I knew damn well I wasn’t going to sleep. I’d be up all night worrying about it, running the past few hours through my mind over and over again—running the past months through my mind whether I wanted to or not.

Why did love hurt so much?

Without another word I stood up and watched him get up and brush sand off his pants. Slowly, together but apart, we walked back to the house. He paused to let me enter first and I glanced up into his eyes. Not mirrors. Not shutters. They were pools of black emptiness, suffering, hurt.

I’d done that to him. I fought for another breath, moved through the door up the stairs and into my room without stopping. We never spoke another word to each other. Not even good night.

When I closed my door and flipped off the lights, in the blackness, my back up against the wall, I slid down to sit on the ground and for hours, long after I had any feeling left in my legs and butt, I sat and stared. And thought.

And felt. And ached.

And then went numb.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Adam

I was up all night. I didn’t even try to sleep. Part of it was spent pacing in my office, another part on my laptop in bed—despite Emilia’s efforts to break me of that habit. At one point I found myself typing out exactly what I wanted to say to her. Despite the emotionally painful confrontation on the beach the night before, there were plenty of logical facts and reasons for deciding on how to proceed. I agonized over them. We were both burying ourselves under mounds of grief and guilt and pretending we could make it go away without having to deal with it.

We were both good at doing that.

I didn’t want my words to be delivered from some impersonal email so I instead memorized the main points of what I wanted to get across and called it even. At six a.m. I changed into my shorts and running shoes and went down to work out in the exercise room.

I’d already run ten kilometers on the treadmill and was getting a drink before going back to do some weights when Emilia came down for breakfast. She was fully dressed in jeans and T-shirt, a bandana tied around her head. And she was pale, drawn, with dark circles under her eyes.

She’d slept about as well as I had, apparently.

I was refilling my water bottle when she came to stand beside me at the fridge. I took a deep breath and said, “Good morning.”

A faint smile ghosted her lips before vanishing. “Hey.”

“I’d ask how you’re feeling but… well, I think I already know.”

She looked into my eyes then. “Yeah. Best not to ask that.”

I screwed the top back on my water bottle and turned from her when her hand darted out to stop me. “Can we talk now? Please?”

I froze and turned back to her, my insides constricting. I hadn’t wanted to do this now. I’d wanted to wait a little while, until lunch maybe, or the afternoon. Because I knew exactly what I wanted to say to her but I wasn’t ready for how she was going to take it. I’d need a few more hours to get the courage up for breaking her heart.

Despite that thought, I said, “Sure.”

I moved to the kitchen table and sat down and she sank into a chair across from me. I set my water bottle aside.

“That was a pretty gigantic can of worms we opened last night,” she began.

I fell back against my seat, watching her carefully. “Yes.”

She stared at her laced her hands on the table in front of her. “And I’ve been up all night trying to think my way through it. I think between the two of us, there’s a lot of brainpower here, and I know there has to be a way through this for us.”

I envied her that hope. Because I just didn’t feel it. I studied her delicate, feminine features, the way she fidgeted with the woodwork on the table, tracing the pattern with her finger, the way she bounced one knee up and down.

The love. That pure, strong, unquestionable emotion. It was there, like always, but dampened, muted. Drowned out by a howling ocean of pain.

Before I let her travel any further down that road of hope, I knew I had to get this out quickly, like the proverbial ripping off a bandage. I swallowed. “Emilia…”

Her eyes shot to mine and I saw the fear there. She knew and she was trying to avoid the inevitable.

She shook where she sat. “Please don’t say it…” she murmured.

I said it anyway—could barely get it out, but I said it. “We need to be apart for a while.”

She inhaled and the noise that came from the back of her throat sounded like a sob. She sat back as if I’d slapped her. She took in another long breath, as if it might be her last and shook her head. Her fist closed on the tabletop and her features flushed.