The words drained me like a plug being pulled from a basin.
I wiggled away from him and sat up against his headboard. “Why did you just say that to me?”
He sat back in the bed. “What?”
“That you love me. Why did you say it?” “Because I feel it?”
“You can’t feel it.”
He looked amused. “Well, I do. And it’s not a big deal. If you’re not there yet, it’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine.
“What are you doing?” I said. “We’re not doing this.” “Doing what?”
“This!” I gestured between us. “Alexis—”
I shook my head. “No. We talked about this. You knew this wasn’t going to be a relationship. You knew this wasn’t going to last. I get the job tomorrow. It ends after that, so why throw that word around? What is the point?”
He blinked at me. “The point is that I’m in love with you.” My jaw set. “No.”
I got off the bed and started putting my clothes on. “Are you leaving?” he asked, disbelief in his voice.
“Yes.”
“Because I told you I love you—”
“No. Because you think you do. And you shouldn’t.” I pulled on my yoga pants. “I should have ended this months ago. I should have gone with my gut.” I pulled a shirt over my tangled wet hair.
Daniel was off the bed, jumping into jeans. “Alexis…” I grabbed my bag and walked out of the room.
“Alexis!”
I ignored him.
I came out into the sunlight to my car, and Daniel followed close on my heels. “Hey!”
“Daniel, this discussion is over.”
“We haven’t even had a discussion. How can it be over?” he said to my back.
I chirped off my alarm.
“Stop!” He grabbed my wrist.
I whirled on him and yanked my arm down. “No! You knew this was a temporary situation. You knew this wasn’t going to have a happy ending.”
He dragged a hand through his hair. “Look, I didn’t plan this either, but it’s happening now, and I can’t pretend that it’s not.”
“It’s not. Our lives don’t work,” I said. “They don’t work together.”
He shook his head. “How do you know? You’ve never even tried to make them work. You won’t let me meet your friends or your family. I can’t know where you live. Give me a chance. Let me try. I can come to you. I can do everything.”
I shook my head. “And how are you going to do everything, Daniel?
When you have to be here to run this house.”
“I won’t buy it. I’ll move to Minneapolis to be near you.”
My heart broke. The declaration pushed the air right out of my lungs. “I’ll get an apartment if you don’t want to live with me,” he said. “I’ll
get a job over there.”
I let out a puff of air. “Daniel, you can’t leave Wakan. They need you.
You love it here—”
“I love you more. If you think I want any of this without you in it, you don’t know anything about me.” His golden-green eyes held mine. “I can’t lose you. I won’t. The job doesn’t have to end what we have. I won’t let it.”
I stood there, anguished. “It’s not even the job, Daniel. That’s just the logistics. It’s my life. My life isn’t compatible with your life.”
He threw up his hands. “What the hell is the problem? Make me understand it. We’re great together. What is this big, horrible thing that you think I can’t handle or we can’t figure out? I’m your damn boyfriend, talk to me.”
“You are not my boyfriend.”
I watched the words hit him like a smack.
“If I’m not your boyfriend, what the hell am I, Alexis?” I didn’t answer.
“What am I? Nothing? Some fucking booty call? Really? That’s what you want to pretend this is?”
Tears pricked my eyes. “This could never work, Daniel. Not the way you want it to—”
“Why?”
“Our lives are just too different. We don’t fit. You don’t know what I come from, the people I’m around, the things they expect of me—the way they are. I don’t know how to let you into my world,” I said hopelessly. “It feels more humane not to.”
He put his hands on my arms. “Look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t love me. I want to hear you say that you don’t love me back. You say it and I’ll let you leave.”
My chin quivered. “I can’t say it. Because I do love you. And that is the fucking problem.” Tears spilled down my cheeks.
His eyes moved back and forth between mine. “If you want something badly enough, Alexis, nothing else matters.”
I shook my head. “That’s not true,” I whispered. “Everything matters.
All the time.”
His sad eyes held mine, and I felt like I was going to crumble into dust. “It’s over, Daniel.”
The words made him blow out a shaky breath.
I turned for the car, and his hands dropped away from me. Then a crack of lightning came out of nowhere.
Daniel grabbed me in a split second and pulled me into him, putting his back to the strike as it hit the oak by the entrance. An enormous branch broke off and fell across the driveway.
I stood there, my cheek pressed to Daniel’s pounding chest. “Did you see that?” he breathed.
I couldn’t even respond. It was like paddles had just shocked me back to life. I was instantly sobered.
“There’s not even thunder,” he said. “There’s not even clouds.” I peered around him.
The branch sat smoking in the driveway. I looked up at the sky. Nothing but blue. “What in the world?” I whispered.
Then I pushed off him. “Go get your chain saw and move it. I’m still leaving.”
He shook his head. “No. No way.”
“What do you mean no way? I need to get out.”
His eyes were wide. “I’m not messing with that. That was God.”
“That was not—” I let a calming breath out through my nose. “Daniel, I do not believe that God had nothing better to do today than trap me in your driveway. I do not believe in cosmic interventions, I don’t believe in magic; that was a completely explainable weather phenomenon. You need to move that branch so I can leave.”
Then a loud crack of thunder rolled, the heavens opened up, and rain poured over us. Sheets and sheets of rain.
Rain. Without clouds.
I stood there, getting drenched, and Daniel crossed his arms in the downpour, looking amused. “The universe doesn’t want you to leave,” he shouted. “In fact, I’m going to say the universe wants you to go back inside.”
“Arrrrrg!” I stomped to the garage in the mud.
I got into the door, and the second I did, I heard the deluge outside stop. Daniel came in after me and wrapped his arms around me from behind. It immediately de-escalated me, a robot powering down. I lost all the energy to fight him.
He stood there, holding me, his body curved around mine like it was made to fit me, and I felt like I was pressed against my other half. But he couldn’t be my other half, because if he was, wouldn’t we be made from the same thing? Why would we be as different as we were perfect for each other?
“I love you,” he whispered. “We are together. This isn’t over. And even if you leave, it won’t be over because you’ll take the love with you and it’ll bring you back.”
He turned me, and I looked up at him, completely helpless. But it was okay that I was helpless because he’d never hurt me like Neil did. He’d never do anything but what he does for all the people in his life. He’d be devoted to me and cherish me and take care of me.
And he was right. I couldn’t escape this.
Love follows you. It goes where you go. It doesn’t know about social divides or distance or common sense. It doesn’t even stop when the person you love dies. It does what it wants.
Even if what you want is to not be in love.
