Chapter 35 #2
The crowd is mercifully gone, the party all but over save for a few straggling balloons and half-eaten cake out in the main area that the offices feed off of.
His door is closed and once again, I realize I don’t even know if he’s in there.
He knew I was here today in the hospital, but as I glance down at my phone, reading the message from Catarina telling me no problem, I realize Luca never texted me back.
Familiar pain threatens to suffocate me. Drag me back down. Hold me hostage.
This is going to hurt something fierce.
Sucking in a sharp breath, I rap my knuckles on his door, but there’s no answer, so I try the nob. It turns, unlocked, and when I push inside, I find Luca sitting on his couch, thighs spread, head in his hands.
I shut the door behind me and that seems to jar him out of his reverie because his head snaps up and his lost green eyes lock on mine.
He licks his lip, and I can see the struggle playing out across his face.
This is not the man in the bar who intentionally broke my heart.
This is a man who is dismantled from the inside out.
I know the feeling.
“Congratulations,” I tell him, meaning it.
“I didn’t think I’d get it. I truly didn’t.”
I blink at him. “How do you feel about it now that you did?”
He doesn’t answer and I hate how indiscernible his features are. How quickly he can shut it all off. How easily he can hide things from me.
“How long have you known it was a possibility you’d win?”
He sighs, his gaze falling back to his hands before he reluctantly answers, “A few weeks.”
Wow. That’s…
“And in the few weeks you’ve known about this, that you might be moving to another country for two years, you didn’t think to mention it at all?
Like hey, Little Bird, I know I’ve been promising you the world, telling you that I love you and need you and that you can fucking trust me again, but oh, by the way, I’m possibly headed to Brazil and Ghana? ”
“I didn’t think I’d get it,” he repeats, and it makes me want to bash his handsome face in. “We were just getting back together, and things were great. Maybe that makes me selfish or an asshole as you so love to call me, but I didn’t want to rock the boat unnecessarily.”
Rock the boat? This is punching holes in the side of the hull and sinking it.
“You still should have told me about it,” I snap, setting my cello down on the ground like I’m gearing up for a fight.
“That’s what couples do. They talk. They tell each other things.
They don’t hide important pieces of themselves and their lives from the person they claim to love.
Christ, Luca. For someone so smart and so talented with a scalpel, you suck at relationships. ”
His hands scrub up and down his face and then back through his hair, messing up what was already a disaster. “I know. I was… scared to tell you. Scared you’d push me away before I got my second chance with you.”
I glare and he throws his hands up, exasperated.
“I didn’t know what to say. I’ve been after this grant for years. I didn’t want to start a fight or have you upset when in all likelihood, I wasn’t going to win it.”
“But you did win it!”
“Because I’m a fucking Abbot-Fritz, Raven,” he barks, shooting off the couch and stalking toward the window. His hands white knuckle the frame on either side as he looks out at who the hell knows what. “That’s why I got it.”
“Shut up, Luca. Just shut the fuck up with self-deprecating bullshit. Especially when you know it is bullshit. Maybe your name played a factor, but a foundation like that isn’t going to give a grant as big as that one to someone who isn’t qualified.
I’m proud of you. So proud. You fucking deserve it.
But I shouldn’t have had to hear about it from a nurse in the hall! ”
His head falls. “I know. I’m sorry, Raven. I truly am. I was going to tell you tonight after rehearsal. I didn’t know you saw all that.”
I shake my head, staring into the back of his. I suck in a deep breath and ask, “When will you leave?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing yet.”
“When. Will. You. Leave?”
“Middle of March.”
Four months. Well then. I take an inadvertent step back, bumping into the door, my hand hitting the nob. There’s that.
He laughs mirthlessly. “There’s what?”
I hadn’t realized I said that out loud.
“Does walking away make it easier for you to do this?”
“What exactly am I doing?”
“Telling me that you love me and that you’re proud of me, but that you’re not coming with me.”
My body physically reacts, tremors rolling through me and churning up the already bubbling acid in my stomach. On a ragged breath, I whisper, “I’m not going with you.”
His grip on the window tightens. “I know. I wanted to ask you to. My father told me I should give you the choice, but I wouldn’t beg you to even if that’s what I want to do. I know you can’t come, and I didn’t want to put you in that position again.” He sighs. “You could ask me to stay.”
I shake my head, my hair flying. “No. I can’t.”
