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Maria would rather eat dirt than accept pity from strangers, and she refused to reveal her vulnerabilities to anyone who’d
already hurt her.
So she wasn’t crying in front of a packed hall of Gates fans, and she wasn’t crying in front of Peter anymore either, not if she could possibly help it.
He loved her. Just not enough.
It was a threadbare refrain, and it left her feeling fragile and frayed too. She was unraveling, faster and faster for every
minute that passed.
Still, she smiled. Laughed. Answered questions. Bantered with Peter, because that was what the audience wanted. What they
expected and deserved from someone they’d spent good money to see. If it was a nonverbal lie, it was one she needed to tell
for everyone’s sake, including her own.
Using every ounce of grit and acting ability she possessed, she managed to convincingly sell that lie for almost the entire
session. Only to find herself telling a tattered corner of the truth at the very last minute, in response to the very last
question of the very last con event, and doing so not just in front of countless strangers, but in front of Peter as well.
And that was the disastrous part.
He might not love her enough, but he did love her, and she loved him. He deserved her utmost care in handling this situation. He’d earned it. And even if he was hurting
her, he didn’t mean to, and she didn’t want to hurt him. Especially not in a setting like this, because he had his own pride
and his own wounds to nurse in privacy. There was no way she could forget that, not when those wounds were the very reason
he was leaving her behind.
Under the circumstances, with the stakes so high, such a simple topic shouldn’t have tripped her up.
“Um...” As the moderator glanced at his tablet, she distracted herself by studying his cods of the gates tee, which she’d never seen before. It featured a line drawing of a large fish fin-slapping Jupiter, and it was perfection.
If anyone on the cast deserved to be walloped by a vengeful cod, Ian was the one. “Final question, Peter and Maria. What’s
happening next for you? Any upcoming roles we should know about?”
Of course he was going to ask that. It was the obvious, okay-we’re-almost-at-the-end, let’s-wrap-things-up question, and she
had a rote, sharing-just-enough-but-not-anything-better-kept-to-herself response.
Peter answered first. “I have a few smaller roles lined up in some upcoming films. I’m especially excited about On the Lonesome Range , a gritty western about nineteenth-century cowboys that doesn’t whitewash history, since so many cowboys were Latino or Black,
or overlook the existence of female cowhands. The script is spectacular.” After a pause, he added, “All that said, I hope
like hell they don’t put me near many actual cows, because cows are fucking terrifying.”
The audience laughed, assuming he was joking. He was not, of course.
When he’d accepted the role, she’d stared at him incredulously for several moments. Then mooed at him loudly and made him jump, which she’d found very satisfying. Cows aside, though, the script had delighted him. Hopefully he’d still be able to film his part between shooting episodes of FTI .
Not that she’d know, because by then she’d be long gone.
At the thought, she swiveled her chair away from Peter, away from the audience, and convincingly—she hoped—pretended the terrible
sound she’d made was a strangled cough, one so harsh it brought tears to her eyes and required a few sips of water before
she turned back.
Peter’s warm hand spread across her back and rubbed there, even as he continued speaking, and his attempt to soothe her fake
cough only made things worse. Much, much worse.
When she finally faced front again, he was wrapping up his answer with a vague hint concerning his big news. “I should be
able to share more information about a future television role, a significant one, soon. What about you, Maria?”
He turned in his chair to watch her answer, and something about him in that moment undid her. His slight frown of worry as
he uncapped a fresh bottle of water and handed it to her. The way his knees nudged hers in a gesture that might look accidental
but was not. The final, gentle pat of her shoulder before he leaned back and surrendered the spotlight to her.
The open adoration lighting his dark eyes. The pride in his posture—all puffed-out chest and squared shoulders and relaxed
satisfaction—as he surveyed her at his side.
She couldn’t speak for the agony of it. Couldn’t think.
Fuck . Swiveling away again, she faked another cough and bought herself a few more seconds, but the time to get a handle on this was now. Right now, so they could walk back to their shared suite, have the awful, heartbreaking conversation coming their way, and get
this initial bit of agony over with already.
“Maria, sweetheart,” he murmured in her ear, one hand over the mic clipped to his collar, the other spread wide and supportive
across her back once more, “are you okay?”
