Chapter 35
LINDSAY
My palms had been sweating since I’d told Anna to contact Jaxon. I never thought he’d reply saying he’d be right over.
Maybe I really hadn’t known him at all. If I was being completely honest with myself, I’d admit that this prompt side of him made him even hotter. He’d told me he was punctual and structured professionally, but I hadn’t really believed him.
The happy-go-lucky side I’d seen on the island hadn’t correlated with a man who took his job seriously, showed up when he was supposed to, and replied within minutes of receiving a request from the company that employed him.
Of course, I wasn’t currently being completely honest with myself, so I refused to admit it. He had more than enough qualities that made him endearing to me as it was. I didn’t need to be adding any more.
Before I’d gotten to grips with seeing him again, Anna’s voice came over the speaker in my phone. “Mr. Scott is here for you. Can I send him in?”
“Yes. I’m ready for him.” I wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
I’d known I was going to be calling him in today, though. So I was as ready as I was ever going to be.
Ethan and I had stayed up so late talking that he’d slept over. Early this morning, he’d even helped me choose my outfit. He didn’t know what I was going to do, but I’d been going back and forth about it myself until five minutes ago.
There wasn’t really a choice, though. I had to be true to myself. I didn’t really know much about what was going on in my life or even who I was anymore, but the parts that I did know, I had to stick to. If I didn’t, there was no telling where I’d end up.
That was until Jaxon appeared in my doorway. He paused when he came into view, his golden-brown hair mussed like he hadn’t been planning on doing anything today and his matching eyes darker than usual with determination.
A small and yet not insignificant part of me wished he’d looked at me with that gleam on the morning we left Fiji. Wished that he’d stayed and had looked at me that way while telling me that he wasn’t ready to say goodbye either.
I stuffed a mental pillow over that part of my brain and smothered the romantic piece of crap. No matter how much I wished things would’ve been different, they weren’t.
Jaxon let out a small sigh. As if he’d seen that secret hopeful part of me being snuffed out and was disappointed about it.
That wasn’t my problem, though.
I stood up, just like I would if this was any other meeting, and waved him into a chair. “Have a seat, Jaxon. Thank you for coming in on such short notice again.”
His forehead twitched like he’d been about to frown at my tone before he managed to clamp down on his expression. “Of course. I was happy to receive your message.”
My heart broke a little at how formal we were both being, but formal, I could handle. It was the familiarity he’d dished my way during our last meeting that’d been unbearable.
“I’m sorry we took so long to get back to you,” I said.
His brows moved up a fraction of an inch. “Long? It’s only been days, ba—” He mashed his teeth together to shut himself up, and I was glad he had. Folding his hands in his jeans-clad lap, he gave me a tight smile. “It’s no problem. I was expecting the investigation to take much longer.”
“It might have if it wasn’t a cut and dry case.”
He cocked his head, his shoulders opening up as his spine straightened. “Cut and dry, huh? Good to know.”
I almost smiled. I knew what he was thinking, and I was looking forward to proving him wrong about me. It would be interesting to see his reaction when he heard what I had to say.
“Yes, Jaxon,” I said, my voice gentler now.
“I’ve spoken to your manager and everyone else involved in the chain of command.
There was no fault on your part. You didn’t leave without notifying anyone.
We have an email on our server, as well as records of several phone calls.
It was an error on our end that your request was never logged. ”
Deafening silence echoed in my office following my statement. Jaxon looked like he might leave his jaw on my floor, but there was also something new in his eyes.
Hope. Respect. Relief. Maybe even adoration. I couldn’t quite pin it down.
“Why are you doing this for me?” he asked eventually. “You hate me. The ball was in your court. Why would you clear all this up for someone you can’t stand?”
“It’s not about you, Jaxon. It’s about me.” A cliched line, but that didn’t make it any less true. “I am who I am, and I won’t change that just because I’m pissed off with someone. Too much has been taken from me. I won’t let that go too.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but I didn’t let him. Exhaling deeply, I rested back in my chair and let my professional demeanor slip.
If I didn’t do it now, I was never going to get the truth out. I needed to get it out because if I didn’t, I would always be weighed down by it.
That last night in Fiji, I’d been planning on telling him anyway. One of the greatest regrets I had was that he’d left before I had the chance to.
I refused to let the opportunity pass me by again. If I was ever going to be able to move past this nightmare of a month and all the turbulence and emotions it brought with it, I had to start somewhere. I had to purge myself of the words I’d left unsaid.
“Lindsay?” he asked, clearly waiting on me to say what I’d needed to when I interrupted him. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I replied truthfully, “but I will be. Look, Jaxon. The trip to Fiji was the best thing that ever happened to me and the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
Sensing that I had more to say, he remained silent. His gaze was steadfast on mine. As I looked into those melted-honey eyes I never thought I’d see again, I couldn’t stop the wave of emotion from swelling inside me, but I didn’t let that stop me either.