His head whips in my direction. “What if I want you to?” he snarls through gritted teeth.
I want to. I want to run to him and throw my arms around him and beg him to stay.
I want to beg him to choose me because suddenly those old feelings that no one ever had before are resurfacing even if they aren’t truly founded in reality.
And yes, I’m still furious with him for keeping this from me.
Even though the gut-wrenching pain at the idea of losing him again far outweighs my ire.
But I can’t do it.
“I won’t ask you to stay for me.” I fumble through my thoughts…
what I want, what I need to say to him. “The only way you can know if something is real is if you give it your all.” My eyes meet his.
“I gave you my all. More than once. But I won’t do it, Luca.
I heard all about that grant just now. I know what it means.
I won’t be the one to hold you back from something as incredible as that just as you refused to be the one to hold me back from The Conservatory. ”
For the first time in four years, I understand with perfect clarity all that he did for me.
What it cost him to make that choice. He did choose me even when it felt as though he didn’t.
Sometimes choosing someone is letting them go.
Is walking away. Even when it kills you to do so.
He loved me enough to do that for me and I will do the same for him if I have to.
But I will not make a decision he’ll be forced to live with.
It has to be him, and I can’t make it easier or allow him to use me as a cop-out.
His eyes search mine from across the room.
“It’s two years, Little Bird. I’d be gone for two years, only returning very sporadically and not for any real length of time.
I want this grant.” He laughs mirthlessly.
“I want this grant so fucking bad that I’ve been trying to talk myself out of wanting it since I heard I was a finalist. But the distance…
it’ll be so much. And it’s not as though I can fly about the world to secretly watch you play.
Or that you can just fly in for a weekend.
We’re talking South America and Africa. Remote parts of both.
We barely made it those four years without each other and they were torture.
I’ll be straddled between two worlds, not knowing the next time I’d be able to talk to you, let alone see you. ”
And I’ll be missing something I deem vital. Him. My hands shift, pressing into the door, holding me up. “I know.”
He frowns. “But you still won’t ask me to stay?”
I shake my head again. He made a choice for me, and I still don’t know if he was right to do what he did.
I’m here and I’m happy and yes, part of me is grateful for what he did for me.
I became my own person. My own woman. Stronger and independent.
But could I have still become all of this without London?
Could I potentially have been more than I am now because we wouldn’t have had those four years apart?
He saw London as my end all be all, whereas I saw potential hidden in different shadows.
I’ll never know what would have been. And I won’t do that to him. I won’t make a decision for him that forever alters his course. He said so himself. He’s wanted this grant for years. Then there’s also the paralyzing thought… what if I ask him to stay and he doesn’t?
“Are you ending it with me then?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Fuck no, it’s not.” He tears away from the window, bolting over to me, his hands on my hips, his face right in mine. “If you won’t tell me to stay, then I want you to tell me that if I go, it won’t matter. That even with the distance, we’ll do it anyway.”
“Can we?”
“Is your heart no longer mine?”
“My heart has been yours since I was a child. Tell me a truth here. A grown-up one. The only thing I’ve ever wanted in this world from you is your love.
And yet no matter how fast I am to give you mine, I continuously feel yours is a trial I have yet to win.
Another broken happily ever after. Is that what this will be? ”
His forehead meets mine, and he growls, “No,” against me.
“No. My heart is yours. It has been yours since you were eighteen and I found you playing your cello in my family’s garage.
That hasn’t changed. It never will.” Softer this time, more desperate.
A plea. “I want this grant, Raven. And I want you.”
I hold him against me. Tighter. Desperate.
“I’m so proud of you. You amaze me. All that you’ve come back from.
Grown from. I want to see you do this. I want to watch all that you can become as a doctor.
As a man.” I cup his face in my hand, feeling the bristles of his stubble against my palm, holding in my sob. “But I can’t be a go-between.”
My body seizes in on itself and I rip myself away.
Grabbing my cello, I flee his office without looking back at him.
Without waiting for him to say anything else.
If he tells me he loves me, I’ll crumble like a stepped-on chip.
I can already feel my strength dwindling.
My desire to go back on my word and beg him to stay.
I’m burning strength the way a drunk burns brain cells.
That’s already how I feel, and I hate that I’m back here. That we’re back to this place.
Worse yet, I honestly don’t know how this will turn out for us.