Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
“Then how—” I shake my head. “How are you sitting here telling me you’re going to keep doing this?”
“Because it’s who I am.”
And there it is. The same answer. The same line drawn in the same place it has always been drawn between us, and I am so tired of that line. I am so tired of loving a woman who keeps walking toward the thing that might take her away from me and calling it purpose.
“You knew that when you—” she starts.
“I knew it,” I say, and I hear the edge in my own voice, but I don’t pull it back. “And I watched you walk out a service exit alone to meet a man who ran his own assistant down with a car. So forgive me if knowing it isn’t enough anymore.”
“That was a mistake. I know it was.”
“You say that now.”
“I mean it now.”
“You meant it before too.” I pace because I can’t sit still with this much pressure in my chest. “And then something came along that you couldn’t resist and you made a calculation and you walked out that door.”
She’s on her feet now too. “I won’t do that again. I’m telling you—”
“How many times do we have to have this conversation?” I hear my voice going flat and I know what that means and I can’t seem to stop it. “How many times do I have to stand here and tell you what it costs me and have you tell me it’s who you are?”
“How many times do I have to tell you that I need you to accept me as I am?” she fires back. “I have never asked you to stop being who you are. Not once.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
I move to the window and back. The living room isn’t big enough for what I’m feeling and there’s nowhere to put it.
“You know what the difference is?” I say, spinning on her. “I would give it up for you. If you told me you were too worried about my job, I’d walk away in a heartbeat.”
“I know you would.” Her voice drops. “And I love you for it. But I would never ask you to give yourself up.”
I look at her across the room. For a moment—a very minute piece of time—I actually hear her. She’s standing there in her robe with damp hair and bruised wrists and she’s looking at me so open in her face that it almost reaches me. Almost gets through the fear and the image of her hooded and hanging from a hook.
I take a breath and step toward her.
And then I think about those woods. That scream. The eternity that Reid and Sully held me back while she was in that cabin being tortured.
And I can’t handle it.
“I just need you to care enough about us to consider it,” I say. “That’s all I’m asking.”
Her expression closes off and I know there’s no compromise tonight. “And I need you to care enough about me to accept who I am. That’s all I’ve ever asked.”
Stalemate.
“I can’t do this, Tessa.” I pick up my jacket from the chair, but I don’t put it on. I stand there holding it and looking at her and she looks back at me. The distance between us is only about eight feet and it might as well be the entire Cascade Mountain Range. “I can’t watch you almost die again.”
“And here we are once more,” she says, her voice watery. “An impasse.”
I stare at her, my eyes roaming her entire frame and soaking it in. This woman I have loved without particularly choosing to. This woman, who is going to walk back into the fire the first chance she gets, expects me to wait on the other side of it.
“I watched you hang from a hook in a cabin,” I say, “and I thought I was too late.” I let that sit for exactly one second. “And you’re standing here telling me it was worth it.”
I don’t wait for her response and instead, I walk out. The night air hits me on the porch and I stand there for a moment with my jacket still in my hand and the sound of her silence on the other side of that door.
I wait to feel like I did the right thing, but it doesn’t come. So I walk to my truck, get in and drive away.
CHAPTER 26
Tessa
The article has been live for four days and I know this because my inbox tells me so. Fourteen hundred and twelve unread emails as of this morning, a number I’ve stopped trying to reduce because every time I delete one, two more arrive to take its place. Interview requests from the Times, the Post, NPR, three cable news networks, a podcast I’ve never heard of with eleven million subscribers. A speaking inquiry from a journalism school in Boston. A literary agent who found my personal email and wants to discuss a book proposal.