“But I can’t,” she says. “I wish I could. I mean…I would. But…my job.”
“Use your vacation days.”
“I can’t just up and leave them. They wouldn’t let me go.”
I know it’s futile now, but I can’t help it. “You can ask. It sounds like they owe you for a lot of things at this point.”
Fuck it. I put the phone back to my ear. “Hello, miss? Yes, actually I’d like to buy another seat, business class, since there is room. If there is one next or close to me, that would be brilliant.”
“What are you doing?” Kayla asks, panicking.
I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “Don’t worry about it.”
The clerk asks me for Kayla’s name and info.
“Kayla Moore,” I tell her, then I have to pause. I don’t even know this girl’s birthday. Just what the fuck am I doing here?
“Uh, love,” I say to Kayla. “Mind supplying me with your birthdate?”
“Lachlan,” she says. “Don’t.”
I give her a long look, trying to read her, what’s she’s really feeling, really thinking. “Don’t what?” I ask her. “You don’t want to come?”
She looks so utterly helpless that I almost feel bad for putting her on the spot. But fuck, the hope it brings is worth it.
“I want to come,” she says quietly. “I just don’t think it’s possible. It’s so last minute. Do you really want me to come with you?”
I nod quickly. “I’m getting the ticket.”
“No.”
“No, listen. I’m getting the ticket. The flight leaves tomorrow at three o’clock. I will be on it. If you don’t make it happen, then that’s the way it goes. But that ticket will be there, in your name.”
She’s shaking her head. “I can’t let you do that. The cost—”
“The cost is worth it in the event that you show up.”
“And if I don’t? I mean, if I can’t make it work?”
I manage to give her a half-smile. “Then at least I tried.” I exhale loudly. “Your birthdate, love.”
I can see the wheels turning in her head. Spinning around. Going over every scenario. Not sure what the right answer is.
Finally she says, “July first, nineteen eighty-five. And it’s Kayla Ann Moore.”
I grin at her and get back to the phone. “Pardon me, miss, you still there? I have the information you need.”
And just like that, there’s hope.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kayla
In a few seconds, everything has changed. Everything. I’ve gone from feeling deep, aching, crazy despair to thinking of brand new possibilities in the blink of an eye.
Because he asked me to go back with him.
It’s everything I have wished for. Hoped for. It’s the same scenario that has played out in my head over and over again the last few days. The dream that he would ask me, would actually want me to go. The sign that this, us, is something. It has legs, and given the right circumstances, could go on and on.
He ends the call on the phone, his long fingers curling over it, giving it a squeeze, as if he’s not quite sure what he’s done. He turns his head to me and a half-smile slowly appears. This time his beautiful lips are twisted with something like shyness. It’s disarming to see him look so unsure and anxious, though I can’t be sure if it’s over what he just did or whether I can go or not.
The truth is, I don’t know what to say. But I know how I feel. I don’t want to say goodbye right now. And suddenly I have the power to make a change and take a risk and follow him to another land.
It’s crazy. I know it is. It’s absolutely crazy.
I shouldn’t even be considering it.
But I am.
I just don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, especially not my own.
“So,” he says finally, after a long pause. “You have your seat if you want it.”
I let out a small laugh, shaking my head. “I’m just thinking about how crazy this is. This is crazy, right?”
“Aye,” he says with a single, determined nod. “It definitely isn’t normal. But…why not?”
“Other than the fact that my work might not let me?”
He smiles tightly. “They might, though. Make a case.”
I grumble to myself, thinking about what Lucy will say. Then again, Candace would gladly take over my position. She has probably been lying in wait for this kind of opportunity. “Shit, if they let me take my entire vacation, there’s a chance I won’t have a job when I come back. I would be so easily replaced.”
He purses his lips, frowning as he studies me. “You’ll only be replaced if you let it happen.”
And how hard will I fight when I return? I hate my job. I hated being shown what I could really do with my life and then having it snatched away. I hated that I wasn’t taken seriously, that I was told who I could be and it was nowhere near who I wanted to be.
Fuck. If I came back here and my job was hanging by a thread…it’s hard to say how far I’d be willing to go to keep it stitched together.
“We’ll only have maybe three weeks together,” I tell him.
He blinks slowly in agreement. “But they would be a good three weeks.”
Good? That would be the understatement of the year. Three more weeks of continuing to have the best sex of my life with a larger than life man I’ve become utterly, desperately obsessed with? They could be the best three weeks of my entire life.
I exhale, trying to expel the tightness in my chest. “But what about you? What about rugby? Won’t I get in the way?”
“No, love, you could never get in the way. If anything, it might get in the way of you. In having you all to myself, day in and day out, with nowhere to go but the bedroom. Or, you know, anywhere else.”
“I just don’t want to mess up your life, even if it’s only for a few weeks,” I say feebly.
He twists his broad frame in the seat and puts his hand on my cheek, turning my attention to him. Thankfully the traffic is at a standstill.
“I want you,” he says with a gruff tenderness. “I want more of you. And I don’t care how I get it.”
I search his eyes, greener now than they have ever been. They’re bright and burning, and I know he wants me. I can feel it in my bones, and the thrill is like a million bombs going off at once. How did this even happen? I’m absolutely spellbound by him.
I clear my throat, but even so my words are quiet. “You have me.”
His mouth twitches up, eyes squinting. “Not yet.”
We drive the rest of the way in silence, but unlike the silence of before, which was pure melancholy as my brain and heart wrestled each other with the idea of saying goodbye, this silence is humming with energy. Possibility. And fear.
When I drop him off at his apartment, the fear is so great that it’s got a chokehold on me. I’m glued to the car seat. He grabs Emily from the backseat, setting the crate on the curb, then comes around to me, opening the door.
“Come on,” he says. “Give me a hug.”
“What?”
He reaches in and pulls me out of the car so I’m pressed up against him, and I’m suddenly hit with this goddamn wave of terror, the fear that I might not see him again.
He wraps his arms around me, holding me in a vise of muscle, warmth, and his wonderful scent, and kisses the top of my forehead. “Just in case this is it.”
I shake my head into him. No, no. This can’t be it. Not anymore.
“I’ll have to talk to my mom too,” I mumble into him, my fingers clawing at his t-shirt. “I don’t like the idea of leaving her for three weeks.”
“I know,” he says.
I raise my head and stare up at him. “If my brothers promise to come by and check on her more often, I think it will be okay. But I don’t think I can talk to my boss until the morning. If she says yes, I’ll have to be ready to go right away. You said the flight is at three o’clock?”
“That it is.”
I’m blinking back tears. “I’m going to plead my case. I’m going to do what I can.”