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She blinked. “I want…” She took a deep breath. Now or never. “I want to be with you.”
He looked away, his jaw working. The silence stretched on, and she felt compelled to fill it. “You haven’t told me what you want from me. I thought…” She swallowed through a too-dry throat. “I thought maybe you felt the same.”
“What specifically are you asking me?”
Frustration rushed through her in a wave. “I’m asking if you’re willing to commit. To see if this could be a real relationship.”
He raked both of his hands through his hair, then laced them behind his neck, rocking on his heels. “I’m going to the UK for three months.”
“I know that.”
“You’re going to wait for me here while I’m over there for months?”
“I’m not saying it will be easy. I know it won’t. But I’d like to try. I think this is worth it. I thinkwe’reworth it.”
“Cassie, I told you from the start I don’t do relationships. We don’t want the same things. I can’t give you what you want.” Some unknown emotion threaded his words.
Cassie’s heartbeat thudded loudly in her ears. “Do you think I’m asking for a ring on my finger?”
Zac’s jaw tightened. “You’ve already had a ring on your finger. So, you tell me.”
Her fingernails dug into her palms. “So that’s it? Because I might want to get married one day? Because I might want to have a family? That rules me out?”
“You know I don’t want that.”
As hard as she tried not to let it, her voice wobbled as she said, “So this is it? You go to the UK and we just… cease to exist.”
“It was always the plan, wasn’t it? You go back to Las Vegas and get a job, and then this is done.”
Dread weighed her down. This wasn’t going to go the way she wanted it to. She couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out though. “That was the plan, but things change.Wechanged. And there’s nothing fake about what I feel for you, Zac. Nothing. I love you. I’ve fallen in love with you.”
His whole body was coiled tightly, eyes a blaze of green and gold as he stared at her. “Cassie…” He took a step forward. Her breath stalled, heart leaping in her chest only for it to plummet when he stopped short. His hands went to the back of his neck again, gripping hard as he looked up at the ceiling. As if the answer to what he should do about her, about her inconvenient feelings for him, was written there.
When he dropped his gaze again, whatever he’d been feeling, whatever he might have been going to say, was locked up tight.
“You deserve better.” He might as well have been talking to a casual acquaintance, there was so little inflection in his voice. “I should have never kissed you.”
The familiar yawning chasm in her chest, the one she’d lived with every day before she’d met Bryan, cracked open. Zac was doing what he did so well—distancing himself.
Exhaustion dragged her shoulders down. The hole gaped wider. She could beg. She could plead. She could try to reach for him, to hold him tight and never let go. Her hands craved the touch of his skin. She wanted to bury her face in his chest and breathe him in.
But she didn’t do any of that.
A single tear escaped and trickled down her cheek as he stared at her with those cool, unreadable eyes. The trail it left behind seemed almost to scald her skin.
Her voice was quiet when she spoke again. “Someone once told me that being alone is better than being with someone who doesn’t value my true worth. And she was right. If all you see when you look at me is a burden—an obligation you don’t want—then I’d rather be on my own, anyway.” Her gaze caught on her notebook lying on the table. It was open at the song they’d been working on. She nodded over at it. “You can keep it or throw it out. I don’t care. I don’t want it anymore.”
“Cassie,” he said, his voice tight. But she was done. She had nothing left to give him. Loving Zac wasn’t good for her. For once, she needed to put herself first. She turned and walked out of the room, and he didn’t follow her.
She called a ride-share service as soon as she got to the bedroom. Twenty minutes later, she was packed and out the door. And that was all the time it took to strip herself out of Zac’s life.
ChapterThirty-Eight
Cassie stepped out of the arrivals gate, the familiar sound of the slot machines scattered throughout the terminal welcoming her home to Las Vegas. Except, home wasn’t really how it felt anymore. She was adrift—homeless, loveless, and currently jobless. She did have something she didn’t have before, though. The small kernel of what might turn out to be a dream of her own.
She made her way through the crowded terminal to pick up her luggage. After grabbing her bags, she turned to head to the exit, but a sign with her name on it caught her eye. A man in a dark suit was holding it up. Cassie looked around, wondering if it could be a coincidence. She didn’t see anyone else walking up to him, so she approached him tentatively.
“Hi. Um, I’m Cassie Elliot, but I’m not sure if—”
