Page 104 of Cava with My Colleague

“Jade, listen to me.” He takes my hands. “I chose this. I chose you. I don’t care where we live as long as we’re together. Madrid, Austin, anywhere. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” I whisper. “I don’t want you to resent me five years from now because you gave up everything and I gave up nothing.”

“You’re giving me your heart. That’s not nothing.”

“It’s not the same.”

We’re quiet for a moment. Izan sighs heavily, his head on my lap.

“I wish I could quit,” I mutter.

Carlos blinks, then reaches across to push a strand of my hair back behind my ear. “Oh cariño. You could.”

“What?”

“I could take care of us, Jade. But you love your job. This is so important to you. I couldn’t ask you to quit for me.”

“I love you more.”

His eyes soften, but he shakes his head. “No. I won’t let you give up your career for me. Not when you’ve worked so hard for it.”

“Then what do we do?”

He’s quiet for a long moment, thinking. Then: “What if we go to Austin? Work your notice period properly. Help them find your replacement. But while you’re there, you look for positions in Europe. Spain, Portugal, Italy—anywhere you want to be. Something that would let you do the work you love but be based here.”

“That could take months. Maybe longer.”

“Then it takes months.”

“But we’d be apart.”

“Not entirely. I’ll split my time. I’d visit. You’d visit. We’d make it work.” He cups my face. “Jade, I’m not asking you to sacrifice your career. I’m asking you to trust that we can figure this out together, even if it takes time.”

I want to argue. I want to say it’s not fair, it’s too hard, we just found each other and now we have to be apart.

But he’s right. I do love my job. And giving it up entirely, depending on him financially—that’s not who I am. That’s not who I want to be.

“It’ll take time to find a job that doesn’t break my non-compete clause. And I’ll be very busy trying to find a new job and then training a replacement. I might have to give three months’ notice? Maybe longer? That’s almost a year, Carlos. Plus we’d have to figure out how to get you legally in the US, which is . . .”

“I know.”

“And you’d wait?”

“I’d wait forever if I had to. But I don’t think it will take that long.” He smiles slightly. “You’re very good at your job. Someone will want to hire you.”

Despite everything, I laugh. “You have a lot of faith in me.”

“I do. More than you have in yourself, apparently.”

I lean into him, let him hold me while my mind races. Austin for six months, maybe more. Carlos and me living there temporarily until I can find a job I love as much as this.

It’s not the plan we made. It’s messy and uncertain and exactly the kind of situation I would have run from a year ago.

But I’m not running.

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay?”