“I got the job,” he said, the words bitter on his tongue.
“I know. I overheard. A presidential campaign. Congratulations,” she said with a soft smile.
He didn’t care about that right now. “I leave in a few days. If they win—I don’t know how long I’ll be on the road.”
“This film is going to be huge for you. I’m happy for you.”
“We can make this work,” he said, taking her hands. “I know long distance is hard, but Liv and Daemon made it work.”
She huffed out a disbelieving laugh. “Two days ago you were saying this was only until you left for the campaign. Now you want to try a long distance relationship? You’ve never even wanted a girlfriend before.”
“That’s not true.”
“What’s not true?”
“I’ve wanted a girlfriend before. I wanted you. Iwantyou.”
She shook her head, her gaze fixed on their interlocked hands. “Long distance destroys relationships. Liv and Daemon are the exception, not the rule.”
“Fuck the rules,” he growled. “We’ll figure it out. I’ll come back to visit every few weeks.”
“No. You have to focus on your work, Noah. You can’t be flying back and forth all the time.”
She pulled away from him again, but he couldn’t let her go. Not until she understood how badly he wanted to be the person who was there for her, how much she meant to him. He tugged on her hand, turning her back around to face him.
“So what? We just don’t see each other? For months?” He shook his head, running his fingers through his hair. “Tell me what to do,” he said, desperation creeping into his voice.
“I can’t.”
“Ask me not to go.”
Her eyes widened, and her lips parted, a surprised huff escaping. “I can’t,” she repeated.
“You can,” he insisted, his fingers digging into her arms. “Ask me to stay with you.”
“No,” she whispered, the sound lost in the wind.
She took his face in her hands, her fingers stroking over the stubble along his jaw, and he squeezed his eyes shut. No matter how hard he’d tried to avoid it, he was going to hurt her. And she was going to hurt him. He’d spent the last twenty years trying to avoid losing another person he loved and yet he wouldn’t have done anything differently over the last week, even knowing it led here.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because you’re the only one of us who can do the things we always talked about doing. And I love you too much to ask you to give that up for me.”
Her words tore through him, shredding him from the inside out and making his knees weak. It was so much worse than he’d expected. Knowing the music had been her dream, too, one that was taken away from her. Knowing she loved him back, and it still wasn’t enough. He should tell her he loved her, that he had always loved her…
“I’ll tell Wolf I’m not going. There will be other projects.”
“Not like this one.”
“Dammit, Callie, I’m not ready for this to end.”
“Maybe it’s just not our time,” she said. “I can’t be the reason you don’t live your dream. I can’t be someone who holds you back.”
“Don’t do this.”
“One of us has to.” She stepped away from him. “The job was the goal. You got what you wanted. This was always supposed to end, Noah. It was never supposed to be real.”
“It was always real and you know it.”