I’d made a decision, and just like he had, I was sticking to it. So what if he saw or heard how much I meant every word? So what if I gave away how much it’d all meant to me?
It didn’t matter anymore anyway. We were over. If he went to his friends bragging about the poor sap in the lobby who he’d pretended to be married to and who’d fallen for his act, I didn’t really care.
I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know me. For at least this one moment, though, I could know I was still the same woman deep down inside. The woman my brother loved and admired. The woman Ember insisted deserved the best in life.
Most of all, the woman I knew I was when all the noise and bullshit got stripped away.
“Fiji was the best time of my life,” I said again. “I went there expecting the worst. When I left here, I prayed that I wasn’t making a mistake, and when I arrived? God. It was like everything was screaming at me that I hadn’t just made a mistake, but that I’d screwed the pooch big time.”
Jaxon chuckled so softly that I almost didn’t hear it. I saw that one half-dimple pop and his chest rising and falling. “You and me both. I thought I’d flown all the way out there only to have a day trip and fly right back.”
I couldn’t bite back my smile this time, but I also didn’t regret him seeing it. At least I wasn’t the only one on the honesty train today. It made me feel marginally better, which only confirmed my belief that I was doing the right thing.
The truth will set you free and yada yada.
“Meeting someone like you was the last thing I expected,” I said, “but you opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities. I’ll always be thankful to you for that.
I don’t know what you saw in me that first day, other than the possibility of a bed for the night, or why you came to join me in the dining area when I’d stormed off on you earlier. ”
“We needed to look like newlyweds,” he answered as if it was the most obvious, simplest thing in the world. “We might not have known each other, but I wasn’t going to be that guy who left his wife alone on the first day of our honeymoon.”
I wanted to scowl, to cry, or to cuss him out.
If he’d just left me alone and been the roommate he had promised to be, the one I didn’t even know was there, none of this would’ve been happening.
Or, well, he’d still have been in my office to hear his fate, but none of these bad feelings would’ve existed between us.
“It might make me sound like a crazy person, but I’m glad you weren’t that guy,” I admitted eventually.
My eyes were growing moist again, but fuck it.
As Ethan had said, what I was doing and who I was weren’t a weakness.
It was a strength, and I was embracing it with both arms open. As Jaxon had taught me to.
“Yeah, me too.” It was barely more than a whisper, but it rang out loud and clear in my office. He cleared his throat. “So where does this leave us?”
“The same place we were at a month ago,” I said. “As nothing. We don’t exist to each other. We were never in each other’s orbit and we were never meant to be.”
The more I’d thought about it, the more I knew it was true. “I got left at the altar, Jaxon. Just when I was forgetting about it and started to believe it’d happened because maybe there was something, someone, better out there for me, I got left at the honeymoon.”
Again, he opened his mouth but I couldn’t hear what he had to say until I’d said my piece. “I don’t want your apologies. I don’t want you to explain or to justify it.”
There was so much emotion in his eyes that it almost broke me, but I was so close.
How many girls could honestly say that they’d had their alpha-male ex sitting in their offices after having been at their mercy, after they’d run out on them, giving them a chance to say their piece?
I didn’t know, but I was willing to venture a guess that it wasn’t many.
Jaxon’s respect as he sat there taking it, not chiming in or arguing, was yet another thing I liked about him. His mother has to be one hell of a person.
One of my biggest regrets was that I’d never get to meet the woman behind the formation of this enigma of a man. I was dying to know how she’d raised such a self-assured, confident, caring jerk of a guy who never missed a beat.
“I just want our time there to be left as a good memory and a reminder to keep me from making the same mistakes,” I said. “Thank you for the photograph by the way. It’s taken up a place of honor in my bathroom. It serves as that necessary reminder that I made a shitty decision.”
He laughed out loud at that but inclined his head when he was done. “I expected it to end up as fish food, so I’m glad it made it home. You’re one of a kind, Lindsay Flinn.”
“Thank you for coming in today, Jaxon. You should be back at work tomorrow. I’ve made sure this doesn’t leave any trace at all on your record.”
He nodded and stood up, taking his cue for being dismissed. Once he was on his feet, he stuck his hands in the pockets of those faded jeans and shot me the most hopeful, adorable smile I’d seen in a long time.
“Can I see you again?” He tucked his chin lower, smile turning sheepish. “Outside of work, I mean.”
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to throw my arms around his broad shoulders and feel his hard body against mine again.
There was nothing I wanted more than to press my lips to his and feel that same rush of exhilaration I would forever associate with being literally and figuratively swept off my feet half a world away.
But it was because of how much I wanted all of it that I injected steel into my voice and said, “No, Jaxon. I think it’s best if we don’t.”