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“Fine? Are you serious?” She stared at him, a shadow dropping over her expression. “I can’t go back to Australia. What can we do to fight this?”
“Nothing.” His voice sounded hollow, even to his own ears. “We shouldn’t fight it. There’s no reason you can’t work with the Australian contacts there and the American ones via video calls. People do it all the time.”
The faster she left, the better. The sooner he could get her out of the nooks and crannies of his soul, which shouldn’t be such a hard task to contemplate…
But it was.
All the more reason to get her gone. This was all on him. He’d pushed her into his bed, never realizing how deep things would ultimately go.
He’d lost sight of her importance to Flying Squirrel. Distance could give that back to him. Maybe this petition denial was a blessing in disguise. Her leaving was the only thing that would work.
“I’m not people, Warren,” she choked out and he glanced at her, finally pulling himself out of his own head long enough to note that the panic going on wasn’t all on his side. Her face was still white and her hands were trembling. “Bryan is in Australia.”
Oh, God. He hadn’t even considered how terrifying it must be for her to contemplate the idea of facing her ex again. “You’re so much stronger now than you used to be. Surely the time we’ve spent together helped?”
She shook her head, her mouth a firm line. “I can’t. I cannot go back to Australia.”
So all the strides they’d made—that he’d made with her, denying his own needs and desires until she was ready—none of that mattered.
Of course it didn’t. He had no business letting his bleeding heart run this show. “I’m not sure what choice we have.”
“That’s it?” Baffled, she glanced up at him, her eyes wide and rapidly filling with tears. “You can’t call someone, or fly me to Canada or England? Surely there’s someplace in the world we can go—”
“We can’t, Tilda.” Before she could spin more fairy tales that could never come true, he had to cut her off. He was the CEO. Flying Squirrel was his life. “If you want to go someplace that’s not Australia, we can look into it. But I can’t come with you. You know I have to stay here.”
And in that moment, a part of him knew he’d have given it all up for her. Which was why this could not be happening.
It was an impossible quandary. He wanted things to be the way they had been, where there were no choices and he’d been forced into this bit of wonderful for reasons beyond his control.
“So, all of this is over?” she whispered. “You’re done with me now that your project has taken a hit?”
“All of what is over? Our marriage, definitely. That’s all there ever was. Now there’s no need for it. What else are you looking for?”
The distance in his voice was perfect. Exactly what he wanted. It matched the numbness and vast empty spaces inside that he’d only recently realized were Tilda shaped.
“I…don’t know.” She crumpled the paper in her hands and held it tight in her fist. “Some indication that you haven’t just been leading me down a path to nowhere. You’ve been so kind and I thought… Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“You thought what? That I might have feelings for you?” He clamped down on the truth before he blurted out things that wouldn’t be good for anyone in this situation and shook his head. “I told you about Marcus. What did you think was going to happen, knowing I took a vow?”
Certainly not that he would fall in love with his wife. If he couldn’t have predicted that, how could she?
She nodded. “I get it. Everything is a means to an end for Flying Squirrel. The people involved are just incidental.”
And with that, she turned and walked upstairs without a backward glance.
* * *
Somehow, Tilda was not shocked that Warren followed her to her bedroom.
“This conversation is not over,” he told her as he stood at the door, his arms crossed over his incredibly hard heart.
She had to pack. Blearily, she tried to think about where she’d put her suitcases in the cavernous room, but her brain was as frozen as the rest of her. “What else is there to say?”
“What are you going to do? Let me help you figure it out.”
“Because I’m your employee? Or your wife?”
What did it matter? She already knew the answer. He was Warren Garinger, CEO of Flying Squirrel. Despite the fact that he’d told her he cared, anything she’d let herself believe—including that—was a lie.
