Page 83 of Without a Clue

Surely he didn’t say . . .

“You are . . .” I breathe.

“In love with you,” he says again.

My heart is pounding.

My ears are pounding.

“And I’m telling you now . . . at the worst time . . . because I’ve been the unlucky soul knowing you were the right one at the wrong time for the past four years, and now you’re free, and I can’t let another minute pass without letting you know.”

Michael.

He never told me because of Michael?

A flipbook of memories from the past four years comes to mind, of dinners and events and coffees and conferences and meetings. Of emails and text messages and phone calls. A mix of Michael and Nash side by side in the timeline of my life, but never touching. Never overlapping. Of course, Michael was hardly in the city, and when he was, on those rare occasions when he was going to go with me to events, Nash always stepped into the corner of my periphery.

Or ended up not attending at all.

Or ended up not attending at all.

Was that . . . why?

On those mysterious days when he suddenly went from a firm yes to can’t attend, that was why?

Little . . . old . . . me?

I never thought anything about it.

To be more exact, I knew I wasn’t worthy of being thought of like that.

Correction: thought.

I thought I wasn’t worthy of being thought of like that.

I guess that’s what happens when the person you’re already with continually makes you feel like you are not enough. Why would you be special to anybody else if you can hardly measure up to the one you’re with?

Nash was and is wildly independent, and whenever he didn’t make it to something, it could be chalked up to him racing away to the wilderness.

Never once did I think there was a correlation between the times he skipped out on events and the times I brought Michael.

Nash never brought up Michael in conversation, I remember.

Ever.

It was like . . . Michael didn’t exist to him.

And all of this . . . is why.

Nash dips his head, his face overshadowed by the brim of his hat. When he looks up again, his eyes are soft. A rare moment of vulnerability.

“Look. I know it’s a terrible time. An insensitive time. But if I have to wait one more day to tell you how I feel—and worse, if I risk not telling you before something else gets in the way—I just won’t be able to live with myself. It’s just . . . the day you walked into my life, I started thinking about you. And I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind since.” His smile twists. “No matter how many trips I take out into the wilderness to try to shake you. You’re just . . . unshakable.”

I truly can’t breathe now. My breaths are coming in short spurts. “That’s why you went off-grid? Part of it . . . was me?”

His steady gaze is my answer.

“But . . . but you could’ve told me,” I say. “You could’ve said something. This wasn’t marriage with Michael.” I cringe even saying his name. Bringing him into the purity of this conversation—it’s like dragging a dirty wet rag over a white wall. “You could’ve . . .”