When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars #9) - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,91
could.
The roller-coaster ride had reached its station. This time he was the one who’d set a deadline instead of her. Next week. Six days from now. Breaking up would tear him apart, but he’d move on. He always did.
* * *
He had to stop at her apartment the next morning to pick up his laptop. She answered the door. He’d seen her fresh-out-of-bed look—sexy, with tousled hair and a couple of pillow creases on her cheek. This wasn’t it. She looked like hell: dark shadows cratered under her eyes, pasty skin, hair hanging loose on one side and clumping on the other. And she was dressed all wrong. A pink T-shirt, pink sweatpants. What the hell? She dressed in black and white. Sometimes classic gray. Maybe a touch of deep purple now and then. He was the one who wore pink.
Her face softened with tenderness, and then the shutters went down. “Come in,” she said with a cool formality that made him wary.
Unlike the way the place had looked yesterday, it was now orderly—boxes unpacked, suitcases tucked away. She’d either put it to rights last night when she should have been sleeping or early this morning when she should have been sleeping. He didn’t like it. Didn’t like the neat apartment or the way she looked. “I need to get my laptop,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Bad night.”
“I can see. Got any coffee?”
She tilted her head toward the kitchen, which was as tidy as the rest of the place. He grabbed a souvenir mug of the Sydney Opera House from the shelf, filled it, and took a sip while she stood in the doorway watching him.
The coffee was undrinkable. She’d forgotten something when she made it. Something important like coffee. He leaned his hips against the counter. “I take it sitzprobe didn’t go well last night. Do you want to talk about it?”
“I can’t see you anymore.”
It took a moment for her words to register, and when they did, something ripped open inside him. He slammed his mug on the counter, its undrinkable contents splashing over the rim onto his hand. “And here we go again.”
“It has to be over, Thad,” she pleaded. “It’s been wonderful. More than wonderful. But we’re breaking up now.”
He hardened his heart against the glint of tears in her eyes. “Uh-huh.”
“I can’t do this any longer. You’re too big a threat to me.”
That made him furious. “Threat?”
She waved her hand in a jerky, arbitrary motion. “I keep setting these deadlines and rolling right past them because I don’t want it to be over.”
“Yeah, you do have a thing for deadlines,” he said, as coldly as he could.
She tugged on the bottom of her pink T-shirt. “This one has expired.”
He’d had enough. “Great. I’ll see you around.” He stalked out of the kitchen and grabbed his laptop.
“The thing you have to know,” she said to his back, “is that I’ve fallen in love with you.”
That stopped him cold. As he turned, he saw a whole universe of emotions smeared all over her face. Helplessness, pain, resolution. “Jesus, Olivia, you’re not in love with me. You’re— We’re . . .” He stammered for the right word. “We’re teammates. We don’t love each other. We have goals. Ambitions. We think the same. We’re teammates, that’s all.”
She pressed her fingers to her throat as if she were choking. “It won’t do, Thad. Some part of me wants to give up everything for you. To refocus my life. Put music in second place. Give up my song! I can’t do that.”
“Nobody’s asking you to.”
“But I can feel it. Wanting to be in your world—to cut out on a rehearsal early to give us more time together. To trim my schedule so I can watch you play ball. To stop getting on planes. To cook dinner for you!”
“Goddammit, you can’t cook!”
A tear hung on her bottom lashes but refused to fall. “Don’t you see? I want to prioritize you over my career, just like I did with Adam. It’s a pattern. And that pattern is going to destroy who I am. What I live for!”
“You and your goddamn drama.” The words came spewing out, propelled by fear, by pain. “You create drama. You live for it. And I’ve had enough of it.”
He’d meant to hurt her, but what he’d just said wasn’t true. She didn’t love the drama that had been foisted on her any more than he did. He tried to think of a way to tell her that. To take