Page 47 of Lessons in Forgiving
This was becoming a more frequent problem: managing our time together.
After NCAA championship meant before NCAA championship. Others might’ve given themselves a few months off after the high season of college soccer, but not Henry. To him, losing in the quarter final only meant more training, more workouts, more strategy meetings.
Less of seeing his girlfriend.
Henry’s priorities had always been crystal clear. I didn’t think I had ever met a person as sure of the things they’d wanted and as determined to make them happen. And I’d never been under the impression a girl would get between that—I didn’t want to get between that.
Still. This was hard. Trying to plan my days around him when they were almost equally as full as his was… exhausting.
After selling another one of my articles to an external outlet, Eddie hadn’t hesitated to drown me in more work, hoping whatever I’d make out of it would draw more attention to HBU and thePost.
I’d gotten a month from him for his last assignment, a cover story on college sports and the impact of it—which meant deeper research, more detailed interviews and a well-developed story that might not have been expected in a weekly assignment. This was big and demanded the time necessary to make it that.
I wished my priorities were as clear as Henry’s. But I took a deep breath, and when I watched him get up, walk around the table to my side with a pout, I asked in defeat, “Where’s the game? Could I join?”
His eyes widened like he hadn’t expected the suggestion. Like I wasn’t only here now—after two weeks in which we’d barely had five minutes a day (when he’d get his morning coffee at Daisy’s)— because I’d cancelled karaoke night with the girls.
Like compromising on my plans hadn’t become a key part of this relationship.
Henry drew me off the chair, into his chest, hands interlacing. “Would you?” And it almost sounded like he was holding his breath, keeping the grin threatening to spread across his lips at bay. “I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
And I couldn’t help it. Seeing the corner of his lip tilt into a devious smile, the way his fingers trailed up my arm only to disappear in my hair. I’d made the decision right then and there. I’d still have enough time to write the article, anyway.
“How?” I asked, arms crossing behind his neck. I barely noticed the way he led me backward, presumably to his room.
He snickered, the sound making its way straight into the pit of my stomach, where it uncurled and wreaked havoc. Tinting my cheeks, turning my legs to jelly. “A house in the Hamptons?” he joked. I think.
I hummed as if considering, then shook my head with a smile. “Seems unlikely. What else do you have to offer me besides a house in the Hamptons, Henry?”
He rolled his eyes when he sat back on his bed, and I had about three seconds before he pulled me onto his lap, my legs on either side of him, leveling our eyes. “We had one. My parents sold it, though.”
He mentioned his parents, and it didn’t seem like he cared much about what had happened to them at all. Like they werestill sitting somewhere in a penthouse on the Upper East Side or a big-shot office on Wall Street. Not like they were buried six feet below ground.
He didn’t do that much—mention them. And whenever he did, I still wasn’t quite sure how to react to his nonchalance. If I should treat them like any other subject, too, or tell him how sorry I was for his loss.
“Why?” I asked today. “Why’d they sell it?”
Henry shrugged. “Doesn’t matter,” he said, and apparently moved on. His hands trailed the contour of my body above his, settled on my waist. He pressed a single kiss to my neck, the touch barely a peck, and looked up at me. “Let’s focus on what you want from me, Paula. Anything.”
And I thought he could really mean that.
Anything.
Anything but time he can’t compromise on.
CHAPTER 20
NOW
Eddie had called me to his office about an hour ago. In that way that wasn’t asking, but demanding, and usually meant something serious was going on.
That suspicion checked out when I got there, and his door was closed. Which hadn’t even been the case when he’d told me, about a year ago, that he couldn’t give me another article until the mess I’d created had been dealt with—or perhaps had blown over.
The fact that Henry was propped against the wall beside it hardly made the scenario better.
“Didn’t know you’d be here,” I admitted by way of greeting, eyes still on the closed door. His gaze followed.
“Is that a good or a bad thing?”
