Chapter Nineteen Jordan #2
“Don’t be. I don’t miss something I never had, and the thought of him never crosses my mind. But do I miss that apartment and the life I dreamed of while I lay within those warm walls? Yes. I miss that, and I ache for the little girl who lost everything.”
My head fell back.
My eyes closed.
My heart pounded so fast, it felt as though my skin would rip open.
I knew her reasoning went deep, but I hadn’t expected this.
“There has to be a way.” I opened my eyes. “There has to be something I can do.”
Her hands went into her pockets. “I honestly don’t know.”
I took a deep breath, knowing every word that came out of my mouth from this point forward mattered more than most. “I want you, Maya. I want you in my arms. I want you in my life. I don’t want to lose you.
Not over something that’s out of my control.
” I gently banged the back of my hand against the window.
“I can’t change who I am. I can’t take away what my father did.
I can’t make you fall for a Worthington if you’ve spent your whole life hating them—but fuck, I want you to.
All I want . . . is you to fall for me.”
She pressed one hand against her chest while touching the corner of each eye with the other. “I need time.”
“I don’t see how that’s going to make this better. All it’s going to do is push us further apart.” My fingers were desperate to be the ones wiping those tears. “How can I make you love me when you don’t want to be around me?”
“Everywhere I look, I see you. Your name on a sign outside construction buildings. Your name affiliated with every Boston sports team. The scent of you whenever I walk into Bettie’s room.
I thought my brain was playing tricks on me.
Little did I know it was from you visiting her in the evenings and your cologne lingered on her.
” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Your face is what I’ll see every time I look at your grandmother.
” Her head tilted to the side. “You’re far from gone. ”
“Mentally, no. But physically, yes.”
Both her hands were now pushing on her chest. “I don’t know how else to get past this.”
The furrow between my brows was larger than the fucking Sumner Tunnel. “What are you saying, Maya?”
“My brain feels full. And my chest”—she stopped to breathe—“is aching in a way I can’t handle. I need a break from everything, and I need it now.”
“Are you telling me you need a couple of hours? Days? Weeks?”
“I don’t know . . .” She pulled out her phone and looked at the screen. “But I have to go. A patient needs me and—”
“Maya—”
“I can’t right now, Jordan.”
She walked out of the room, and I stayed against the window, staring at the open doorway, wishing she would come back through it.
What the fuck do I do?
Where do I go from here?
How do I mend a past I had no part of?
The only thing I knew was that nothing I’d said or done in this room had brought her back to me.
I heard footsteps, the sound of rubber soles squeaking on the linoleum floor, and I turned my head just as a woman was walking in.
“Oh! Sorry to bother you,” a woman said. “I didn’t realize . . . Jordan?”
She wore the same color scrubs as Maya, her hair blond, her face not one I recognized. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at me.
“Do I know you?” I asked.
She stepped inside. “I’m Emily, Maya’s best friend and roommate. I saw you at the hockey game—of course, you didn’t see me, but you know that by now.” One arm crossed her chest, the other hand held her chin. “Are you here to see Maya?”
The best friend.
This would either work in my favor or fuck me even harder.
“I came to see my grandmother. She’s at PT, but she’s normally in this room.”
Her mouth opened wide. “Hold up. Bettie is your grandmother?”
“Yeah . . .”
“That’s a wild coincidence. Does Maya know?”
I nodded. “She left just a minute ago. Walked out, I guess I should say.”
“Oh boy.”
I took a step toward her. “Emily, can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything”—she smirked—“but I won’t promise I’ll answer.”
“Fair.” I debated over how I should proceed. “Maya and I talked. I know everything. And I don’t know what the fuck to do. All I want is her, but I don’t know how to make that happen. As a Worthington, that seems like an impossible task.”
“Something tells me you have the power to heal her from that pain.”
I shoved my hands into my pockets. “How? She won’t answer her phone. She won’t make plans with me. She barely returns my texts. She keeps telling me she needs time, but what the hell does that even mean? What’s time?”
She bobbed her head while I made each point, then said, “You know, Maya’s always dated men who have needed her in some way.
As a nurse and a healer, it’s in her nature to try and fix them.
But it’s a cycle that broke once she met you.
” She smiled. “My God, she went bananas over you, Jordan. And my girl doesn’t go bananas over anything aside from running and nursing and true crime podcasts. ”
“Emily, I’m fucking wild for her.” I huffed out some air. “And I don’t go wild over any woman.”
She walked over to me and gently tapped my chest. “Then go get your girl.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s one thing you know how to do better than anyone she’s ever dated.”
I chuckled. “Emily . . .”
She smiled and blushed. “Not that—but yes, I’m pretty positive you can add that to the list too. I’m talking about fighting.”
“Fighting?”
“No one has ever fought for her before. You’re the first. What I’m saying is, don’t stop and don’t give up.”
I needed to prove that all it was was a last name. I needed to show her the man my grandmother had told her about, the one with a loving interior that was just covered in a hard, rough exterior.
I needed to make her fall.
As Emily turned to walk out of the room, I said, “Hey, Emily.”
She paused and looked at me over her shoulder.
“Consider it done.”