She regards me with a look that resembles pity. “It’s been an emotional couple of days, Ben. It’s not fair of me to let you make this kind of decision right now.” She presses her lips to my cheek and then turns for the front door. I follow her out, determined not to let her change her mind like this.

When she reaches the cab, she faces me with a steadfast look. “I would never forgive myself if I didn’t encourage you to follow your dreams like you encouraged me to follow mine. Please don’t ask me to be the reason you give them up. It isn’t fair.”

I can feel the desperate appeal in her words, and it forces all of my words back down my throat. She wraps her arms around me, pressing her face against my neck. I hold her tight, hoping if she feels how much I need her to stay with me that she’ll change her mind. But she doesn’t. She releases me and opens the door to the cab.

I’ve never wanted to use physical force on a girl before, but I want to push her to the ground and hold her there until the cab drives away.

“I’ll come here next year,” she says. “I want to meet your nephew. We’ll meet at the restaurant again, okay? Same time, same place?”

What?

Did we even experience the same past eight hours?

Did she fall down the stairs and hit her head?

No, I’m not agreeing to this. She’s crazy if she thinks I’m just going to give her a high five and tell her I’ll see her in a year. I shake my head adamantly and close the door to the cab, refusing to let her climb inside.

“No, Fallon. You can’t just agree to love me, and then take it back because you think it’s not what’s best for me. That’s not how this works.”

She’s startled by my words. I think she expected me to let her go without a fight, but she’s not the kind of girl you choose your battles for. She’s the kind of girl you fight to the death for.

She leans against the cab and crosses her arms over her chest. Her eyes are focused on the ground, but mine are focused on her.

“Ben,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “You don’t need to be in New York. You need to be here. I’ll just be a distraction, and you’ll never finish your book. It’s only three more years. If we’re meant to be together, three years is nothing.”

I laugh, but my laugh is short and humorless. “Meant to be together? Are you listening to yourself? This isn’t one of your fairy tales, Fallon. This is real life, and in the real world you have to bust your ass for the happy ever after!” I grip the nape of my neck and take a step away from her, trying to collect my frustration and bottle it back up, but it’s pouring out of me every time I think about how she can so easily climb into this cab, knowing she won’t see me for an entire year. “When you find love, you take it. You grab it with both hands and you do everything in your power not to let it go. You can’t just walk away from it and expect it to linger until you’re ready for it.”

I don’t know where this is coming from. I’ve never been angry at her before, but I’m so fucking pissed because this hurts. It hurts to know we just shared what we did upstairs in my room and then after giving it a little thought, she decides it didn’t mean shit to her. That I don’t mean shit to her.

Her eyes are wide and she’s watching me struggle through every single emotion a guy can possibly have. This week has been full of them. From Kyle’s death, to having to call Fallon yesterday morning, to seeing her at my front door, to breaking down on her in my bed, to making love to her in the same spot. If I were to put the week’s emotions on a graph chart, it would look like tidal waves.

I see her glance at the cab as if she’s contemplating her decision. I step forward and put my hands on her shoulders, forcing her attention back on me. “Don’t walk away from this.”

Her shoulders drop with her sigh. She gives her head a soft shake. “Ben, I’m not walking away from this. I’m not doing anything we didn’t agree to the first day we met. I’m the one sticking to the rules, here. We agreed on five years. And yes, we had a little hiccup upstairs where we almost caved and—”

I cut her off. “A hiccup?” I point to the house. “Did you just refer to us agreeing to start a relationship as a . . . hiccup?”

Her expression is immediately apologetic, but I don’t want to hear an apology. I’m obviously in the wrong here, because when I made love to her I knew what was happening between us was something most people don’t even know exists. And if she even remotely felt the same, there’s no way in hell she would be saying these things right now.

My stomach clenches and I want to double over in pain. But instead I hold steady and I offer her one last chance to prove to me that the entire past day wasn’t completely one-sided.

I grip her face until my fingers are wrapped around the nape of her neck. I brush my thumbs across her cheeks and encourage her to look up at me. I touch her softly—as gentle as my fingers are capable of touching her. She swallows, and I can see that my change in demeanor is making her nervous.

“Fallon,” I say, keeping my voice calm and sincere. “I don’t care about the book. I don’t even want to finish it. All I care about is you. Being with you every day. Seeing you every day. I’m not finished falling in love with you yet. But if you don’t want to finish falling in love with me, then you need to tell me right now. Do you want me to be a part of your life on more than just November 9th? If you say no, I’ll turn around and walk right back inside that house and things can go back to how they were before you showed up here yesterday. I’ll continue working on the book and we’ll meet up next year. But if you say yes . . . if you tell me you want to spend every single day on the calendar this year falling in love with me, then I’m going to kiss you. And I promise it’ll be an eleven. And I’ll spend every day after today proving to you that you made the right choice.”