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“Mm-hmm. With two little kids and a stay-at-home wife.”
“I’m sorry.” Tim really meant it. If there were some way for him to go back in time and fix everything, he’d move mountains to do so if he’d thought that would make Valerie happy—if it would make herwhole.
She shrugged. “That’s the way the world is, and things haven’t improved all that much in thirty years. I hate having to choose between things that are so important to me. Either way I choose, I’m going to have regrets. Before, I thought I’d be okay as long as I was a success and had accomplished that thing I always set out to do, but it’s not enough, is it?”
He rubbed the sides of her arms and closed his eyes, so he didn’t have to look at her shaking hands. Her bobbing knee already had his stomach nervous and tied in knots.
He couldn’t tell her what was or wasn’t enough. It wasn’t his place to, and now that he understood why she’d been so reluctant in the first place, he couldn’t blame her. He, probably more than anyone, wanted her to succeed. He’d be proud of that—ofher. That was the kind of woman he wanted for a wife and for the mother of his kids—even the stepmother of the one who evidently told her more than he told his own father.
“What am I supposed to do with you, Valerie?”
She exhaled a quiet scoff and hung her head, wringing her hands some more. “I thought I knew, but I don’t.”
“What did you think you knew?”
“I thought maybe that we could work out some kind of compromise, but we can’t, can we? What I want to do, I can’t do…here.” She pointed toward the window—ostensibly in the direction of the coast which was actually on the other side of the boat.
“And I can’t move for you. Follow you around like a housewife,” he said.
“Exactly. I suppose this happens to lots of folks who wait until they’re thirty to start allowing themselves to even think of settling down. They get there, and they can’t have what they want, so they have to leave something on the negotiating table, either in their personal life or their professional one. With me, I don’t have any leverage. There’s nothing I can demand that would make things better.”
“Could you work for a local firm? Would you consider that?”
“I have. There’s one in Norfolk.”
“Bit of a commute.”
“Not if I’m living in Norfolk.”
Fuck.He raked his hair back from his forehead and let out a ragged exhalation. “So, I’d have to spend ninety minutes in a car to go see you, and then we’ll have this conversation again in a year when I want you to move in with me.”
“Because you have a home already, and even if you didn’t, there isn’t much between Norfolk and there.”
“Exactly.”
“I tried, Tim. I did. IswearI did, but I just don’t see how it could work.”
“This feels like a breakup. Don’t tell me this is a breakup when we’ve barely gotten it together.”
“Okay,” she said softly. “We don’t have to call it that, but at some point, we will have to call a spade a spade because you’ll want to move on to someone else and you can’t leave attachments dangling.”
He didn’t want to think about moving on to anyone else. No one else hit all the right buttons for him. No one else made him believe for the first time in five years that trying again was worth the energy and all the frustration.
There had to be a way to give her everything she wanted. He didn’t know what it was, but he built things for a living. When plans went wrong, he figured out new ones and made the finished product even better than what he originally set out to do.
She may have thought there was no room for negotiation, but he wasn’t done exploring options.
“Let’s get some sleep,” he whispered. “If you want to call this a breakup, fine, but I want to hold you tonight and for as long as I can until it doesn’t suit you anymore. Will you do that, pretty girl?”
“You know I will.”
“All right, then.” He helped her to her feet and held her hand as she walked toward his bedroom.
She climbed into bed and he curled behind her, not even bothering an attempt at chastity. He freed his cock, rubbered up, and slipped into her while tugging the soft lobe of her ear between his lips.
She sighed and looped her fingers through his that were draped over her hip.
“Just let me.” He started long, slow strokes that had him on the edge so quickly it was as if he hadn’t come so fucking hard just hours before.