Another wet, violent cough dragged from laboring lungs. “I—I’m fine.”
It wasn’t a lie if she would be fine. Someday. Not soon, though.
Ready or not, she swung back around to see a huge roomful of people looking at her. Waiting. For something she couldn’t quite
remember.
She peered at them blankly, lost.
“Maria?” The moderator glanced discreetly at his tablet, probably checking the time. “What’s coming up for you?”
It was a prod, gentle as Peter’s hand slowly circling between her shoulder blades.
“I...” She wasn’t unraveling. She was undone. “I don’t know.”
Peter’s brow furrowed, his mouth pressing into a grim line, and he quickly looked at the moderator, a silent request to end
the session so he could check on her well-being. But the other man was already speaking again, already giving her a helpful
prompt so she could tell everyone exactly what they expected to hear. What Peter expected to hear. What she’d expected to
tell them less than two hours ago.
“Well, we all figure you’ll be based in LA rather than Stockholm from now on, right?”
The moderator aimed a knowing glance and a wink at the crowd, and they smiled, delighted for the happy couple onstage. The
happy, committed couple who wouldn’t part, not for anything.
She opened her mouth.
And somehow, somehow—found herself telling the truth. “I... don’t know.”
Only that wasn’t the truth, was it? Because she already knew she’d be booking a flight to Stockholm as soon as she and Peter finished digging
a grave for their relationship and buried it deep beneath the brown, desiccated grass of LA in July.
So far underground it would never resurface.
The rest was a babble of voices and applause and shuffling feet as the moderator did whatever he was doing and wrapped up
the session, but she paid none of it any attention, because the look on Peter’s face—
Mouth rounded in absolute shock as he stared at her. Forehead creased in utter bewilderment and so much pain, she might as
well have knifed him in the ribs. Stricken brown eyes pleading for reassurance, for her to tell him she didn’t mean it, that
she’d misunderstood the question or misspoken.
He’d gone pale as death.
Then that vulnerable, open mouth snapped shut, and betrayal edged the sharp jut of his jaw. A tide of hectic color slashed
across his cheekbones.
He closed down.
Expressionless, all emotion shuttered and tucked safely away, he stood. A single hard look ordered her to follow him, as if
she weren’t already going to do that. As if now, after all these years, she could simply walk off without another word the
same way she had long ago.
Earning his trust had taken so long. So much effort.
And with three very short, very basic English words— I don’t know —it was gone.
Her own heartbreak had required a three-word, hyphenated phrase: three-year commitment . Because the man she adored could apparently commit to stay among strangers for three years for the sake of a job, but he
couldn’t commit to stay with her for longer than three months. Not even for the sake of her love and her presence in his daily
life.
She couldn’t live with that. She wouldn’t live with that, because he wouldn’t be living with her, and she had other options.
Peter strode ahead of her and cleared a path through the hotel hallways, so stone-faced that not even lingering selfie-hunting
fans dared flag them down, although she caught a few camera flashes along the way. Occasionally he shot a glance back, confirming
her continued presence, but she hadn’t gone anywhere.
When she offered someone her heart, she was never the one who chose to leave. It was everyone else who left her. Always, with
the sole exception of her family.
Step by step, she followed in his wake, silent. When he fumbled for his keycard outside their suite, his hands shaking, she
produced hers and slotted it in place. The sensor flashed green, and he shoved open the door with violent force.
But he was Peter, so he also held it for her, making sure she was fully inside before letting it slam shut again.
Before the echo of that slam even faded, he’d turned on her.
“ I don’t know. ” It was a mockery of her voice. “What the fuck did that mean, Maria?”
He stalked farther into the room, off to the side where he wasn’t blocking the exit. Deliberately. Because again, he was Peter.
He didn’t join her in the little seating area when she carefully perched on the edge of the too-narrow armchair, though, and
he didn’t appear particularly inclined toward civil conversation. Fists curled at his sides, he waited for her answer.
“I—” Clutching the squared-off armrests, she tried again. “Peter, I can’t...”
His dark eyes were pinned to her face, narrowed and mean and distrustful.
And to her shame, she began crying.
There was no passing these tears off as coughs. Not with her ragged gasps for breath and her rough sobs and her face crumpled