“Mmm.” She bit her lip and studied the white conch shell as it reflected the patio light. Her eyes closed tightly for a moment, and she shook her head. “Cooper, I can’t do this.”
He’d been half expecting the words or something similar, and still, the bottom dropped out of his gut. He swallowed back the swarm of emotion that suddenly tried to choke him. “Can’t do what?” As if he didn’t know. But he’d make her say it.
“This … us. There is no ‘us’—”
“That’s not what it seemed like half an hour ago.”
She checked over her shoulder again, nervously this time, as if making sure there was no one to overhear her as she ripped out his heart. “That was a mistake, and you know it.”
Hardening his heart, he went for flippant. “I’m a guy. Sex that amazing is never a mistake.”
“It made everything more difficult. We aren’t together. Aren’t going to be together.”
“We agreed to take what we could get for this weekend, Zo. That was more than I expected. So much better. Why ruin it with all this? Why not just get through the rest of the weekend and—”
“And then what, Cooper?” Steel lined her tone. “What’s next? We waste another year traveling sixteen hundred miles once a month for some really good sex and to pretend like we have a real relationship with a real future?” Her jaw clamped down and she shook her head adamantly. “And every Monday morning, we have a painful reality check where it sets in that, once again, we’re alone, and when you get down to it, we really have hardly anything without a future? I won’t do that again. I can’t.”
“What if I considered moving to Colorado?” he said, feeling desperate at the thought of not seeing her again. Leaving San Amaro Island, the only place that had ever felt like home, was hard to imagine. He hated the idea.
After a moment’s hesitation, Zoe surprised him by shaking her head fiercely. “I won’t ask you to do that. I’ve never—”
“No. You didn’t ask.”
“Because I know what this place means to you, Cooper. If I made you choose between me and the home you love, who’s to say you wouldn’t end up resenting me?”
“Who’s to say I would?”
“Would you have moved if I’d asked?” she said, finally meeting his eyes head on with hers.
He looked away, toward the waves, which, this far south, showed no sign of the otherworldly algae glow. He loved them anyway. Loved the gulf and the beach and the year-round decent weather, even the stifling-hot summer nights like this one.
“Your hesitation says it all, Cooper, and I can’t hold that against you. Not when my answer was the same thing.”
Not entirely the same, he thought to himself, as hers was a business decision more than love of the area she’d grown up in. But it didn’t really matter, did it? What it came down to was the same dead end. The same losing proposition.
“Maybe I just need some time,” he said, and without giving himself a chance to consider his action, he reached out and took her hand in his.
He saw Zoe swallow hard as her eyes lowered to their entwined hands. When she met his gaze again, tears made her eyes glisten in the low light.
“I’m sorry, Cooper. I love you.” She hesitated and seemed to fight for control of herself, which tore him up even more. “I can’t live in limbo anymore. I need either all of you or … none of you. I … I’m sorry.”
She rose on her toes and planted a quick kiss on his lips, turned, and hurried away from him, into the refuge of the hotel lobby.
Cooper stared at the door where she’d disappeared, dumbfounded.
What the hell had just happened?
From the most amazing sex of his life to being walked out on in less than one hour?
He attempted to slam the brakes on the blinding pain that rolled over him and got the hell off the patio, where people milled around, probably staring at him, pitying his sorry ass.
He hurried away from the light from the buildings. Headed toward the escape the water offered. And when he got to the waves, he walked right goddamn into them, clothes, shoes, pain, and all.
10
Twelve hours and Zoe could blow this town. Ten and she would be at the airport, safely away from having to see Cooper again.
Every second of being in the same place with him, even if it was the sprawling, open-air patio of the Shell Shack beachside bar, made the hole in her chest stretch a little bigger.
