“Well, maybe it’s time you thought about your own passions.”
It felt like a slap of some kind. “What?”
“Look, I know it’s hard when I’m gone. It’s hard for me, too. You think I like spending my days with a bunch of other smelly scientists and rough sailors on the freezing cold Arctic Ocean? I like spending my days with you. I like spending my nights with my wife. I like screwing my wife. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think it was vitally important. So while I’m gone, maybe you need to find that thing, too. The thing you think is important.”
“I think you’re important,” Eleanor told him. Not sure why he was saying what he was saying.
“Nor, I can’t be the only thing in your life. That is not the woman I married. You’re not this clingy weak thing. You are Eleanor Gaffney. You’re the girl who shook off her small Nebraska town, who found a way to put herself through school. You were going to rule the world. What happened to that girl?”
You married her and took her to a research facility in northern Norway. Eleanor wanted to say those things, but it sounded pathetic in her own head. Then she did the only thing she could think of, the thing they had both talked about having.
“We talked about getting pregnant this year,” she said.
Another snort. “Really? You’re pulling the baby card?”
The sound of his disbelief made her furious. “A baby is not a card. It’s supposed to be about having family. It’s what we both talked about wanting. We talked about doing it this year!”
“Are you pregnant now?”
“No,” she told him.
“Then when I get back in four months, we’ll talk about this. But I mean it, Nor, you need to find out what you want to do with yourself, with your life. Because being my wife, and hell, being the mother to our future children, isn’t enough. You need something for you.”
“I studied business! What the hell am I supposed to do with that in Trondheim? Create an ice-selling business? Oh, I know! What about a new pickled herring recipe?”
He had the audacity to smile at her. “Are you going to kiss me goodbye? I’m running late as it is.”
Eleanor shook her head as it finally settled on her. The truth. He was leaving. He was leaving, and his answer to that was she needed to find a hobby that would occupy her time while he was away.
This was going to be her life. Watching him leave and waiting for him to come back. She hadn’t known that’s what it would be when she married him. She didn’t know that going in or she would have...
You would have married him anyway. Your mother was right. You’re too stubborn for your own good.
“I don’t think you understand what I’ve been trying to tell you. If you leave me, I’m leaving you.”
Eleanor watched as his whole body tensed.
Max shook his head. “You don’t mean it.”
“Look at me, Max.” Eleanor stood in front of him, and she knew in her heart she meant every word she said. It would take all her courage to leave him, but she would do it. “I love you. Like no one I’ve ever loved before. But I can’t spend my life doing this. Watching you leave. So it might break me, but if you leave, then I’m gone.”
“I’m not going to be brought to heel by my wife,” he snapped. “I’m not your damn dog.”
“I’m not trying to do that. I’m trying to save our marriage. You think love is enough.”
“It should be,” he shouted.
“It’s not. It’s about compromise and working together and finding a solution. It’s not about you telling me the day before, Sorry, babe, I need to leave for a while, and that while is four months.”
“The funding came though from Tom yesterday. I had no control over that. Or when the ship leaves. I told you that, too.”
“Max! You’re not listening to me.”
“Eleanor, I’m hearing you loud and clear. Now you’re not listening to me. I don’t do threats. I don’t do ultimatums. I have a real opportunity to collect meaningful data that might help people really see what’s happening to our planet. I’m sorry, but that’s more important than four months of our marriage.”
She swallowed as the words penetrated her skull. “No, Max,” she said sadly. “What you mean is that it’s more important than me.”
“Nor...”
She took a step away. “Stay safe.”
“I’ll see you in four months.”
She shook her head. “No. You won’t.”
He wrapped a hand around her neck and forced her to hold still for his kiss. Not that he ever had to force her to kiss him. Kissing Max Harper was her own particular addiction.
And this might be their last kiss.
Knowing that, she clung to him. Wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him everything that she was. Everything that she ever would be.
Until finally she couldn’t take it anymore and she pulled away.
When she did, she was crying. “I love you, Max Harper.”
“I know. Which is how I know I’ll see you in four months.”
Four months later
HE HADN’T BELIEVED HER. When she said she would leave him, he just couldn’t believe she would do it. They loved each other. Sometimes almost too much. It was a scary thing to know how vulnerable you were when you loved someone that much.
Which was why he hadn’t believed her when she said she would leave him.
Except the empty house told its own story. So did the people they were renting it from.
Mrs. Harper had left months ago. Right after he left on his trip.
The only thing waiting for him was a large brown envelope with the name of an attorney’s office in the upper left corner.
He wasn’t going to open it. He wasn’t going to see what she chose to throw away. He was going to do what he needed to do, then he was going after her.
He’d come home with a sick feeling of dread in his stomach. Not because he even entertained the idea that she would leave him. He looked at his life, his work as if he was at war. Against time, against the forces of nature and the forces of mankind. He was a soldier, and their marriage was like any other military marriage. One where he would need to be deployed from time to time.
So the feeling of dread he’d felt coming home was knowing he would have to tell her that he was turning around and heading out in a few weeks. The financing for yet another extension had come through.
He’d expected more shouting, more fighting. He’d thought he could power through all of that with some mind-blowing sex that would remind her of what they had. How incendiary they could be.
He’d thought wrong.
It didn’t matter. Max stared at the brown envelope with his name on it, then dumped it in the trash, unopened.
He would fix this. He would head out to sea for just a few more weeks, finish what he needed to finish, then he would go find her. Because there was no world he could live in where they weren’t together.
Nor was angry. She was hurt. He knew that. But he also knew he could fix both those things. One more trip, then they could move forward with their life together.
Three months later
“SELENA?”