Single Dad Seeking Love

13. The Short Bridge Between Joy and Pain

“Is it true?”

I jump at the voice right behind me, but the jump is followed by a tingling sensation down my spine.

“Trevor, seriously, you need to stop sneaking up on people.” I turn. A smile I’m trying to suppress is tugging at the corners of my mouth.

Trevor’s face is ashen. Hair, for once not confined in a ponytail, is falling over his eyes. Ice spreads in my stomach.

“Is it true?” he repeats. His shoulders are slumped and his big hands burrowed in his pockets.

“Is what true? Trevor, what’s wrong?” I reach for him, but he retreats.

He opens his mouth, but then clamps his teeth shut and he looks away while pulling his hands out of his pockets and running them through his hair.

“Have you been with Julie?”

My intake of breath is so sharp, I’m sure he notices. I glance over the field, to where Adam is playing football with some of the other kids. The joy I felt when he walked over to them is all gone.

“Trevor…”

“Is this what they do in the city? Make-out with whoever they want with no regard for the consequences?”

“Of-of course not.”

“Then tell me,” he grits through his teeth, his eyes wide in anger and hurt. “How could you go from my sister one day to me the next? I just found her crying in the house, heartbroken because you’ve been playing with her.”

My heart is thumping for all the wrong reasons, the thoughts in my head a jumbled mess. “I-I wasn’t playing her…”

“Wasn’t playing? So your intentions towards her were real?”

“No, it… it just happened.”

“Just like you just happened to be with me,” he snarls.

“I was never going to be with you,” I bark back, and immediately regret my words.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going on.” I breathe heavily through my nose, my jaw clenched shut. I hate every word that’s come out of my mouth, hate the confusion in my head—in my chest.

“Fuck this,” Trevor says quietly, his normally sparkling eyes dull.

The anger drains from me. My stomach churns, cramping up as if I’m about to be sick. Trevor shakes his head and all I want to do is wipe the anguish from his face as he whispers, “I was too obsessed with getting some that I didn’t see that Julie’s feelings were true.” I flinch. Is that all I was to him? Some ass? “I thought… I thought it was only a bit of flirting between you and Julie. And I went after the bloke that she liked. The man that she’s kissed. I’ve hurt my family yet again.”

“Trevor—”

His voice is defeated when he interrupts. “I think it’s best you leave.”

“What?” A bull just rammed my gut. Why does this hurt more than seeing my family board the plane?

Trevor turns his head away from me. “I don’t want to cause Julie more hurt. She’s suffered enough.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

He closes his eyes for a long time.

“Even if you didn’t mean to, it still happened. And… even if it wasn’t for Julie… I don’t have time for this, Jamie.”

“Time for what?”

“Time to hold your hand while you figure out what you want.”

I open my mouth, but the words that I want to say are lodged in my throat.

I guess he’s right. I’m not ready for this.