“Fuck that,” he says. “A happy potter’s better for this world than a miserable surgeon.”
Warmth spills across the bridge of my nose. “I’m not a potter, Wyn. This isn’t something I’m making money on.”
“Maybe not. And it doesn’t ever have to be, if you don’t want that,” he says. “But that’s the point. Your job doesn’t have to be your identity. It can just be a place you go, that doesn’t define you or make you miserable. You deserve to be happy, Harriet.” He brushes a strand of hair away from the curve of my jaw. “Everything’s better when you’re happy.”
“For me,” I say.
“For me,” he says, vehement. “For Cleo and Sabrina and Parth and Kimmy, and your parents. For anyone who cares about you. The world’s always going to need surgeons, but it’s going to need bowls too. Forget what you think anyone else wants. What do you want?”
I try to laugh. The back of my nose stings too badly to let out a full-blown snort. “Can’t you just tell me what to do?”
His arms close around me. I burrow into his chest, breathe him in, and feel my body calm. “What if . . .” I brace myself, grab hold of every last scrap of courage, and frankly, it’s not all that much. I pull back enough to look up into his face, my voice whittling down to filament. “What if I came to Montana?”
His gaze drops, his lashes splaying across his cheeks. “Harriet,” he says, so thickly, like my name hurts to say, and my own heart flutters painfully. Because I know him.
I know what an apology sounds like in Wyn Connor’s voice.
His eyes rise, the green of them mossy and warm. The heaviness that presses into my chest threatens to crack my ribs, puncture my heart. My eyes fill up, but somehow, I find the strength to whisper, “Why not?”
“Because you can’t keep doing what other people want,” he says, voice gravelly. “You can’t follow me, like I followed you. I won’t be enough.”
“But I love you,” I choke out.
“I love you too,” he croaks, his hands moving restlessly over me. “I love you so much.” He kisses a damp spot on my cheek, then lets our foreheads lean together. “But you can’t follow me. I did that, and it tore us up, Harriet. I can’t let you build your life around me. It would break us all over again, and I can’t. You have to figure out what you really want.”
My heart feels like it’s being stretched on a medieval rack, pulling apart bit by bit. “What if all I really want is you?”
“Right now,” he murmurs. “What about later? When you wake up and realize I’ve let you give everything up for me. I can’t do that.”
Those months of watching him drown, thrash against a life that didn’t fit him, surge back to the forefront of my mind. He’d built his life around me, and it almost crushed us. Starved our love until it was unrecognizable.
I loop my arms around his neck and breathe him in, one last sip to tide me over for years to come. “I don’t want to keep feeling like this.”
“It’ll get easier,” he promises hoarsely, his hand brushing my hair behind my ear. “Someday you’ll hardly remember this.”
The thought is searing. I don’t want that. I want any universe but that one. All the rest, where it’s him and me, scattered across time and space, finding our way to each other again and again, the one constant, the only essential.
I can’t bear to let him go yet. But it’s like he said.
We’re out of time.
“We should get back,” I whisper.
Wyn lifts his chin toward the vase, asks damply, “Should we scrap it?”
I shake my head. “Maybe they can ship it once it’s been fired.”
“You really want it?” he says.
I study it in all its wavy, wonky glory, my rib cage so tight I can’t get a good breath, a firm beat of my heart. “Desperately.”
35
REAL LIFE
Saturday
AS SOON AS we step into the house, I know something’s wrong. It’s too quiet, still. Wyn and I make our way to the kitchen without seeing or hearing anyone.
“Where do you think they are?” he asks, checking the time over the stove. “They should be back by now.”
“I’ll see if Kimmy and Cleo are in the guesthouse,” I say. “You want to see if Parth and Sabrina are upstairs?”
Wyn nods, and I let myself out onto the patio, heading through the gate at the side.
There’s no sign of life in the guesthouse, but I knock on the door anyway. Where is everyone? I type into the group text as I make my way back to the patio. On a whim, I go to the top of the stairs down to the shore.
Parth sits on the rocks below, sun gleaming off his dark hair and wind rippling through his jacket. I pick my way down, calling his name as I go. He glances over his shoulder at me, then goes back to staring out at the water.
“Where’s Sabrina?” I ask.
A shrug in response. It triggers a sinking sensation in my gut. I lower myself onto the rock beside him, stretching my clay-streaked legs out toward the water. “For what it’s worth,” I say, “Wyn and I, we’re really sorry we didn’t tell you.”
He looks up. “You should’ve. But I should’ve come straight to you when I saw Wyn’s text too.”
I follow his gaze out to a white boat drifting toward one of the small islands off the coast. “I hope eventually you can forgive us.”
His gaze flickers to me. “Forgive you? Harriet, you’re already forgiven. You’re like a sister to me, you know that? I’ll always forgive you. You’re family.”
My heart pangs. “I thought being family just meant you have limitless time to hold grudges.”
Parth scoffs and tucks an arm over my shoulders. “Maybe for some people. Not for us.”
“If you’re not out here contemplating how we’ve failed you,” I say, “then why all the forlorn gazing into the sea?”
He smiles, but it fades fast. “Sabrina and I got into a fight. She walked out.”
“Oh my god, Parth. I’m so sorry. This is my fault,” I say. “I’ll call her and—”
His arm slides clear of me, and he angles toward me. “It’s not,” he says. “Honestly, a part of me has been waiting for her to back out ever since we got engaged. I mean, she only agreed to get married because her world was falling apart. No matter what she said, I knew she wanted an anchor. And a part of me always expected her to run. Last night we argued, and she went downstairs to cool down, and when I woke up she was gone. Hasn’t answered her phone all day.”
“She’s scared, Parth,” I say.
He scoffs. “We’re talking about Sabrina. She isn’t scared of anything.”
I puzzle for a minute over how to explain it. “You know what you just said to me? That we’re family?”
He nods.
“Well, for you and Cleo and Wyn and Kimmy, that means one thing,” I say. “For Sabrina and me, it’s different. In our families, there was no coming back from fights. Her dad would rather divorce than apologize, and in my house, arguments always ended with everyone leaving. Things never got resolved; they calloused over.”