Page 129 of The Mating Game
Cold runs through my blood. “So soon?”
“Yes,” Heidi says with a nod. “Like I said, we’re fitting you into a canceled slot, so we need to move as fast as possible. Truthfully, we’re already behind on filming.” She gives me a pointed look. “So I hope that you won’t needtoolong to look things over.”
My mouth opens and closes as I think of the project I left behind, all the unfinished things still in Colorado, seeing it practically slip through my fingers. Seeing the man I left there slip with it. How could I possibly ask him to wait around for me while I undertake all this, knowing I’ll have to abandon him in his hour of need?
“You can take the packet with you,” Heidi tells me. “We’ll need Legal to put together a formal deal agreement for you to sign if you say yes, but we can expedite that—don’t worry. In fact, if you canget me an answer by Monday, I can guarantee we’ll have you signed by the end of next week.”
It’s everything I’ve wanted, everything I’ve been dying to hear since this became even a remote possibility—so why the hell am I hesitating? I know deep down that I can’t afford to, that no matter what my heart might be saying, Iwillbe saying yes to this before Monday’s end…I just didn’t expect it to feel like this. I expected to feel accomplishment, to feel some sense of gratification at having reached the ending I’ve been working so hard for, and yet…all I feel is…empty, mostly.
But still I paste on a smile, tucking the packet under my arm as I rise from my chair and hold out my hand in offering for Heidi to shake. She takes it with a matching grin, no doubt knowing as well as I do that I won’t be saying no to this. No matter how much it will hurt me to do it. Which is something I never could have anticipated.
And when I leave her office, when I step out into the bright waiting room, with its sleek tiles and cream-colored walls that feel like they’re closing in…there’s only one voice I want to hear.
“…So you just left?”
I sigh as I grip the steering wheel. “What choice did I have?”
“It sounds like you’d rather have made a different one,” Ada says.
I’ve spilled my guts to Ada about everything that’s happened the last few days—about the heat, about Hunter, HGTV…all of it. She listened patiently as I recounted everything we did and everything I felt, and she was thoughtfully quiet throughout all of it.
“He didn’t really give me any other option,” I tell her. “He barelyacted like he wanted me to stay.” Ada is silent as she seems to consider, and it makes me uneasy. “Well?”
“I’m thinking that I might understand where he’s coming from,” she says finally.
“What do you mean?”
“I just…I know what it’s like to push everyone away because you think they couldn’t want you.”
My chest squeezes at her admission, and I know she’s thinking of her own issues, of how she uses her humor and her jokes to hide the fact that she’s most likely lonely.
“Anyone would want you, Ada,” I tell her. “One idiot doesn’t change that.”
She sniffs. “I’m just saying, it sounds to me like Hunter was trying to protect himself from heartbreak.”
“I would never hurt him,” I argue.
“But it sounds like he might have a hard time believing that with everything he’s been through, yeah?”
“Maybe,” I admit. My breath comes a little shorter as I recall all that he’d said, and my voice is quiet when I ask, “Do you think he could be right? Do I feel this way because of hormones or biology or whatever?”
“I can’t tell you that,” she says. “There’s no way I could be sure. But I know what it’s like to be afraid of your own feelings, and I know what it’s like to find out everything you thought was real never was.”
“Ada, not every guy is going to be a bastard like Perry’s dad,” I tell her.
She blows out a breath. “Maybe you’re right. But it’s not about me right now. It’s about you. Ask yourself, Tess. Do you think you really care about Hunter? Does itfeellike it’s just hormones?”
I let myself consider that, thinking about his quiet smile and his grumpy demeanor and his silly jokes at the most random of times, trying to imagine never experiencing any of it ever again. The thought fills me with immediate melancholy.
“It feels real,” I half whisper. “Is that stupid?”
“Not if you feel it,” Ada says. “You know your heart better than anyone else. And as scary as it is—and believe me, I know it is—sometimes you have to trust it. Even if it means you might get hurt. You’ll never know otherwise.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I say thickly.
“Of course I am,” she chuffs. “I’m always right.”
That gets a watery laugh out of me. “Of course you are.”
