“I’m always drunk,” she snaps back, turning her angry gaze on me. “Usually I’m drunk on you, and you like that, don’t you? I bet it feels good. But it doesn’t always feel good to me. In fact, it never does. It hurts, and it’s lonely, and sometimes I really wish I had the courage to just—to just tell you to go fuck yourself, and move on with my life—”

“Get in the car, Georgia.”

She sniffles, shaking her head. “No. I’m going back in for my coat. You don’t have to wait for me. I’m going to ask Caleb if I can ride home with him and his friends. He said he could get tickets to take me to The Nutcracker tomorrow since I didn’t get to go tonight, and you know what? I’m gonna say yes. I think I have to. I think that’s what’s best for me, and I don’t usually make decisions on that basis, but I think maybe it’s time to.”

Jealousy courses through my veins as she feeds my fears about Caleb’s interest in her. “Is that what you want?” I ask tersely.

“What I want is you,” she says tiredly, seeming to deflate a little more with each syllable. “But you know that. I’m so tired of wanting what I can’t have, Lee. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t… I don’t want to. It’s not fair.”

I could tell myself she doesn’t mean it, that she’s only saying this because she has been drinking, but there’s finality in her words. Maybe she is only saying it because she’s drunk, but it’s the truth. Even if she caved and went back on her words tomorrow, I know she means them from the bottom of her heart.

It hurts her to love me.

A better man might let her go, knowing that.

A better man might hold his tongue and watch with a clenched jaw as she turns and heads back inside the mansion in search of someone who will treat her more fairly.

Some part of me wants to be that man for her, the one who lets her go for her own good, but I’ve tailored so much around making sure she always stays.

Impermanence terrifies me. Losing Tess was more a nuisance than anything, but losing Tina was absolute agony. There was nothing I could do as she was torn from my life, leaving a void in my heart nothing else could ever fill.

She was never really mine, I just loved her like she was.

The way Georgia loves me.

I knew when I felt that searing pain, I’d never let myself feel it again.