by V.K. Sykes
* * *
Nate stared at the doorway. Every fiber and nerve in his body urged him to get up and follow Holly, but he glued himself to the seat. He knew better than to chase after her. That would only make things worse. Cursing under his breath, he half-filled his sake cup and drained it in one swallow.
He felt like crap. His emotions were a mess. He didn’t know whether he was mad or sad or both. Frustrated, for sure, because he wasn’t used to not getting what he wanted. And he wasn’t used to a woman slamming an emotional door in his face, much less walking right out of his life.
Still, he had to admit there was hard truth in what Holly had said. As much as he didn’t want to lose her, she could be right about their chances for a permanent relationship. Maybe they were just too different and set in their ways for it to work out. So, when she’d said those things to him, he hadn’t been able to object, or come up with a single effective argument to counter her logic.
Even worse, the raw pain in her eyes had truly thrown him, rocking him with a heavy guilt. Did he have the right to put her through something that looked like it was tearing her apart?
Nice work, Carter. Now what?
Back to basics, he guessed. What he could give and what he couldn’t. While his dad had been busy teaching him how to throw a baseball and how to fight, his mother been teaching him a lot of other things. And the one he remembered at that moment from her life lessons was that a person can only ask someone else to give them something they are actually capable of giving. Holly didn’t understand that he couldn’t give her what she wanted. Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t. He’d promised her everything he had in him to give her. But it wasn’t enough.
He slapped his credit card down on top of the bill and motioned to the server. His gut felt empty, and not because he hadn’t eaten anything but a few sips of miso soup.
Get a grip, man.
If she wasn’t willing to give it a chance, that was the end of it. He’d get over it, and he’d do it by focusing hard on images of his life before he met her. Because that life had been damn good. He’d been happy—or at least he’d thought so. Hell, why wouldn’t he be happy with the kind of life he’d been able to lead? Wouldn’t almost every other guy in the world envy him?
Life before Holly was great. Life after her would be great, too.
Now he just had to keep saying that until he was sure he believed it.
Chapter Twenty-Five