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Heat pooled behind her eyes but she refused to lower her gaze; that was the cowardly way and her default method of coping, but it wasn’t appropriate here. It would only make things worse. Marlowe was already angry and upset with her for trying to sway his opinion, for trying to get him to stay. His words were pointed and cruel though she wondered if he meant them to be, if perhaps he viewed them as the honest truth: something she was tragically blind to, being so very selfish and terrible a person.
Hitch supposed that she ought to be used to it, used to people thinking very little of her and expecting even less, but things were supposed to be different, now. Marlowe was supposed to like her. They were friends on a path together, not looking for something more so much as something different.
Surely she had not imaged it all: the glances, his fingers against the back of her shoulder when he wished her a good night, the almost-smiles he surrendered in the face of her attempts at humor.
Like a fool she’d let herself believe that it would last—that Marlowe Freudenberg would settle for something less than doing everything he could to change the world.
“Hitch.” His voice broke the silence between them, but it had lost its earlier edge. “Why are you trying so hard to get me to stay here? This isn’t—staying here isn’t right.”
His expression was tight, but he was done venting. He stood just out of reach, mouth downturned, fingers clenched so that his knuckles were nearly white. Still, there was something in his creased forehead that told her that he was confused.
That he did not understand her this time, for perhaps the first time, but that he wanted to.
And it was now, she knew, that she would have to convince him that she was worth staying for.
It was the one thing she couldn’t do, the one impossible thing. Marlowe always put his goals first, and someone as small as Hitch Dreyse was never meant to be anything more than a footnote in his journey.
He would be more likely to stay in the Military Police if he believed he could affect change, but that could take years; the Survey Corps could do it faster and on a grander scale if they met with success. It was that if that terrified her beyond reason, but Marlowe held onto it as if it were the key to humanity’s salvation.
He waited patiently for her answer, muscles relaxing slightly as if he felt sure she would have a good one, a reasonable one—some kind of explanation for the things she’d already said that had no doubt hurt him as much as his decision to leave had hurt her.
She licked her dry lips and tried to keep her tears inside her eyes where they belonged as she scrambled for something that wasn’t the easy but wholly uninspiring truth.
“Because I love you,” lingered nonetheless, the words an unrequited ache that settled so deep in her skin she felt as if she might choke on them. She’d said her piece, hadn’t she? If the allure of fame and fortune with which to climb the Military Police chain of command wouldn’t sway him, nothing so small as her feelings would.
Her gaze fell to the floor, biting her tongue against all of the things that tried to force their way out of her aching throat.
Marlowe was silent for a moment longer. His voice, when he spoke, was raspy, as if he’d spent all of his energy telling her how much of a disappointment she’d turned out to be.
“I see.” He turned to go.
And if things had been different, if she had been born braver or he less attached to his idealistic moral principles, she might have tried to stop him.
But then again, she reasoned, squeezing her eyes shut against the sound of his fading footsteps, she could not imagine loving him if he were so very unlike himself.