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Once they’re out, they hang between us—big and powerful and inescapable.
“What’s going on here, Savannah?” he asks, suddenly very, very quiet.
It’s my turn to sink down at the table, terrified my shaking legs won’t support me for much longer. “I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.” He sits down across from me. “You’re going to have to spell it out for me, Savvy.”
I don’t know if I can spell it out—I’m not sure I even know what I’m trying to say. It’s just, I’m sick of being the one who gets left. Sick of being an afterthought to somebody else’s life.
I can’t make myself say that, though. Can’t let myself be that vulnerable when I know Kian is just going to leave me, too. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But if he’s supposed to slide into Garrett’s shoes, it won’t be long before I become that afterthought I don’t want to be. Or worse, a liability he feels forced to hide.
I did that with Garrett because I was young and naïve and thought it was romantic that we had our little secret. But it wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t fun. It was sad and I was pathetic.
I swore then that I’d never be that girl again. That I’d never put myself in that position again. And yet, here I am. And he’s not planning on leaving me today—it’s obvious Kian is shocked by just the suggestion. But just because he’s not planning on it now, doesn’t mean it won’t happen once duty and country and life start getting in the way.
“I just think maybe we should take a break,” I tell him finally. “Let you get stuff sorted out at the palace before we try to make anything work between us.”
“Try to make something work? I thought we were working.”
I don’t answer. I can’t. There’s a lump in my throat the size of a fist.
“Damn it, Savvy. Don’t do this.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You are, goddamn it. You’re breaking us before we even have a chance and I don’t know why.”
“Kian—”
“I love you,” he says, pulling me out of my chair and into his arms. “I love you, Savvy, and I don’t want to let you go.”
“Nobody says you have to let me go. I just think we should—”
“No,” he says, pressing his mouth to mine in what feels very much like a panic. “No. Please. No.”
My resolve is weakening in the face of his certainty, his desperation. And though there’s a part of me that is screaming that I need to let him go, there’s another part that wants to hold on as tightly as I can. A part that wants to believe that this time will be different—that this time, I really do matter.
“I—”
His phone goes off then, dinging with one text message after another.
I pull away. “You should get that.”
“Fuck it.” He pulls me back. “I love you and I want to fix whatever is fucked-up between us. If you would just—”
A powerful knock at the door, followed by another string of texts, interrupts him. “I think you’d better answer.”
He curses then, long and low and vicious. But he heads for the front door, pulling his phone from his pocket as he goes.
I stay where I am, clutching the kitchen counter in an effort to stay upright. Because—no matter what he just said—I know exactly how this is going to go.
Sure enough, he’s back in under a minute. “I have to leave.”
I nod. “Okay.”
“Fuck, no, it’s not okay.” He reaches for me, pulls me into his arms. But I don’t feel him. I don’t feel anything right now. “I’m sorry. If it wasn’t imperative, I wouldn’t go.”
“It’s fine,” I tell him, because it is.
