The truth is, I don’t know what to say. But I know how I feel. I don’t want to say goodbye right now. And suddenly I have the power to make a change and take a risk and follow him to another land.

It’s crazy. I know it is. It’s absolutely crazy.

I shouldn’t even be considering it.

But I am.

I just don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, especially not my own.

“So,” he says finally, after a long pause. “You have your seat if you want it.”

I let out a small laugh, shaking my head. “I’m just thinking about how crazy this is. This is crazy, right?”

“Aye,” he says with a single, determined nod. “It definitely isn’t normal. But…why not?”

“Other than the fact that my work might not let me?”

He smiles tightly. “They might, though. Make a case.”

I grumble to myself, thinking about what Lucy will say. Then again, Candace would gladly take over my position. She has probably been lying in wait for this kind of opportunity. “Shit, if they let me take my entire vacation, there’s a chance I won’t have a job when I come back. I would be so easily replaced.”

He purses his lips, frowning as he studies me. “You’ll only be replaced if you let it happen.”

And how hard will I fight when I return? I hate my job. I hated being shown what I could really do with my life and then having it snatched away. I hated that I wasn’t taken seriously, that I was told who I could be and it was nowhere near who I wanted to be.

Fuck. If I came back here and my job was hanging by a thread…it’s hard to say how far I’d be willing to go to keep it stitched together.

“We’ll only have maybe three weeks together,” I tell him.

He blinks slowly in agreement. “But they would be a good three weeks.”

Good? That would be the understatement of the year. Three more weeks of continuing to have the best sex of my life with a larger than life man I’ve become utterly, desperately obsessed with? They could be the best three weeks of my entire life.

I exhale, trying to expel the tightness in my chest. “But what about you? What about rugby? Won’t I get in the way?”

“No, love, you could never get in the way. If anything, it might get in the way of you. In having you all to myself, day in and day out, with nowhere to go but the bedroom. Or, you know, anywhere else.”

“I just don’t want to mess up your life, even if it’s only for a few weeks,” I say feebly.

He twists his broad frame in the seat and puts his hand on my cheek, turning my attention to him. Thankfully the traffic is at a standstill.

“I want you,” he says with a gruff tenderness. “I want more of you. And I don’t care how I get it.”

I search his eyes, greener now than they have ever been. They’re bright and burning, and I know he wants me. I can feel it in my bones, and the thrill is like a million bombs going off at once. How did this even happen? I’m absolutely spellbound by him.

I clear my throat, but even so my words are quiet. “You have me.”

His mouth twitches up, eyes squinting. “Not yet.”

We drive the rest of the way in silence, but unlike the silence of before, which was pure melancholy as my brain and heart wrestled each other with the idea of saying goodbye, this silence is humming with energy. Possibility. And fear.

When I drop him off at his apartment, the fear is so great that it’s got a chokehold on me. I’m glued to the car seat. He grabs Emily from the backseat, setting the crate on the curb, then comes around to me, opening the door.

“Come on,” he says. “Give me a hug.”

“What?”

He reaches in and pulls me out of the car so I’m pressed up against him, and I’m suddenly hit with this goddamn wave of terror, the fear that I might not see him again.

He wraps his arms around me, holding me in a vise of muscle, warmth, and his wonderful scent, and kisses the top of my forehead. “Just in case this is it.”

I shake my head into him. No, no. This can’t be it. Not anymore.

“I’ll have to talk to my mom too,” I mumble into him, my fingers clawing at his t-shirt. “I don’t like the idea of leaving her for three weeks.”

“I know,” he says.

I raise my head and stare up at him. “If my brothers promise to come by and check on her more often, I think it will be okay. But I don’t think I can talk to my boss until the morning. If she says yes, I’ll have to be ready to go right away. You said the flight is at three o’clock?”

“That it is.”

I’m blinking back tears. “I’m going to plead my case. I’m going to do what I can.”

“I know you will,” he says. “I have faith in you.”

“So then, this isn’t it,” I tell him. “This can’t be it.”

He closes his eyes and leans in to plant a terribly soft kiss on my lips. It makes me want to weep. My hands grab him tighter. Something inside me is shaking my foundation.

“Go home,” he whispers. “Do what you can. And I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“And what if you don’t.”

He smiles sadly. “Then at least I had hope.”

Fuck.

I don’t know how I manage to break apart from him but I do. I can barely drive back to my apartment. I’m an emotional wreck, a zombie, yet I’ve never needed to think more clearly in my whole entire life.

I don’t know what to do. I know what I want to do and what I should do, but I don’t think they are the same thing. What I really need to do is discuss it with my mother—even if my work does let me take my three weeks’ vacation completely last minute, she’s the reason I’d have trouble going.

But before I can even bring it up with her, I have to know my plan.

I immediately text Steph and Nicola. When you guys get back, can you get dropped off at my place? This is an emergency. I need to talk to you.

I ponder leaving it at that, but I’m not sure it will be enough so I add, Lachlan asked me to go to Scotland with him. Tomorrow.

They both text immediately with a lot of questions and say they’ll have the guys drop them off.

I pour myself a glass of water from the sink and drink it down in five long gulps. Then I take a half empty bottle of red wine out of the cupboard and have a few swigs straight from the bottle. After all the wine over the weekend, I’m still not tired of it. More than that, I need it. I am flipping the fuck out.

When Nicola and Steph buzz me and I let them up, I haven’t really come up with any decision. I’ve been pacing with a mind so overwhelmed that I can’t figure out anything.

“Kayla,” Steph says as they come inside. “What the hell happened on the ride over here?”

I stop pacing and look at them, flapping my hands like an anxious bird. “Okay. Okay. Well. He missed his flight. The traffic.”

“I know, we were just stuck in it,” Nicola says. “He seriously missed his flight?”

“Yes. He was able to book the next one going out, but it doesn’t leave until tomorrow. And then…and then suddenly he looked at me…”

He looked at me, and it was something I hadn’t seen before in him: hope. I could feel it in my marrow, and I knew, I knew, that something had changed for us.

“And?” Steph coaxes, sitting on the couch and folding her legs underneath her.

“And then he asked if I would go to Scotland with him. He said he’d buy me a seat on the plane.”

“So you said yes?” Nicola asks.

I shake my head. “No. Yes. Maybe? I mean…I don’t know if I can? What if work won’t let me? I’m supposed to stroll into my office tomorrow and ask if I can leave right then and not return for three weeks. And then there’s my mom. I can’t leave her for that long.”

Steph studies me. “Right. All valid. So you’re not going?”

I sigh and flop down on the couch, legs spread out, all my strength drained. “I don’t know. He booked me a seat anyway.”

“Oh my god,” Nicola says softly. “He did that?”

I swallow and nod.

“I told you he was sweet on you,” she says rather smugly.