Page 48 of Running Hott (Hott Springs Eternal #4)
Eden
I hate the feeling of hope that wells up in me.
I hate that I want to clutch his hands and beg him to mean it.
I hate that I already know how much it will hurt when he doesn’t, when he changes his mind, when he takes back the ring, when he ends the marriage, when he leaves.
I hate that even though I’m standing on the edge of the highest, cruelest cliff, I can’t stop myself from saying—my voice filled with hope, like an nine-year-old’s asking her mom if this is the time she’ll stay, “You want to do long distance?”
He shakes his head, and the wind rushes up at me from the edge of the cliff, the vast empty space beyond, but I don’t fall, not yet.
Because he’s not saying no , he’s saying something else: “I want to stay here. In Rush Creek. I have a friend who’s partner in a firm in Bend that does collaborative divorce and a bunch of other family law stuff, and he wants me to join their firm. ”
He wants to stay.
He wants to stay.
But can he? Will he?
He said it himself—he’s a shark. Sharks don’t live in Rush Creek and do “a bunch of family law stuff.”
How long would he be happy doing that?
How long would he be happy with me ?
Before New York would draw him back?
It’s my turn to shake my head. “You’re not going to be happy doing that. When I brought up collaborative divorce on our road trip, you acted like I’d suggested you raise bunnies instead of doing law.”
He winces. “That was before. You’ve helped me see other possibilities.”
“No,” I say. “You’re setting yourself up—you’re setting us both up—for failure.
You take some job that’s the antithesis of who you are, you try to yank the city boy out of New York and dump him in backwater Oregon, you take the cynic and try to turn him into the committed monogamist—and in the end, you can’t make any of it work, because it’s not you. ”
“It could be me,” he says. “I want to try it.”
Like Paul tried not to still be in love with his ex-girlfriend?
I shake my head. “I don’t want to be something you try. I don’t want to be the next woman you walk away from. And I don’t want you to be the next person I care about who walks away from me.”
I’m proud of myself. I feel strong. I feel safe. I’m making myself both those things. I don’t need anyone else to do that for me.
“Hey,” he says. “I don’t want either of those things, either, and I wouldn’t be telling you any of this if I thought either of those things would happen. I know you’ve been hurt, and I will never hurt you like that.”
You won’t, I agree in my head, because I won’t give you the power to.
This is what I should have been able to do with Paul: push him away. This is what I should have said to Paul: I won’t give you the power to hurt me again.
It’s what I should have said to my mother at nine, at eleven, twelve, fifteen, sixteen, sixteen and a half, seventeen.
I can’t go back and do that part over.
But I can refuse to be hurt again.
Rhys pushes a hand into his normally flawless hair.
It’s a little long right now, and it stands on end.
“When I was in New York,” he says, “I ran into my ex-girlfriend. And we started talking. She’s with someone else now, and she’s happy.
She wanted to know if I still felt like marriage would never be for me.
She said that she should have known that she wasn’t the woman who would change my mind about marriage.
And it made me realize. You’re that woman for me, Eden.
You’re the woman who can change—who has already changed —my mind about marriage.
I want to be with you. Not just now but for as long as you’ll have me. ”
All I have to do is stay strong a little bit longer and this will be over. “That’s what you thought about her, too.”
“No,” he says. A pleading note has crept into his voice, but I don’t let it penetrate my shell.
“I didn’t. I knew it wasn’t working for me.
The mistake I made was trying to talk myself into it.
I knew she was wrong for me. But you’re different, Eden.
You’ve been different from the beginning.
You made me want to break every rule I had for myself. You still do.”
I cross my arms. Like I’m protecting myself—from him. “You shouldn’t, though. You shouldn’t break your own rules. Those rules exist for a reason. To protect yourself.”
“I’m not scared, Eden. I know this can work. And I want to try.”
I close my eyes. Open them again. “I know,” I say. So strong, like steel, something that won’t bend or break, that will be left standing when all the trying and the this time is different are done. “I’m the one who doesn’t think it can.”