Now, the hurt of a woman who has just spent 18 hours discovering what she'd been starving for laid out in front of her and being told she couldn't have it. Don't tell me you don't. I'm not a stupid woman, Nathan. I read people for a living. Don't stand there and tell me there's nothing here.
I'm not going to tell you that, Nathan said. There's something here. I'd be lying if I said different, and I'm done lying, even the polite kind. He took a breath. But here's what I know, Victoria.
You ended a 2-year relationship 8 hours ago on my bathroom floor. You are raw as an open wound, and you are standing in the one place in your whole life where somebody's been kind to you with no angle. And everything in you right now wants to grab onto that and hold it because you're drowning and I'm the nearest solid thing. He shook his head slowly. And if I let you do that, if I reach out right now and take what's being offered, then I'm no better than him.
I'm just a nicer looking version of a man who took advantage of the worst night of your life. And in 6 months or a year, when you're standing on your own two feet again, you'd look at me and you'd never quite know. You'd never know if you chose me or if you just grabbed the nearest hand in the dark. Victoria stared at him. The tears had stopped.
She was looking at him with an expression that was almost anger and almost awe. "You're turning me down," she said slowly. "To protect me from choosing you too easily. I'm not turning you down, Nathan said. I'm telling you to wait.
There's a difference, and it's the whole difference in the world. " He held her gaze. If there's something here, really here, not just the wreckage of last night, then it'll still be here in 6 months after you've got your feet under you, after you've stood on your own again, after you don't need anybody's couch to feel safe. And if it's still here, then you can come find me, and I'll be right where I always am, up a ladder in the corner. But you have to save yourself first, Victoria. I can't be your rescue.
If I'm your rescue, I'm just the next fortress you hide inside, and you deserve to build your own damn fortress and stand in the middle of it and know it's yours. For a long moment, Victoria didn't say anything. " Then she laughed a wet, disbelieving, wondering laugh and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. "Do you have any idea? " she said. "How rare you are. Do you have any idea?
I have spent my entire adult life surrounded by men who wanted something. " every single one. My father's partners wanted his money. Adrienne wanted my company and my name and my my smallness. He wanted me small. And every man in between wanted access or influence or a story to tell.
And I finally finally meet a man who could have anything he wanted from me who I would hand it to. And he looks me in the eye and says, "Wait. " Says, "Save yourself first. " Says, "I won't be your rescue because you deserve to rescue yourself. " She shook her head. You're either the best man I've ever met or you're a lunatic. Little of both, probably, Nathan said, and she laughed again, and the terrible tension broke and the room could breathe. Fine, she said, straightening, wiping her face, gathering herself back into something like composure.