Chapter Seventeen
Ernestine fell flat. Packing everything up in the glass cabin was just…
hard. She was going to stay another night, and then get a start out the next morning.
She would be back in a week and a half. But it wouldn’t be the same.
She would be back with a team. She would be working on the dig site much more intensely.
There were now expectations, and everything that went with that.
But she had her new office. She had her promotion. She had…everything. And nothing was unexpected. Except the timeline had just changed. And yes, she thought she had a little bit longer with him, but she would still have him in her life. Kind of.
“How’s it going?”
He didn’t even knock. He was just there in the house, because that’s how familiar they’d become in such a short amount of time.
“It’s going okay. I’ve mostly erased any evidence of my ever being here.”
“I don’t know that I like you putting it that way.”
“Well, that’s what has to happen, really.
I’m going away and coming back in a…a different capacity.
” She looked off into the distance, her mouth dry.
He had said, he had made it so clear, that he didn’t want a family.
If she did a grand gesture for him, it would be one he didn’t even want.
He didn’t want a wife. He didn’t want permanent.
And while that was kind of a crazy thing to think about after three and a half weeks of being in a relationship, it was where her heart was at.
And even more than that…it was just… That was who they were; she could just feel it.
All or nothing. And the potential for it all felt heavy inside of her.
But it would require one of them to make a really drastic decision.
And he’d already given emotional reasons why it was a decision he wasn’t going to make. She had just gotten her promotion and…
“The migration patterns of Dr. Ernestine Martin are very small,” she said slowly, looking out in the distance.
“While she has traveled extensively, she always returns to her homeland. She never strays from it. She is incapable, in fact, of changing that pattern, as her resources all exist in that space. But sometimes she wishes that weren’t true. ”
She looked at him, desperately hoping he understood what she was trying to say. “I’ve seen where she migrates to. It’s impressive, amazing. And it’s the right place for her.”
She took a sharp breath. “Yes. She has a very nice office.”
“She does.”
She swallowed hard. “If…if she could change her migration patterns—she can’t—but if she could, do you think…do you think that you might have been able to make a home for her?”
“Yeah. In another life where she could change where she stayed, I could change… I could change.”
That was as good as it was going to get.
As close to a declaration. If things were totally different, they could be together.
But they weren’t different. He was still himself—a man who was utterly afraid of having a nuclear family—and she was still Dr. Ernestine Martin of the Oregon Museum of Natural History and Science, a codirector.
Her life wasn’t mobile; neither was his.
He was just starting all of this. She was just starting this new phase of her career.
And it would be such a sacrifice for either of them to redirect, and for what?
She tried to let out a breath, but it was difficult to do.
Everything just felt…heavy. It felt extremely heavy.
And suddenly, she didn’t want him to stay the night.
Because it would be the last night, and everything would be heavy with it, and she just couldn’t take it. “I’ll see you when I get back.”
As send-offs went, it wasn’t subtle. But she thought she was going to break apart, and he was going to think she was…
weird. Because who felt like this after three and a half weeks?
Virgins, she supposed. Women who had never had sex before.
Maybe that’s all it was. Her confusing orgasms with feelings.
But oh…it felt an awful lot like she had big, big feelings.
This man who had shown her a more physical side of herself, who had shown her that she wasn’t too difficult, too demanding or boring. Who had made it clear that her real problem was the people she had hung around with, not her. Not her.
“Okay,” he said, his voice rough. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
She nodded. “It won’t be long.”
“You won’t be staying here.”
“No. I won’t.”
They didn’t say goodbye. But they’d said all that. And even Ernestine wasn’t so black-and-white that she didn’t understand.
It was over between them because it had to be. Because they had changed each other, but not enough, she supposed.
It was the only night in the glass cabin where sleeping under the stars did nothing to make her feel better. Nothing at all.