Scot and Bothered

41. Now

41

NOW

Brooke rode next to Jack on the train back to Edinburgh , hands clasped and quiet.

“You probably don’t remember,” Jack said, “but we’d planned to come up to Inverness one day.”

“No one forgets the Heilan Coo Trail.”

He hummed out a sigh. “I thought about waking you up this morning to take you out before we left. But it didn’t feel like the right time to enjoy it and be playful.”

“No. I just needed to be held this morning.”

Jack unzipped his pack and pulled out a little orange hairy coo plushie. The same one she’d picked up in the shop in Portree.

“Jack.” She tucked the stuffie against her chest and nuzzled against Jack’s neck. “Thank you. We’ll come back another time.”

“I’ll take you up the riverwalk when it’s dark and the string lights glow under the trees.”

“I love dreaming with you.”

Jack pressed a kiss against her temple and she watched the distant horizon flash outside the train, interrupted by shrubberies and trees, their reflection hazy in the window. As much as her heart was breaking for Mhairi, anxiety a constant hum in her chest, she also felt calm here with Jack, tucked up against him. Like she always had.

“You want to know something?” Brooke pulled her wallet from her jacket pocket. She slipped the ripped piece of printer paper from the sleeve and unfolded it. “I could never quite part with this.”

Jack’s biggest smile spread across his face before he pressed a hard kiss against her forehead. “You want to know something?” He adjusted his hold on her, reached for his wallet in his front pocket, and Brooke’s breath hitched.

“Really?” she asked as he pulled out the other half, unfolded it, matched it up to hers like a love locket.

“I could never part with it, either.”

Tears welled up in Brooke’s eyes. “That was the cheesiest thing I’ve ever done,” she said as they put the paper pieces away.

“Well, I loved it. And you.”

Brooke’s pulse raced. At the words he almost said. At how much her heart wanted to hear them and say them back. She wasn’t sure how to tell Jack about the ghostwriting job and how she’d put it off this morning because the timing didn’t feel right. But she wanted him to come with her. To never stop feeling this way.

“So, the ghostwriting job. It’s for Jennifer Aniston.”

“Jennifer Aniston. Wow.”

“You have to wipe that from your brain now.” She wouldn’t have told him, but she trusted him and she needed him to know what a huge opportunity it was.

“It’s nearly deleted.”

“I told my editor I’d take the job last night.” She took a stabilizing breath. This thing with Jack was old but it was also so new. She wanted him to be with her, to keep seeing what a future could hold. “Will you come to LA with me?”

His chin dipped down and he rested his hand above her knee. “Brooke,” he said, his voice pitched low, but not how she’d expected it. Not with a softness like he was thrilled she’d asked. Her stomach pulled in at the hesitation, at the way it sounded like he was about to let her down easy. “You’re still going to ghostwrite?”

She didn’t like the hint of disappointment, maybe even judgment, in his words. She sat up straighter. “Taking this job gives me so much stability and choice going forward.”

“I know this is scary, and Mhairi being sick makes everything feel unsettled.”

“Yeah, it does. Life is short and unpredictable.” She breathed through the defensiveness welling up in her at his lack of enthusiasm. She’d been thinking about this for days and she’d sprung it on him. He just needed a minute. “I don’t want to leave you. This feels fragile still and, god, I’ve spent so much time in the last seven years missing you. I don’t want to miss you anymore.” She looped her fingers around his wrist. “Come with me.”

Jack’s eyebrows furrowed. He opened and closed his mouth and her heart felt too big for her chest. “LA is on the other side of the world.”

Their reconnection had felt so certain until this moment. Before it looked like Jack never missed her back. When the possibility entered her mind that this rekindling might’ve meant less to him than it did to her. Not a vacation hookup but maybe not forever, either.

Brooke pulled her hand away, tucked her feet up on the seat. “I know. But it’s a short gig and we wouldn’t leave for a few months.”

