"I understand."
"People depend on me."
"I get it."
"It's-"
"You don't have to explain." She cut him off because she couldn't bear to hear anymore. He was leaving. She knew it was going to happen. But she'd convinced herself that they would have a few more days together. "I have problems of my own. Dart's missing. We've got to find Dart."
"The kitten?"
"Yes, the kitten. He got out of the house, ran up the tree. I tried to rescue him. He took off. He's out there. In the night. Alone."
"I'll go look for him." Ridge straightened.
"I'm coming too." She pushed off from the sofa, pushed through the dizziness. "There's a flashlight on the foyer table."
"You fell from a tree. Rest."
"I'm fine. Dart won't come to you. Remember the last time?"
He put a hand to his chest where Dart had scratched him. "Point taken."
"Let's go." She muscled past him, headed for the door.
"Stubborn," Ridge muttered, but he did not try to make her stay.
Ridge shone the flashlight in bushes and trees. They searched her entire two-acre lot, calling and calling and calling. Then moved to the back alley, peeking behind Dumpsters, looking over fences into the neighbors' yards.
No sign of Dart.
What if they didn't find him? What if he was gone for good? Anxiety was a corkscrew, punched into her chest, twisting and twisting. Tighter and tighter the later it got.
Finally, at midnight, the flashlight battery gave up the ghost, winked out. Plunging them in darkness in the middle of an open field a block away from her house.
"What do you want to do now?" Ridge asked. "If you want to get a fresh battery and search all night, I'm with you."
His words were a comfort. She appreciated the sentiment. But it was temporary. In his mind, he was already gone.
"You need to go," she said.
"I can stay until we find the kitten."
"We may never find him. He's hard to tame."
Kaia remembered what Ridge had said when Dart had taken off before. Once a runner, always a runner. She had not wanted to believe that. Had hoped her love would sway him to stay.
Hope.
Her greatest strength, according to Granny Blue. But was it also her greatest flaw? Hoping against hope Hoping when all hope was gone. Hoping a kitten would change his stripes. Hoping a man would too.
Foolishness. Utter foolishness. She could hope until she was blue in the face and it would not alter a thing. They were who they were.
Both Dart and Ridge.
She thought of an inane poster Aria had tacked on their shared bedroom wall when they were teenagers. If you love something set it free. If it comes back it's yours. If not, it was never meant to be.
"Are we giving up?" Ridge asked.
Heart scraping the ground, Kaia nodded. "It's over."
"Wait," he said, moonlight carving his face in silhouette, half light, half dark. "Are we talking about the cat?"
"No."
"Kaia." He reached for her, his voice dusky as the Milky Way overhead.
She stepped back, away from his hand, out of range. "You should go."
"We need to talk about what you said to me before I went to get Duke."
"There's nothing to say. You're leaving. You can't get along with your father. You'll never be comfortable in Cupid." You can't tell me you love me.
"Come with me."
Her heart skip-thumped, bump-bump, bump-bump. "To China?"
"Yes."
"I'm returning to A&M in September."
"You could come back then."
Hope. Hope. Hope. Her imagination flew to China with Ridge, pictured living there with him. How easy it would be. How exciting.
"No," she said, shocking herself by sounding so forceful.
"No?" He looked blindsided. Had he really expected her to say yes?
"It's better to cut bait now. Cleaner." She didn't know where the courage to say what needed to be said was coming from. The weak part of her wanted to sail into his arms and cover his face with kisses.
"But the humming you hear when we kiss . . . that legend. I thought . . ."
"The Song of the Soul Mate."
"I thought you believed in it."
"I do."
"So why are you breaking up with me?" He canted his head, gazed at her in hurt confusion.
"Sweetheart," she said as kindly and gently as possible, her heart breaking for him. He truly did not get it. "I can't break up with you. We were never together."
He chuffed out a breath, ran a palm up the back of his neck, looked utterly lost.