“Jesus, Corrie,” Ford said, startling at her presence. “You scared the shit out of me. Think you can give me a minute? I’m trying to change,” he said, clutching the towel around his waist to keep it from falling.
Trying to change?
“Ford, we literally spent half the day naked together. It’s nothing I haven’t seen.”
“Yeah, well, things are different now.”
She cocked back her head.
“Different now? What the actual fuck, Ford? Are you going to tell me what’s up with you? Or, I don’t know, tell me why your clothes are lying in a pile over there soaked and completely covered in mud?” She nodded her head in the direction of his clothes.
“We’re done here. I got the knife. We can pack up and leave now.”
Corrie’s jaw went slack. Not that she didn’t already suspect he’d gone there alone to investigate, but this? Excavating the tecpatl on his own in a mere matter of hours? The odds were highly unlikely that he followed the proper protocols.
“Why the hell would you do that? What were you thinking?” she demanded.
“I was thinking it’s time for us to go. Get back to our lives. Put an end to all this . . . this thievery nonsense. Now that I’ve got the knife, we can all finally go home.”
“But what about Chimalli and Yaretzi? And their child? We still need to excavate—”
“No, we don’t. The investor wants the knife, that’s it. He doesn’t care about the rest of it, so neither should we.”
“You’re joking, right?” Corrie examined Ford like he’d come down with an illness. “Ford, this is one of the greatest Aztec discoveries in decades. We can’t forget about it and leave.”
“Well, this is what the investor wants, and seeing as it’s his money and his land, sorry, but you don’t have a choice.”
“So that’s it?” she asked, watching him nonchalantly get dressed as if it were any old day, though he took care not to flash his ass to her as he pulled on his boxer briefs under the towel. As if she hadn’t already seen his goods dozens of times. But Ford was right . . . things were different now. Like everything they’d shared was of no consequence anymore.
“That’s it.”
“And what happens after we leave here?”
“I guess the investor will either sell the piece to a museum or keep it for his own private collection.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She paused, trying to settle her heart, which was about ready to pop out of her chest from pounding so hard. “I mean . . . what about us?”
Us. A word Corrie had never used when discussing relationship status with any of her partners.
Though relationship status was also a foreign term in Corrie’s vocabulary.
Ford stopped what he was doing and turned to her. Searching her face. Clearly scouring his own thoughts. Why wasn’t he saying anything? She couldn’t have been wrong about the connection they’d made. Sure, the sex was great. Fantastic, in fact. But there was so much more beneath the surface. And pain at the idea that she’d never see him again after this.
“Ford . . .” she said taking a few steps toward him, her voice soft and timid, “what happens to us once we leave here?”
He stared at her, unflinching.
“You go back to Berkeley and I go back to New Haven. That’s for the best, don’t you think?”
“No. No, I don’t think that’s for the best. Please tell me you aren’t being serious. You know there’s something more between us. I don’t know why we didn’t see it before.”
“We’d never work, Corrie. You know that. We’d end up arguing all the time,” he said as if exhausted, then resumed getting dressed.
“So what? Maybe that’s exactly why we would work. They say opposites attract.”
“But we’re not opposites. We argue because we’re both stubborn, egotistical know-it-alls—”
“Who happen to understand each other better than anyone has ever before,” she said, inching closer still and tracing her hands along his chest and collarbone. She gazed at his face, twirling her fingers along the nape of his neck and into the wet tips of his hair. Warmth spread over her body as he wrapped his hands around her waist and succumbed to their magnetic energy. Yes . . . he wanted it, too.
“What if I took a sabbatical? Moved to New England for a few months.” The words came out of her mouth without any forethought, but it felt right hearing them aloud.
A life with Ford no longer seemed an impossibility.
It seemed a necessity.
“Corrie, what are you saying? Are you saying you want to move . . . move for me? Because I thought you didn’t do relationships.”
“I don’t. Or at least I didn’t. But at least over these last twelve years, maybe that’s because deep down I always wanted you. You’re the only person who can occupy my mind, no matter how much I’ve tried to keep you out. The only person I’ve ever truly wanted to know. And the only person I’ve ever wanted to know me.”
He brought his hand to her cheek, brushing his fingertips across her warm skin, flushed from her reveal. She hadn’t intended to tell him all that. But something told her she needed him to know.
“I . . .” he started, staring into her eyes. “I want those things too . . .”
Corrie’s heart warmed, soaring with elation. She’d finally opened her heart to someone else and they’d reciprocated.
“But,” he continued, sending a sinking knot into her stomach, “we can’t be together. I’m not the man you think I am. You deserve better.”
He pulled away from her, leaving an emptiness in her arms.
“That’s not true,” she said. “Ford, I know you. The real you.”
“I wish that were true.”
“Then tell me.”
“Corrie, please don’t make this any harder than it already is,” he said, his voice exasperated.
“Harder? Ford, you’re literally breaking my heart right now,” she said, her voice shaking. “Why are you doing this? Why are you pushing me away when a few hours ago you were pulling me closer? What happened between then and now?”
“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. At the airport on our way back to the US.”
“The airport?” She cocked back her head and stared at him incredulously. “Ford, no. Whatever it is, I want to know now. There’s no reason this has to wait.”
“Yes, there is. Because once I tell you, you’re never going to want to speak to me or see me again.”
“So instead you’re going to leave me to fret about it all night? How can that be better?”
“It just is.”
“But how?”
“Corrie, let it go.”
“No, Ford, I can’t let it go. I have to know now because . . . because . . . because I’m in love with you!” she blurted out.
Silence fell over the tent as they both froze. He then hung his head and spoke. “Please don’t say that.”
A lump formed in Corrie’s throat. Thirty-five years of her life, and the first time she tells someone other than a family member that she loves them, the response is please don’t say that? So that was what it felt like when men told her they loved her and she didn’t reciprocate.