Page 3 of Time After Time

I still remember how I foolishly believed that Ransom found me attractive and interesting—I mean, we were having sex and spending a lot of time together.

Thenone day, out of the blue, unexpectedly, he told me it was over. No explanation, no nothing. It had been a year since we began our relationship. A year where I juggled master’s program classes and Ransom, and he made time between his high-pressure job at Stanford Medical and me.

I was almost living with him.

I had been so stupidly sure that theimportant talkhe wanted to have with me was about how we were going to inform my parents and his family about our relationship.

I was sure about so many things, which only proved how dumb I was. Here I was, madly in love, and he was….

“Now, let’s be adults about this, Em. Affairs end.”

“But…Ransom…I?—”

“I’m fifteen years older than you. I’ve been where you’re going,” he says softly, his eyes already scanning the dining room for our server. He wants to pay and leave. I know him. He doesn’t like scenes, especially emotional ones.

“So, what?” I grip his hand. This is important. I want him to stop running away from something I know is beautiful and rare. Soulmate stuff.

He slips his hand free and gives me a smile—flat, perfunctory, the kind you toss at someone you’d rather be rid of. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I need more in a partner.”

My heart cracks.

“Ember, you’re a beautiful, wonderfulgirl, and you’ll meet a man who’s your age and shares your dreams of building a life. I’ve already built mine.”

I swallow, my eyes moist. He’s really ending us.

He looks irritably at me. “See, you’re getting upset. A woman my age wouldn’t be.”

That wounds, and he flinches when he sees the bruise of his words on my face. But it only propels him to make his intention clearer. “I need a woman with maturity. This isn’t about you, Sweet Em. It’s what I need in my life.”

And I’m not who he needs or wants. I was good for fucking and some evenings of companionship, but no more—not to build a life with. The shock of that knowledge almost knocks me over.

The server comes with the bill, and Ransom hands him his credit card. The man I’m in love with looks impatient, wants to get far, far away from me and my moist eyes, the ones that I can’t stop from tearing up.

I pull myself together because I’m a Rousseau. I’ve been raised by and with strong women. Freja would never beg a man.

“We had a good time, didn’t we?” I say, picking up my glass of wine, sipping, showing him and myself that my hands are not shaking.

He arches an eyebrow. He’s surprised.

I can read him like a spectral line—every shift tells me what he’s made of, and what he’s hiding.

His eyes soften. “We did. You’re a remarkable girl, Em.”

Now he’d said “girl” twice and not in that sexy way in bed when he calls me his good girl, but condescendingly, as a way to tell me that he’s a man in need of a woman and not an adolescent.

I raise my glass, clear my face of all emotions. “Ditto, Doc.”

A few months later, I left Stanford, transferred to MIT, and stayed as far away from Dr. Ransom Marchand as I could.

We met at events and functions through the years. We smiled politely. He was friends with my sister and brother, and his parents are close to mine, so no one thinks much of how frosty things are between us—no one thinks we even know each other beyond the perfunctory hellos and how-do-you-dos.

“Latika and the kids saybonjourto everyone.” Aksel hops on the couch I’m on and puts his socked feet on my lap as he lies down on the couch.

Latika is his wife. They have two adorable children.

“Well, I say, everyone should get LASIK,” Calypso Blake chimes in with amusement as she looks at me like I’m a child to be patronized.

And now my ex-lover’s girlfriend has taken it upon herself to dissect my looks. Perfect. This so-called two-week break already reeks of a morbid nightmare.