Tate forced her feet backwards, and Linc’s hand dropped from her neck. “I’m...” Sad? Gutted? Emotionally whipped? “I’m okay.”
Linc frowned at her. “Really? Because I’m feeling like someone used me as a floor rag.”
He lifted a hand to her face and ran his thumb under her eyes, across her cheekbone. God, she felt as if being touched by him was what she was put on this earth to do. Tate jerked her head at the thought and stepped back again, shaking her head. You’re not doing this, Tate, you’re not going down that road. Distance, dammit! Creating distance was her best coping mechanism, the way she avoided disappointment and heartbreak. And bad decisions.
Distance had served her well in the past.
“I’ve had a job offer,” Tate blurted, keeping her voice flat.
Linc’s eyebrows rose and a muscle jumped in his cheek. His hand fell to his side. “Really? Where?”
“I don’t know too much about it except that it’s a US-based travel program, which will be a change.”
“What about Ellie? How are you going to manage her and the job?”
Linc threw up his hands in frustration when she didn’t respond. He correctly interpreted her silence. “Oh, come on, Tate! You can’t seriously be thinking about giving her up. She belongs with you, any fool can see that—”
“How do I support her? She doesn’t come with a trust fund, Linc! I have to clothe and feed her and educate her! How do I do that? If I give up my career for her, where do I find another job where I can be with her and support her?”
“Here, at The Den,” Linc stated. It took a moment for the words to register, for the pennies to drop.
Tate frowned, not sure that she’d heard him correctly. “You’re offering me the nanny job?”
“I trust you with Shaw. I like having you in my house, and I’d pay you well.”
She loved Shaw and Ellie, but there were so many places she still wanted to see, to share with the world. She adored her job, and he was asking her to walk away from it? “Are you completely nuts?”
“Probably. But I’m also in love with you, and I’m trying to finding a way to make you stay,” Linc said, in an annoyingly calm voice. “I thought I’d ease you into living with me...us.”
Tate placed her fist into her sternum, utterly shell-shocked by his prosaic announcement. Linc just held her eyes, his hands in his pockets, waiting for her reaction.
Tate lifted her fist to her mouth, her eyes blurring with tears. She heard his words, but she couldn’t trust them, she couldn’t allow herself to take the risk of believing him.
He couldn’t, shouldn’t love her... She wasn’t what he needed. He needed a woman who was completely and utterly focused on him and on their life at The Den; she’d always have one eye on the horizon, dreaming about another place she wanted to explore. Linc deserved a woman who gave him exactly what he needed and wanted, and while she loved him, she was terrified that he’d one day realize that he’d mistaken his need to protect her and Ellie with love.
Besides, she needed to leave, to test her theory that distance gave her perspective. Would what she felt for Linc be as strong away from him as it was with him? Somehow she thought not.
“We agreed to keep it simple, Linc. To not let it get emotional. You told me I’m not what you wanted! You want a domestic goddess, a stay-at-home mom, a compliant wife.”
“I’m pretty sure I never mentioned the word compliant,” Linc muttered. He rubbed the back of his neck, obviously frustrated.
“You told me that I deserve to be happy, and you, for some reason, make me happy.” Linc pulled his hands from his pockets and reached for her, but Tate danced out of his grip, knowing that if he touched her, she’d never leave his arms again.
She had to—she had to run, she had to put the distance she needed between them.
“Make some ties, Tate, commit to me, to us. Stop protecting yourself from life and love,” Linc said, his eyes sad but determined. “Be brave, Tate. Love me, embrace the life I’m offering you.”
Tate wished she could, but it wasn’t possible. Tate slowly shook her head. She couldn’t risk hurting him, hurting herself. No, it was better if she left now, while both their hearts were still, sort of, intact.
When she had distance from him, when she wasn’t confused by all the emotions swirling between them, she’d feel differently, she’d feel as she always had: that she was right in her belief that she was better off alone, that she didn’t need love in her life.
Tate knew how to run away; she knew what she had to do.
She’d pack up and find a hotel, which is what she should have done weeks ago when she first acquired Ellie. She’d meet with the adoption agency and the Goldbergs and see if Kari was right, if being with them would be the right choice for Ellie. If they could give her a good life, no, a wonderful life, she’d hand over custody, hoping that the Goldbergs would allow her to have contact with Ellie going forward.
She would take the new job she’d been offered, and life would return to a new type of normal.
Tate closed her eyes against the wave of pain at the thought of not having Ellie or Linc or Shaw in her life, but she knew it would pass, that each day would get better. Keeping it simple, being on her own, was the way she had to live.
It had worked for ten years; it would work again.
She had to do this. She had to tell him.
Linc beat her to it. He lifted a hand, his eyes steel gray. “Don’t bother saying anything, I can see the answer in your eyes. You’re going to run, because that’s what you Harper girls do.”
“It’s for the best, Linc.”
“BS! Instead of staying, talking it out, working it out, you’re running.” Linc linked his hands behind his head, the cords in his neck tight with frustration. “You kept telling me you were different from Kari, Tate.”
“I am.”
Linc shook his head and flashed her a cold smile. “Are you? You took what I offered, and when it became a little uncomfortable, a little heated, you decide to walk, run, whatever the hell you Harpers call this.”
He’s trying to hurt you, wanting and needing to lash out, Tate told herself, but his words still whipped her with the ferocity of an Arctic storm.
“It’s not like that, Linc.” she said, silently begging him to believe her.
“Funny, it feels exactly the same.” Linc strode over to the door. He placed his hand on the door frame and gripped it tight. “Can you be gone by the time Shaw comes home from pre-K? I don’t want him upset any more than he needs to be.”
She didn’t want it to end like this. “Linc—”
Linc spun around, and his lightning-filled eyes pinned her to the spot. “All I’ve ever wanted, Tate, was someone to stay. No matter how hard it got, just to stand next to me. And, because I’m such a flippin’ fool, I thought that person might be you.”
Tate, her heart cracking, watched him walk through the doorway, heard the clatter of Linc’s feet on the stairs and then, a minute later, the heavy, hard thud of the front door slamming closed.
Tate sobbed as she watched his hunched figure walk down the sidewalk away from the house, walking out of her life.
Just as she’d told him to.
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