—” He cut off because his office door opened, and he straightened, expecting to see his assistant. Instead, the topic of his conversation stood there holding a couple of bags and wearing a skirt and a pink shirt. She looked delectable. “Shelby?”
She pointed to the phone and mouthed, “I’ll wait.”
“It’s just my sister,” he said out loud, offering her a smile. His heart pounded against his ribs and he stood. “Uh, Anna, I have to go. Shelby’s here.”