“I’m a Scottish landscape photographer. I can’t do that from somewhere else. Especially not when I finally feel like I know what I’m meant to be doing.” Jack squeezed her knee as if this would convince her it was better to spend months apart. Her dreams were important and his were, too, but she thought being together was just as high on that list.

“There are interesting landscapes in California. You could diversify your portfolio. We can go hiking on the weekends in the hills. I could take you out to Catalina Island. I went once in high school, it’s beautiful.”

“Brooke, you’ll be working.” His voice was so soft. So placating. “What did you tell me? ‘Around the clock’?”

This was spiraling out of control. She’d asked him to come with her as a next step, as the start of a future together that was disintegrating in front of her eyes. Brooke turned in her seat, rested her knee over Jack’s thigh, and wrapped an arm around his waist. “I would make time for you.” She’d be busy, but all she wanted right now was to be in Jack’s arms. To explore together. To give this a real shot.

Jack cupped the back of her head, ran his fingers through her hair, traced her jaw. She sank into the comfort, lifted her chin when he nudged it with his thumb, met his eyes, all soft and pleading. “If this was your real dream, I would be there in a heartbeat.”

“Are you serious right now? Just say you don’t want to come.”

He sucked in a long breath and let it out, resistance in his posture, regret etched around his mouth. “You know what it feels like to put this on hold, to not be sure if you’ll come back to it. You know what you’re asking me to do here. I can’t sacrifice my dream that I only just started to chase because you’re scared.”

Brooke wasn’t sure when she’d stopped breathing. She was already feeling insanely vulnerable and then to hear Jack tell her she was running?

She pulled her chin out of his grip, straightened in her seat. “I’m not scared. I’m being practical.” How dare he always remind her that she wasn’t chasing her childish dream. That dream didn’t pay the bills. “Writing my own stories is all risk and no guarantees.”

“Brooke,” Jack said as he tried to catch her eye, squeezing her knee. “It’s okay to be afraid. I believe in you.”

“Why is everyone always pushing me? Maybe all this potential isn’t real. Maybe I can’t do it. Maybe I’m not good enough.”

Not without Mhairi. Not when everything was spinning out of control like it had back then. Like she could be left with nothing.

“I understand that fear. Believe me, I do. But this isn’t the life I want, where we make ourselves smaller because we’re scared. I’m tired of living that way, and I can’t watch you do it, either.”

Brooke flushed hot all over and then cold. It was just like Jack to try to pick her life for her.

“I think you still need to figure out what’s most important to you.”

Brooke twisted her rings, tried to unclench her jaw. “I know what’s important to me. My writing. My career.” The things she could control. “Back then in secret, and now on the trail, you made me believe I could have everything, but it never pans out that way.”

“That’s not fair. What happened in uni has nothing to do with now.”

“It has everything to do with now. You encouraged me to turn down a huge opportunity knowing Mhairi was sick. Both times, you had more information and you didn’t talk to me. And I should’ve remembered that. Maybe this trip was the closure we needed. This—” she gestured between them “—never seems to work in the real world, does it?”

“It doesn’t if you go to LA and ignore your dreams. I lived that way for so long, and you did, too. Some people are happy that way, but you and I aren’t. We’re made for bigger things. For telling stories and sharing them with the world. You’ll end up sad and jaded if you don’t follow your heart. I know you.”

“Or maybe you just always think you know what’s best for me.” Brooke stood up and yanked on her pack wedged in the overhead rack, trying not to notice Jack’s clenched jaw, the etchings of frustration around his lips.

“Then go to LA,” he said in a voice so soft it hurt. “Pay the bills and live Jennifer Aniston’s story since you’re too afraid to live your own.”

Hot tears pooled in Brooke’s eyes as her pack came free and the weight crashed against her chest. She would go to LA. Go back to being a ghost. It hurt a hell of a lot less.

She moved to a vacant seat at the front of the train, her heart pounding hard enough to shatter. Jack always managed to leave her that way. She never should’ve opened herself up to this pain again—she’d barely survived it back then.

And now? They’d hurt each other enough for two lifetimes.