status quo. But he knew that telling Em would drive her away for good. She had always been set on having children, the one risk Cole didn’t want to take. “We always wanted to travel, Em. Have fun, live our lives, before we added kids into the mix.”
She let out a gust. “Let’s go back to shore. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“Let me ask you this.” He leaned toward her, causing the boat to make a gentle rocking motion. “Why do you think having kids will improve our lives?”
“How can you say they won’t?” She shook her head. “I don’t get you, Cole, I really don’t.”
“I’m just trying to make sure we have everything in order first.” He didn’t want to tell her that the thought of being a father was the only thing that truly scared Cole. He knew what he was good at and what he wasn’t—and parenting didn’t make the list of talents.
“You and your lists and timetables.” She let out a gust. “For once, I wish you would just let all that go.”
He was losing her. He could hear it in her voice, see it in her face. They had reached a moment of no return, a time when he had to act, instead of just talk. Their relationship stood on a fault line, and only a dramatic shift would keep it from falling apart.
“I can, if you want me to, Em.” He tugged his cell out of his pocket and held it over the water. “I can drop this in the water, and not think twice about it. Devote myself entirely to us for the next week or month or year or however long it takes.”
“You’d do that? Walk away from the company?”
“If it brings us back together, yes.” Then, as if God was testing his resolve, Cole’s phone began to ring. Doug, again. The little notification bar under the caller ID showed Doug had called four times with no answer. Definitely an emergency, if he was trying that hard to get hold of Cole.
He glanced at the screen, his stomach churning. The urge to answer the call, to solve the problem, burned inside him. The company had taken so much of his life in the past ten years and even now, even when it mattered, he couldn’t let it go. He could feel the need calling to him, like the business held an invisible string to his gut. He wasn’t sure which direction the need went—whether it was the company that needed him or him who needed the company. The phone dangled from his fingers, inches from the water. Then his fingers tightened their grip and the decision was made. He realized that at the same time Em did.
Emily gave him a sad little smile. “You might as well answer it.”
“What about us?”
“Us?” She took the oars and put them in the water, then began rowing back toward shore. “The only thing I know for sure is that I’m done going in circles.”
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