Page 100 of Chasing Dreams
She tried to pull away. “I can throw your jeans in with mine.”
He held fast and pulled her back to him. “Shaine, talk to me.”
She looked him in the eye. “What’s there to talk about?”
That stumped him. Indeed. What was there to talk about? How miserable he’d be without her? She didn’t need to hear that. How much he wished things were different, so he could be the kind of man she needed and deserved? That would serve no purpose.
What else was there to say? Goodbye? He didn’t think he could handle that. He released her arm.
She stared at him.
A sick, cheated feeling convulsed in his belly. He couldn’t stay here until morning. He couldn’t prolong the torture. He wanted to hold onto her so badly, the desperate need scared him.
He had to go now. Before he spoiled everything they’d had up until tonight. Now. While he still had his fast-failing dignity.
“I’m leaving now.”
In the dim light from the hallway, he thought her face drained of color. “Where will you go?”
He moved past her. “The airport.”
He found his phone in his jacket pocket and called an uber.
Shaine moved into her living room like a zombie. Austin’s suitcase still sat by the door; he hadn’t unpacked since they’d come back that afternoon.
He went into her bedroom and returned with a smaller bag. “I think I have everything. If I didn’t have it in my suitcase, I don’t need it.”
His impatience and the finality implied stung. Shaine watched him with her heart aching.
“We’ll keep in touch,” he said without looking at her. He hadn’t looked at her since he’d said he was leaving. “We’ll still be working with Ken for a while, so we’ll talk.”
She didn’t have anything to say. If she tried to talk, she’d break into a million pieces.
“I’ll want to know how Jack’s doing,” he said, pulling on his jacket.
Finally he looked at her.
Their eyes met and held.
Shaine’s chest felt like he was taking her heart with him.
He broke their locked gaze, tucked one bag under his arm and picked up the other.
Without another word he turned and left.
Shaine commanded her feet to carry her to her bedroom window. In the dark, Austin strode to the end of the drive and dropped his bags onto the concrete. He paced the street in front of the inn a few times. Finally he sat at the curb.
The buzzer on her dryer went off, but she paid it no attention. She wanted to cry. She wanted to throw up. She gripped her stomach and wanted to run down to the end of her drive and throw herself at his feet.
Miserable, Shaine tore herself from the window. She looked in on Jack once again, almost afraid she’d only dreamed him up, too.
How bitterly unfair that in finding him, she’d found and lost the only man who’d ever meant anything to her.
Returning to the window, she caught sight of red taillights disappearing in the distance. A morose sadness fell upon her. He was gone.
She paced the apartment. Sat on the sofa. Looked at the digital music device on her counter. Anything she ever listened to would remind her of him. Who was she kidding everything she saw or did or felt or smelled for the rest of her life would remind her of him.
If she went to her bed she’d smell him.
