He sat there with his mouth hanging open. Before he could formulate a response, she went on.
“What about you?”
“What? What about me?”
“You could quit. Find another job. You said Janine likes you. I’m sure she’d be willing to give you a good reference if you’re leaving willingly and not getting fired.”
His mouth hung open again, this time in astonishment. Yeah, technically him quitting would solve the problem, too, but what would he do then? “It’s not that easy to just find another job, Hannah.” He managed to keep his voice low and even, despite the fact that she was almost yelling, and part of him wanted to yell back.
“Well, you’ve got some time, right? I mean, there’s not a conflict until the summer internship starts, which isn’t until the end of May. That gives you a couple of months.”
“Hannah, I have friends who started applying before graduation in December, guys with good grades and good resumes, who still haven’t found anything. They’re working as waiters or doing construction in the summer and saving as much as they can for the fall and winter when nothing’s going. I can’t just quit my job. That would be stupid.”
She paused, looking around the room before settling her gaze on him again and crossing her arms. “So I should alter the course of my career for you at your say so, but you won’t even consider doing the same for me?” She huffed out a laugh and shook her head, turning her face away again.
He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated that she would think he could just quit and find a new job like that. She was still in school, she didn’t understand the job market, or how much he needed a stable job. Yeah, he didn’t care that much about the job itself, but it had good benefits, and it meant he could save up enough money to go to the coast for a couple of weeks a year. And he could pick whenever the surf was best. Hell, he could even go back to Westport in September for the annual surfing competition like he used to do in high school. He hadn’t been in years because he always had games that weekend. No way could he compete even at the amateur level this year. He was way too out of practice—the baby waves in the summer that he had access to when he went to visit his parents were nowhere near enough to keep his skill level at even amateur competition level. But maybe next year. Just for fun.
He shook his head. “Will you at least think about it?”
Her green eyes were hard when she skewered him with her gaze again. “Will you?”
“Hannah, be reasonable.”
“Don’t patronize me, Matt. I am being reasonable. You’re the one who’s not. You have dreams you’re too scared to go after, content with your safe little job because it gives you a paycheck, and now’s the time to go after what you want. I’m going after what I want, because I have the guts to do it. But if you won’t even consider—” She held up a hand to hold him off when he opened his mouth to interrupt. “I’m not saying you should definitely do it or not, but the fact that you aren’t even open to discussing it, and you expect me to just turn down something that I want—that I’ve worked hard for, that I’ve earned—without batting an eye, can only mean that you’re not as invested in this relationship as I thought. I was right all along.”
He stood, unable to sit through what she seemed to be trying to say. “What? Right about what all along?”
She looked down, rubbing her hands up and down her arms like she was cold.
“Hannah. What do you think you were right about all along?” Matt’s voice came out harsher than he intended, but he needed her to say it, spell it out for him, because he needed to know if the dread solidifying in his gut was right. “Spit it out.”
Her face twisted in anger and pain, her eyes a blaze of green fire, stark in her pale, anguished face. “You’ve never felt as strongly about me as I’ve felt about you.” She spit the words, each one piercing him like a shard of glass, embedded so deep inside him that he didn’t know if they’d ever come out. “Never. Not that summer three years ago and not now.”
His breath left him in a whoosh, like he’d just been punched in the gut and had the wind knocked out of him. “How can you say that?” He still couldn’t breathe, the pain from her face and her words crushing his lungs. He sucked in a breath, trying to force air into his chest. “How can you say that?” His voice came out louder this time. “I fucking love you, Hannah. Jesus, how can you not see that?”
One corner of her mouth twisted in an ugly travesty of a smile, and her eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “No you don’t, Matt. Maybe you think you do, but you wouldn’t ask this of me if you loved me. You would talk with me like an adult, like an equal, not come in here with ultimatums, telling me to choose my dreams or you. You, who for all I know will just stop talking to me again if you decide we shouldn’t be together anymore.”
“That’s not fair, Hannah. I apologized for that, and you said that you forgave me.”
“You did apologize, and I did forgive you, but
