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CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
Tuesday, July 6
I packthe next morning while Connor sleeps on the sofa. I heard him come in around 10 p.m., but he grabbed a blanket and stayed on the couch. I’m actually glad. I’m not strong enough to be curled up into my lion again.
I’m dressed by 7 a.m. and hear the wheels of my cab crunching outside. I wake Connor as the driver packs my suitcases into the trunk.
“You’re dressed very early,” he says, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He looks like he hardly slept at all. I know because they’re the same eyes that I looked at in the mirror this morning that didn’t sleep at all.
My fingers tremble and my heart aches. I can barely get out the words. “I want to say goodbye, Connor.”
“Goodbye? What do you mean? You’re leaving?” My heart crumbles when I see the hurt and sadness in his eyes.
“I think it’s for the best,” I offer, tears clogging my throat and almost paralyzing my vocal cords.
“What the fuck, Lainey?” Connor is fully awake now. Sadness twists into full-on fury. “The best for who?”
“For both of us, Connor.” I shake my head and look down. Then I muster every ounce of courage I have left and look up into his dark blue eyes. “If I stay here another three or four days, I’m just going to let you convince me that you’re right. That I should just leave well-enough alone. But I don’t want to do that.” The tears begin their slow steady trickle and his fingers reach up to brush them away, but my fingers do it first.
“I love you,” he says softly, reaching for me. “I didn’t say I wanted this to end, ever. I just said I didn’t want to get married. We’ve only been together a few weeks, Lainey. Why can’t we give this some time and see where we are a few months from now?” His voice pleads with me. It would be so easy to cave to him.
I shake my head slowly and free a few more tears. “No, Connor. By then, you’ll be too much a part of me, and I won’t be able to let you go. And I need to let you go. You’ll devour me. I don’t want to say no to my wishes anymore, Connor. You showed me that. You think we don’t know one another, but I know you. I know you’re scared because of what happened with Shana. I know you still blame yourself, but you can’t. She had her own problems.”
“Yes, she did,” he fires back. “And if I was any kind of a decent husband to her, I’d have seen that and gotten her help. I’d have been there for her. I will not do that to you, Lainey. I love you too much.” The look of helplessness in his eyes feels like a razor to my heart. I have to look away.
“I love you back,” I say tenderly. “You know that. I am so grateful to you for everything.” I pause to regain my resolve. “But I want evermore with you, Connor. A future of ‘us’, not ‘you’ and ‘me’. Not just dating. Not just filling time until you figure things out. I’m going home.”
“What? Right now?”
I nod silently and pick up my purse.
“So, this is it? We’re done?” He rakes his hands through his long hair, lightened with bright streaks of blond from the summer sun.
“What is the point of going on when we want to reach two very different destinations, Connor? This is our journey’s end. I’m sorry, but staying would be too painful. I love you so much. You’ll swallow me up, like a lion. I’ll watch myself disappear again into someone else’s version of what and who I should be, and I can’t do that. If I disappear again, I’ll never find my way back.” I lift to my toes and kiss his cheek softly. “I love you.”
His arms pull me in tight to his chest. The muscles twitch with his own emotion. “Don’t go, Raven. Please, don’t go, baby.”
I push lightly out of his arms, walk out to my cab and tuck myself inside. In the window’s reflection, I watch as the little blue house and my sad lion fade into the distance.
