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Will looked away from his friend, and his voice dropped. “But…what if I’m right? I’m terrified that I am. I'm afraid she'll admit to it. To all of it.”
“But that will be a good thing, because then you can work to move past it.”
“Thereisno moving past it. Either way, it's done. We're done. And you know what? It's easier with her on the Cape and me here. I can't see her, can't talk to her.”
I can't look at her face, can't see her eyes, can’t be close enough to touch her.
He closed his eyes, and for a moment, the pictures he’d found were forgotten. Instead, the image of Elizabeth as he’d seen her so often, lying in his bed with a drowsy smile gracing her lips, floated through his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut as his emotions threatened to take over.
His cell phone rang, and when he saw Elizabeth’s name and picture flash across the screen, he turned it face down on the table.
“I can't,” he whispered. “I can't talk to her.”
A moment later Charles’s phone chirped with a text. “It’s from Jane. She says ‘no amount of begging will stop her. We're on our way to Boston.’” He glanced at Will. “Looks like she's not giving you a choice.”
“I don't want her to come, Charles. Tell Jane not to bring her.”
“If Jane doesn't go with her, Lizzy will only show up on her own, and I'm sure she's in no shape to drive.”
“Then I'll leave. I'll get a hotel room.”
“If she's driving all the way up here, you damn well betternotleave. You're not running away from this. You have to face it, and now is as good a time as any.”
“It will just turn into me yelling and saying things I don't want to say. Or maybe things Idowant to say, but don't necessarily want her to hear.” Will ran a hand over his face. “If she's here in front of me... I'll lose it, I know I will. I don’t want to do that to her.”And I don't want to look into those eyes. “I need time.”
“Well, if you don't want to see her, thenyoucall her and tell her. Jane and I can’t be in the middle.”
Will rose abruptly. “Fine. I'm going to my office.”
Once there, he paced back and forth before sitting behind his desk. He stared at the picture of Elizabeth, then looked at the one she’d taken of him and Georgiana on the jetty on the fateful day they met. He gave a sharp laugh as his anger grew.Maybe not fate after all.
He took a deep breath and called her, and she answered on the first ring.
“Will?”
His stomach lurched. “Yes.”
“What–What’s going on? I've been—”
“Don't come to Boston,” he said quietly but firmly. His words were met with silence. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes. But—”
“I don't want to see you. I don't want to talk to you. Not–not now. Just let me be.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath and waited for her reply and when it came, he was surprised at the anger in her voice.
“Let you be? How can I justlet you be? I want to know why you left. Ideserveto know why you left. Why won't you talk to me?”
Prickles of anger mixed with unbearable pain raced along his skin. “I can’t. If I start now, I won't stop.”
“How can you do this to me? To us? I love you.”
It sounded like she was crying now, and he felt precariously close to doing the same. He swallowed roughly and closed his eyes. “Bye, Elizabeth.”
I love you too.
He ended the call, set his phone on the desk, dropped his head into his hands, and gave into his tears.
