Nobody prepared to give up everything, to sacrifice like adults.
I might want to move around for inspiration, and he’d want to stay put in the life he’s carved for his family and himself—the one he had before I came along.
We might still sleep together, but eventually we’d end up as strangers again.
The thought kills me.
There’s nothing lonelier than being with someone and wishing you’d stayed single.
Margot keeps beaming at me with unfiltered enthusiasm, hope shining in her eyes like stars.
I don’t have words to fight her, to rattle off the many reasons this was doomed before it really started. Even though there’s really only one reason, and it isn’t hard to see.
Kane wanted Margot completely.
Holden only wants parts of me.
That’s just not enough to bridge the gap when we’re continents apart.
“If you want him, you should lock in. You should fight,” Margot says, stirring her soggy paper straw through what’s leftof her drink absently. “Nothing’s ever guaranteed when it comes to this stuff. But maybe, just maybe, you’ll be surprised.”
Yeah, or maybe I’ll have my heart mauled.
Oh, I wish I could borrow her hope.
But I don’t know how to erase my doubts when there’s only one thing certain.
It’s going to be brutal when the day comes where I walk out of Holden’s life.
I come hometo an empty house.
When Holden and Kit arrive home, she’s buzzing with her poetry hangover and a new pile of books. Moody McMiserable does his best to ignore me.
Typical Holden.
But after our talk last night, after my meeting with Margot today, the distance between us cuts like a rusty blade. I’m in too deep to walk away without scars.
That awfulloveword rattles around my brain.
It’s not true—not yet.
It shouldn’t be possible when we’ve only been ‘together’ in the loosest terms for a matter of weeks.
But I can’t help dwelling on it as Kit joins me at the canvas while I try to wrap up my texture masterpiece today. As I help her with accent paints and plaster glue, showing her how to dab enough on so it all holds firm but doesn’t show, I plan the conversation I’d like to have with her daddy.
I imagine what he’ll say.
My stomach knots.
Kit’s so wrapped up in the project like the little perfectionist she is. She doesn’t notice my feelings, and when we’re finished, she spins around to face Holden working on his laptop.
“Dad, look!”
He glances up with a shadow smile, deliberately avoiding my eyes.
“Oh, hey. Looks like you made it rain gold. Cool effect,” he says.
“I was going for snow! Gold snow. The kind you’d see with dragons flying around the mountains,” Kit announces proudly.
