All To Myself (13 page)

Chapter Seven

“It chaps my ass a little, but I figure if it was anyone else, I’d jump at the chance.”

This is what Noah explained to her as he flipped kebabs on the grill outside her cottage. This was how it started. He would talk about the plans that seemed to grow more ambitious by the day, and eventually it would come around to the horrible thing they hadn’t talked about since that night.

“It’s a good idea. It’s either that or go up to your eyeballs in debt.”

“Yeah, but it feels less
mine
.”

He’d been busy in the last few weeks, though never too busy to spare her a moment. He’d initially pulled back at the notion of buying the adjacent property to the one he already owned. The purchase would drain his funds almost completely, and he had nothing to borrow against. His father had proposed partial ownership. The cottages would operate under The White Tip banner and become a more economical offering to visitors who wanted a little more seclusion. As a part of the hotel, Noah could take advantage of The White Tip name and pay a modest fee to the hotel with each reservation made through their system. The new venture would be Noah’s to operate, and if it was a failure he would have no bank to deal with. If he wasn’t paid up in ten years, he could relinquish the cottages to his father and walk away, or try for a bank loan and go on his own.

Rory considered it a smooth move on the part of Vincent Hyland. If it was responsibility his son wanted, Noah had it. It was entirely up to him to make something of his impromptu purchase and prove himself. Whatever Noah had been lacking his four years of university, he seemed to have found it in his little plot of land and its potential. She could tell he believed in himself. She could tell his father believed in him.

She believed in him, and it made her ache to think of him settling down with a family in a spot he began with her.

It had been almost two weeks after their excursion to town. Since that night, they’d avoided the subject. Or, rather, Rory avoided the subject. It was obvious that Noah wanted to press her on where they could go next, but he never pushed too hard once she backed off.

She didn’t think she’d be able to do it any longer. There weren’t many days left in the summer, and she was trying to convince herself that she might feel better if she just had this talk with him and get everything out in the open. It would be over and done with, at least, and they wouldn’t be living under the illusion that everything was all right and would be all right.

She didn’t really believe it. This was going to be what she had feared back when he’d first pursued her.

The end.

She had no one to blame but herself. She knew it would come one day, but as each day passed she just ignored the inevitable, and part of her thought that maybe, just maybe, this mess would just work itself out.

It was hard not to have regrets, especially when he was still in arm’s reach and so warm and comforting.

“Ah, well,” he said and sank into the plastic patio chair next to hers. He nudged her foot as he collected his beer. “How about we head up Sunday night? I can get you back here in time for three o’clock.”

“Sure.”

“We can do the whole weekend. You took next Monday off, right?”

She hesitated. “I have to go over to the mainland with Pa.”

“Something wrong?” he asked, though there was an odd strain on his voice.

He knew.

She turned her face to the water and took a deep breath. Now that the moment was here, she could feel her body and her mind conspiring together to shut down on her.

“I’m going to look at an apartment.”

Noah said nothing for a moment, and she couldn’t look at him.

“Then you really don’t want to go with me to Halifax, do you?”

She felt sick. She wanted to go inside, shut the door and cry. “You know that’s not it.”

“Do I?” He leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees. “This seems pretty straightforward to me.”

“Yeah, it does.” She didn’t mean to sound so caustic, and he picked her up on it right away.

“You think I’m asking you to give something up?”

“To be honest, Noah, that’s not that I think; that’s what’s going to happen if I go with you. I’m going to be left floundering at the last minute--”

“Oh, come on!” he growled, then held his hand up. “No, I’m not going to get hot-headed, and neither are you. We’re going to talk about this because, yes
,
we have something to talk about. I’m just going to put it out there: if you don’t want to come to Halifax with me, I’ll come to Moncton with you.”

“You c--”

“Don’t tell me I can’t. You don’t get to make my decisions any more than I get to make yours. If I can’t get into a program for next month, I’ll start in the winter.”

Rory bit down on her own temper and clasped her hands on her knees. “You’ve been so excited talking about your plans for when you finish school. Do you really want to add six more months to that? A whole other summer?”

“Who says I have to add six months? I can take credits next summer.”

“So your plan is to burn yourself out so you can be with me?”

He looked at her as though she had suddenly started speaking tongues. “Do you not get that there’s a lot I would do if it meant I could be with you?”

And underlying that statement was, wouldn’t you do the same?

She wished she could say she would. If things were different, if they had met a few years later when she didn’t feel so lost, maybe …

All along it had been so easy to just say yes when it came to Noah. When he’d asked her out. When he’d wanted to take her to bed. All of his little schemes and plotting. Yes, she said, over and over again. She wanted to be with him. When she woke up in the morning he was there, and when he wasn’t she wondered with her first lucid thought what he was doing. She wanted to live and breathe in his presence.

And now when it counted, she couldn’t. She couldn’t just give up what she wanted for a man, even one she loved as much as she loved Noah.

“Either I come to you, or you come to me.” He delivered this statement quietly, cautiously. “It would be easier, you know.”

“Until things turn to shit.”

“Who says things are going to turn to shit? People do tweak their lives a little and still survive. Why couldn’t we do that?”

“You mean, why couldn’t
I
do that?” She pushed out of her chair and poked at the food on the grill. “My Mom never finished high school. She married a guy who got drunk and killed himself driving home from the bar one night, and she scrubbed toilets until she got too sick to do it. There must have been other things she wanted to do, but that was her life because she didn’t do anything for herself. And look at my sister. She met Linden and told herself she’d stick around until he finished school. Then he got a job with public works and the money started rolling in, and it was easier for her to just give up what she wanted and stay. Now, ten years later … well, you’ve met Francie.”

“Yeah, but Francie’s an asshole. You said yourself she’s always been an asshole.”

