I’m still feeling like I got run over by a semi-trailer when Bear tells me, again, to “think about it” and heads inside.
I clutch the paper with Bear’s obscene salary proposal in one hand. More money than I let myself want… and a “write your own job description” offer.
“You look like you’re going to throw up,” Hanna observes. “Is that happy barfing?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “You should be happy. A super famous celebrity wants to pay you ridiculous money to do exactly what you want to do. It’s your dream come true!”
It’s true that it’s what I thought I wanted. To get out of Rush Creek, away from what felt like stifling sameness and being perennially under my big brother’s thumb. To be taken seriously enough to get paid what I’m worth and given the work I’m excited about.
But right now? It doesn’t feel like what I want at all.
Rush Creek hasn’t felt stifling these last few weeks. It’s felt like…
It’s felt like what I didn’t let myself know I wanted. Discovering that the woman who makes me laugh is also the woman who gets me hotter than I’ve ever been, who gets me off… but most of all? Who gets me.
Hanna, who doesn’t let anyone in, has let me in in so many different ways, and I’ve never felt connected to another person the way I feel connected to her.
These last few weeks in Rush Creek? They’ve felt like possibility and the future, like the beginning of the rest of my life.
I open my mouth to say that. To say that everything’s changed for me, that what I thought I wanted doesn’t matter anymore, because the thing I want now wins out over everything else. But Hanna is already speaking, her tone teasing.
“It’s kind of the perfect ending,” she says. “You get the job of your dreams, you move away. Better that it ends like this, right? Before it has a chance to end in disaster.”
“Don’t do that,” I say, irritably. “Why do you do that? Talk like there’s no way it could possibly work?”
I know I’m hurt and frustrated because I’m thinking about beginnings and she’s talking about endings, but I can’t seem to be cool about it.
“Because there’s no way it could possibly work,” she says. “You just got offered a job in Colorado.”
And then she shrugs, like it’s nothing. Like my going to Colorado, like things between us ending, is nothing to her.
I frown. “I don’t have to take it.”
“You should take it. You want it. Obviously, you do, or you would have told Bear you didn’t want the job. But you didn’t tell him that, did you? You do want it.”
And she’s right. I want it. I want to do what I love and be taken seriously. I want to make my own way, not just the Wilder way.
I just…
…want something else, more.
I say, “I want this.” I repeat it, point to the two of us, so there’s no mistake. “I want this, you and me.”
“You want—”
She’s staring at me like I’ve said something so absurd, she can’t even assimilate it.
“Like a relationship,” she says. “You want us to be—together?”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t… I don’t know,” she says. “What would that mean? You’d turn down the Bear job and stay here? When you know you’re sick of working for your brother and not being taken seriously? How long do you think that would work for you before you realized you’d made a mistake?”
“You could come to Colorado,” I say. “Bear knows a ton of people doing outdoors stuff in the Golden area. For that matter, so do I. We could have you hooked up in a second.”
She frowns and looks away. “You know I can’t do that, E. I’ve got my granddad here—he’s all I’ve got left, and the day is coming soon when he won’t be able to manage all the ranch admin himself. And, well, I love working for Wilder. On its worst day, it’s my dream job.”
I know that’s all true, and I don’t begrudge her one ounce of it, but a vise tightens in my gut.
Some part of me must have been expecting this to go down very differently. Some part of me must have thought that when I told her how I felt, that I wanted us to stay together, she’d throw her arms around me and squeal with delight. In all the years I was sleeping around, I’d never really thought about what not wanting to be done with someone would feel like. What it would feel like to ask for more and not get it.
The universe doles out hard lessons, and I can see from the look on Hanna’s face that this one’s not done yet.
“You’ve never had a girlfriend, E,” she says. “You’ve never been serious about anyone. And I’m… I don’t want… I can’t be your practice girlfriend.”
The anger that had been heating up in me grinds to a cold, slow stop.
“You don’t… you really don’t think we can make this work.”
It’s not a question. Because I know I’m right.
“We didn’t set out to make this work, E,” she says quietly. “We knew who we both were.” Her eyes scan my face, looking, I think, for confirmation that I know I’m asking for something absurd, that I know I’ve gone way off script.
She’s right, of course. We didn’t set out for this to be something.
It was always temporary in her mind.
We both knew who we both were.
I’m temporary.
Which makes sense because I’ve always been temporary. I’m the one-night guy, the just-for-fun guy. The jokester.
The flirt.
I’m good at temporary, and I shouldn’t be surprised that I got chosen for temporary by someone who has seen me excel at it my whole life.
Hanna doesn’t think we can make this work. But worse, she never has.
“I just think—you should take the job. It’s a sure thing, Easton. A sure way for you to be happy. And I think it’s the universe’s way of putting a clean ending on what’s between us.” She says it decisively, like a lawyer making a closing statement.
“What if I don’t want a clean ending?” I ask. “What if I want—”
Caution is screaming inside my head. Don’t do it! This is Hanna, and you know her, you can’t just come at her with all the words and all the feelings. You’re going to scare her, and that’s going to make it worse.
But I’m hurt and frustrated. I want her to be in it with me, to take me seriously, to believe that we are—that I am—enough to make this work.
“What if I want it all? The future. Forever. Marriage. Children. Happily ever after? What if I want that, Hanna?”
Hanna’s eyes get big, and her face fills with something. If I trusted myself, I’d say it was hope. And I feel it too. I’ve finally said the right thing; I’ve finally convinced her I’m serious; I’ve finally gotten through.
And then that bright emotion in her eyes vanishes. She takes a step backward, a small stumble. Just a half-step hitch.
“You don’t,” she says, shaking her head. Her eyes are big. Panicked. “You don’t want that. You think you do, but you’ll get bored of me. You’ll get tired of this. You’ll want the job you turned down when the sex was shiny and new. And when you do, I’ll be the one who loses everything. You. Your family. My friends. My job. That’s how it works.”
She’s shaking her head.
“Hanna.”
“Don’t,” she says. So familiar. Don’t give me that stone, don’t give me that kiss, don’t give me that compliment.
Only this time, it’s don’t need me, and there’s nothing I can do about it, because it’s way, way too late.