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I hurried back outside, leaving my suitcase near the door as I broke into a jog. Whitney’s eyes went wide.
“I thought I missed you,” she croaked, her eyes puffy from crying.
I came to a stop a foot away from her, although what I really wanted to do was pull her into my arms and crush her to my chest, never letting go.
“You almost did.”
Her breath made little puffs of silver mist as she fought for something to say. I was fighting too, trying to stop myself from saying too much. I wanted to tell her we had to find a way through this, that I couldn’t imagine coming back here and not seeing her. That the thought of never touching her again was killing me.
That I hadn’t expected anything like this.
“I—I’m spending Christmas with Jessica and her family,” she said after a moment, her voice wobbling as she thrust a thumb over her shoulder at the station wagon.
“I know. I... You drove all this way—”
“I need to talk to you,” she whispered, shivering from the bitter chill. “I tried to find you after my last exam, but you weren’t there.”
“I shouldn’t have asked you to come all this way—"
“I don’t know how to do this, Rhys.” Her eyes filled with tears. “The whole drive up here I kept thinking that this is something really special and we’re wasting it. Like, how do we move on from this?”
I felt gutted. I reached a hand out to wipe her tears away but curled it into a fist instead and let it drop to my side. “You were right when you said this wasn’t a good idea. There’s too much at stake for both of us, Whitney. For you, especially.”
“I don’t care about me.” Her voice broke over the words as she hugged herself. “For the first time in my life, I don’t care. I thought I knew what I wanted, and now I know that what I want is you. I want you.”
I realized I was on a precipice, riding a fine edge between two different lives. One with Whitney. I could see it, honestly, quite clearly. She’d drop out of her graduate program. I’d leave my tenure. We’d go... somewhere, maybe somewhere overseas, where we could be together and rebuild our reputations.
Or not. And she’d graduate with her master’s degree and start on her doctorate like she dreamed. I’d be long gone by then. I’d have to go back to Britian eventually.
“We can’t.” The words were like a death knell and tasted like acid on my tongue. “We can’t do this, Whitney.”
“Why did you ask me to come here?”
“Because I’m selfish!” I shook my head. “Because I needed to see you one last time to know that I am making the right decision in not throwing away everything we’ve both worked for.”
She swallowed hard, tears streaming down her cheeks. All around us, snow was falling and people were moving about, none of them taking notice of us. If they did see us, they would assume we were just a couple saying a tearful goodbye, and maybe we were. But this felt so much more final.
“And now that you’ve seen me, you’ve decided you’ve made the right choice?”
“I care about you too much to put your reputation on the line, Whitney. I do. I care about you.”
“You care?” A bitter laugh followed the words before she shook her head and sniffed, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. “That’s all you feel for me? You care about me?”
“It’s more than than—”
“Then say it,” she whispered, and the world around seemed to slow to a halt. “Why did you leave me that note? Why did you tell me you’d be here, that you wanted to see me? I drove up from Jersey for you!”
“I know.”
“Then say it.”
I loved her. I did. But I couldn’t let her throw away everything she’d fought for just for me. For us. For a weeks-long romance that was strictly forbidden from the start.
“I can’t,” I said, and the spell shattered, noise and shuffling feet filling the air around us. “Whitney, I am sorry. I just needed to see you.”
She nodded, taking a few steps backward before turning and walking toward her car. I watched her shoulders go rigid with tension, her head slumping forward as a sob ripped through her body.
I’d spent my entire adult life in discovery and research. I knew human behavior and patterns. I could talk for hours about the dawn of civilization and my theories on what the dusk would look like.