“Maybe she never had anything for herself. She had her opportunity and she just let it pass. Now what does she have?”

“A family? Kids? A job she’s sort of good at, or at least one she loves.”

“She’s a big fish in a small pond.”

“Is that what she thinks or is that what you think?” He sagged back. “I don’t even know what your sister has to do with it. I don’t know what your mother has to do with it. We’re talking about
you
. We’re talking about you and me.”

“We’re talking about me dropping everything and following you just because this summer has been more wonderful than I ever imagined it could be. We’re talking about making a big decision because we had a few good weeks. We’re talking about me putting what
I
want on hold.”

“And what you want doesn’t include me? I’m not buying it.” He tipped his head back and groaned. “You know, people like you who moan about not having the things they want are usually the only ones standing in the way of what they want. You could have both. You could go to school in Halifax with me. You could live with me.”

“And then I’d have to leave to find a job somewhere else.”

“Oh, come on. You’d find something no more than an hour’s drive away, or the more likely scenario is that you find something in walking distance from our place.”

“What if I want to go somewhere else?”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

Her frustration reached its limit. “Noah, stop it. I just turned nineteen. You’re twenty-three. We’ve been together a little over a month. The only life we’ve had together has been here. You don’t have a job, and neither do I, and yet you want to go off and have a life together. Do you not foresee how this might be a huge mistake?”

His cheeks were a hot red as he responded. “No, I don’t. I told you that the moment I met you on that road I knew this was it for me. I knew you were the one for me.”

Just like the first moment he said it, Rory’s whole body seemed to squeeze around her heart. There should be happiness there, she thought, and there was--happiness strangled by all the reasons to say goodbye.

And so she said, “I can’t say the same.”

It had hurt saying it. It hurt more seeing the shattered look on his face.

He shook his head and set his beer aside, then stood. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not. I love you, but--”

Rory shrank back as he stuck his face in hers. “You’re lying to me.”

She didn’t know what to say as he leapt down the stairs and headed to his car, shoulders tense. This wasn’t how she had wanted it to end. She didn’t want him to be angry with her.

“You know where I am,” he snapped as he crawled behind the wheel. “You know where to find me, but I’m not going to listen if the only thing you have to say is that this means more to me than it does to you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said meekly, and anything else she could have said was chased back by the roar of his ignition.

She got her wish. In the wake of his leaving, she plucked the food from the grill and tossed it in the garbage can, then closed herself in the cottage and cried until there was nothing left to cry out.

*****

She dreaded going to work that night. She really thought of quitting, but if she did that, her whole argument with Noah would mean nothing. If anything, she needed to work. She needed the feeling of doing something.

She just wished she didn’t have to work in the one place she was most likely to find him.

After parking her bike in its usual spot, she walked to the hotel and felt heavier with every step.

Even the discovery of Noah waiting for her by the service entrance didn’t make her feel lighter. Her stomach gave a sickening roll and she felt cold as he stood to greet her.

“I’m sorry I left like I did,” he said.

“It’s okay. I … It was a messy conversation.”
Said some things I shouldn’t have. I want to take it all back.
She gestured to the door behind him. “I have to get changed.”

“Not yet. I told Tom to tell his diners that there would be a wait for cocktails,” he explained, holding the heavy door open for her. “They could have beer or wine or soda on the house while they wait.”

“You can’t do that. Francie will have a cow. You’re--”

“Yeah, I can, and I did.”

He sounded so angry when he spoke; it was as though his words were cutting him in half. She knew the feeling. She went to hug herself, but instead was pulled into Noah’s arms.

For a moment they just stood there in silence, heart to heart, his chin propped on the top of her head. Rory found no comfort in it. No good could come from an embrace like that.

“I really shouldn’t have just left like that.”

She said nothing. Her insides twisted and turned. This was good. This warmth and strength. She didn’t want to hear anything else. She didn’t want to feel anything other than this beautiful thing.

“I meant what I said. Rory,” he went on.” I’ve meant every single thing I’ve said to you since we met.”

She closed her eyes and braced herself as the malicious tension made itself known in his hard body against hers.

But?

“But you won’t come with me and you won’t let me come to you, and so--” He choked, and the tremor in his chest leapt into her and made ice in her veins. “So I’m leaving tonight.”

“What?” She disentangled herself and looked up him, stunned. “There’s still time. There’s still two weeks left.”

“Two weeks of what? Of me begging you to reconsider? Of waiting for that last day so I can have my heart ripped out again?” His eyes shone with tears and he scowled as though trying to banish them away. “If this is going to be it, if all this is ever going to be is a summer--not even a summer, a few weeks of a summer--then there’s no point in spending the rest of it trying to get over one another before we’ve even walked away, and that’s what’s going to happen. I spent all day trying to figure out how in the hell I’m ever going to get over you.”

Panic and sorrow hit her at once. She lunged for him, wrapped her arms around his midsection and squeezed.

“I don’t want you to go, not yet,” she sobbed into his chest. The things she wanted to say came bubbling up. Now that
over
had come, there seemed to be no use in keeping them in. “Give me just a few more days.
Please
. I do love you, and I need you just a little longer.”

He said nothing. He held her as tight as she held him.

The minutes ticked by and she cried. She wasn’t ready. She’d known it was coming from the start, but she wanted more time. She wanted more time to breathe him in, to rest her head on his shoulder while they sat under the stars. She wanted more time to remember what he looked like when he slept, what he tasted like when he kissed her. She wanted more time to forget that she was losing him.

It was impossible, no matter when it came, but she wanted her last moment with him to be more than this, more than feeling nauseous and wrecked.

Noah’s grip loosened. Hers tightened. Rory knew this would be the last time she would be in his arms. When he let her go, he was going to leave her.