ERIK
I blink. Then I blink again.
What the hell is Luke talking about? France? Where did that come from?
“I’m not sure I follow,” I say. It’s a struggle to keep the sheer confusion out of my voice.
“My grandmother was French, so apparently that entitles me to a permanent visa for France. That’ll let me live in Europe, and then I can keep my existing job.”
I’m still lost. “But you’d be in France.”
“Yeah, France and Sweden are a lot closer together than Canada and Sweden. It’d be way easier for me to visit you.”
He’s always the one visiting me. He came to Sweden. He’s planning on coming to Minnesota. And he’d be the one making those flights back and forth, not me.
Talk about imbalance.
Sighing, I drag a hand through my hair. “I won’t be able to visit you at all during the season. That’s not fair on you.”
Luke waves me off. “I don’t mind. I have a lot more flexibility in my job than you do, so it makes sense.”
“Why are you so desperate to move, even if it isn’t to Sweden?”
Luke lets out a grating, frustrated noise and mutters a low “oh my fucking god” under his breath. “I’d see you more often than I would if I stayed here, and I’ll take anything. I’d visit you as much as possible because Iwantto.”
That sounds like a lot of heavy lifting for him, and I’d just take, take, take.
Luke seems to read my mind, because he continues. “And, before you come at me with some bullshit about how it’s ‘unequal effort,’ or how it’s ‘not fair to me,’ have you considered that this, again, iswhat I want?”
This is ridiculous.
“Can we talk about something else?” he asks.
“No, we can’t, Luke.” That gets his attention. “You want to burn yourself out by running around in circles for the slim possibility of moving not to Sweden, as you originally planned, but somewhere that’s a three-hour flight away.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Erik! I’m not burning myself out, and even if I was, it would be temporary.” He sighs and looks up, his expression shifting from incensed to…
My stomach drops. He’s holding back tears.
Luke lowers his head to face the camera again. “I found a way to keep my existing job and be closer to you. I finally had some kind of breakthrough after a month of nothing, and I was happy about it.”
Those words make my core tighten even more. If he was trying to make me feel guilty, he succeeded. If hewasn’t, I feel guilty anyway.
Luke continues. “Like, yousaythat you want me to move, but I’m really not feeling it. You keep shutting me down and finding ways to poke holes in whatever idea I come up with.”
I open my mouth to speak, and my brain blanks. Luke doesn’t deserve to be sad, and he definitely doesn’t deserve to be sad because of me. What can I even?—
“To confirm, you want to stay together, right?” he asks, snapping me back to him. “As in, you don’t want to break up with me because of the distance.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. My stomach sinks even lower, to the point where I’m scared of crapping it out. The thought of breaking up with Luke didn’t evenregisteras a possibility before he called me out.
“I don’t want to break up. God no, I really fucking don’t,” I sputter.
Luke’s expression softens. “Then let me deal with my own shit, Erik. I’m choosing to do this, and I’m choosing you.”
“You’re still choosing a hell of a lot of trouble,” I mumble, out of arguments. Luke is a man on a mission.
“Erik, you’re worth the trouble and then some. You’re amazing, and don’t you dare let yourself think otherwise. I’m so damn lucky to be your boyfriend, and that’s the truth.”
