AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s a new assignment!” she finally blurted out. I was so surprised that I didn’t try to stop her from ripping it out of my hand. “I haven’t taken it yet, but it has been offered to me. It wouldn’t start until March.”
“Oh,” I said. March was still two months away. “Okay…”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” she said. “Okay?”
I gently rubbed both of her arms. “Caz. I know we haven’t talked about the future before now, but maybe this is a good time to discuss it. Both of us knew this assignment would be temporary. But in the last month, I’ve decided that I don’t care when it ends. Whenever you go back to Los Angeles, I want to try to make it work between us.”
“Luke…”
“I know long-distance relationships don’t always work, but it wouldn’t be so hard for us. Los Angeles is close. I have the entire off-season to visit you. And we’ll be in town whenever we play the Chargers and Rams. What I’m trying to say is that we can make it work, if you want to try—”
“The job is in Berlin!”
I flinched like I had been slapped. “Berlin?”
Her entire demeanor seemed to deflate. “It’s a three-year contract in Berlin. Maybe longer. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, yet. It’s all I’ve been able to think about lately.”
“Lately?” I thought back to the way she had been acting lately, which I had assumed was because she was preoccupied with protecting me. “How long have you known?”
“My boss offered the job to me on Christmas Eve.”
“Christmas? Caz, you’ve known for almost three weeks? And you didn’t tell me?”
She crossed her arms over her chest defensively. “I was processing it on my own.”
“You said you would never lie to me. After the whole fake-lesbian thing. You promised you would always be honest with me.”
“Sure, about things that involve you, or your safety,” she quickly replied. “But this is my life, and my career. It has nothing to do with you.”
I took a step back. It felt like someone had punched me in the gut. Cazzie was potentially making a life-changing decision and she thought it had nothing to do with me?
“I see,” I said slowly. “So what we’ve been doing together. It means nothing to you?”
“What? Of course not!”
“I’m just some job, like you said when you first got here.”
She took a step toward me. “That’s not true.”
Anger roiled inside of me, and I didn’t try to fight it. “You said your future has nothing to do with me? It’s my future, too. At least, I had hoped it would be. But clearly you feel differently.”
“Luke. I was going to tell you…”
“When?” I demanded. “When were you going to tell me? Were you going to wait until you hopped on a plane and flew to Germany, the land of pickelhaubes and sausages and defenestration?”
Cazzie blinked. “Defenestration? Are you confusing Berlin with Prague?”
“How should I know?” I shouted. “I’m just some big dumb football player, right?”
Her mouth fell open. “I would never say that about you.”
“No, but you’ve probably thought it before.”
“Luke. Why are you acting like this?”
She tried to touch my arm, but I shook her off. Every word that came out of her mouth made me feel like I was being tackled by the biggest safety in the NFL. Even looking at her, wearing the same suit she’d worn the first day I met her at the Stallions practice facility, made me nauseous.
“I’m going out for some fresh air. I need to be alone.”
