Chapter 29
Jade
“What are you talking about?” I paced the floor like a woman gone mad, a hand to my forehead.
I felt dizzy, spinning, sick to my stomach, and the sight of Alyssa on my couch—sitting ramrod straight, knees pressed together with her hands folded on top, like a schoolgirl in trouble, with that bitterly sad look in her eyes, I wanted to shake some sense into her at the same time I wanted to hold her and kiss her and never let her feel this way again.
“I promise I’ll be safe,” she said, and she dropped her gaze to the floor. “And I mean… we knew this was going to end, right? You and me.”
“Not like this.”
“It’s been really special,” she said softly, her voice cracking at the edges. “Thank you for making my time here really mean something. I’m sorry it’s been—”
“It’s not about me,” I said, stopping pacing in front of her. “It’s just—you know everyone wants you here even if things with Daniela—”
“I don’t know about that,” she groaned, slumping forward.
“Apparently Drew and Charlie have been making the rounds about me. And after seeing how things went with Cat—someone who’s been around for a long time and contributed to the center and everything—I’m sure it’ll be easy for them to demonize an outsider who just showed up out of nowhere and started messing with things. ”
“Alyssa—”
“I guess you were right, to begin with,” she said, looking up at the window behind her, the rain still driving hard against the glass.
That look in her eyes, hollow and vacant, like the tone in her voice, it broke my heart just listening to it—like there was nothing left of the girl who showed up so luminous that the whole town couldn’t help falling for her.
“You said before that a place like this is cozy and feels like home only if you’re in the inner circle. And that one step out of line…”
God, this was my fucking fault. If I’d just gone and left town like I’d been planning on, instead of getting distracted by a pretty girl, Drew and his friends would have been satisfied to see at least me driven out of town.
Alyssa would be welcome with open arms wherever she went.
Instead, I’d taken someone as beautiful and bright-eyed as Alyssa Taylor and made her as disillusioned and broken as I was.
“Charlie was doing what about you?” I said, voice low, and she shrugged.
“Don’t really know exactly. Drew just made an offhand comment about it… basically just like don’t think you’re too welcome here. Said that she’d been complaining to everyone who would listen about how nosy I was, how I couldn’t mind my business.”
“To think for a second, I’d started to feel bad for how I’d talked about her.” I dropped into the chair opposite her, my head spinning. “Alyssa, I don’t even know what to… I’m sorry. God knows you didn’t deserve for anything to end up like this.”
She laughed thinly, looking through me and out to infinity. “I kind of do. I mean, I was… truth be told, originally, I was trying to find a way to convince you to stay here in Vermont.” She looked down. “So you could be with Daniela.”
“Yeah, I mean, Cat already told me.”
She looked sharply up at me. “She did?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s kind of got loose lips…” I shrugged. “Told me how you two were working together for matchmaking but then she changed her mind when she saw how much I was…”
She stared wide-eyed at me before she pursed her lips, wavering on the edge of tears, and crumpled into herself.
“Maybe you should stay,” she whispered. “You talked about it before and I freaked out because I didn’t know how to handle it while I was being stupid and keeping us a secret.
But you and Cat and Daniela and everyone are all just so good and…
I know this place is complicated, but I know you love it, too. ”
“Alyssa—”
“I know I screwed everything up, but I just want things to be okay for you. For all of you.”
I swallowed hard. I’d known this whole time this would end, and that it would hurt, but…
god, I thought I’d have more warning. I never even finished the right candle for her.
Thought I had more time. Didn’t we all? “It’s not your fault, Alyssa,” I said, and she shook her head, pinching her eyes shut as the tears won.
“Please don’t say that,” she whispered. “I’m ready to accept I made a mistake. Or a lot of them. I can’t be… halfway between accepting it and not.”
“You shouldn’t have to go. You had a fight with Daniela, and she’s upset right now, but she’ll come around—”
“Jade, please—” She signed my name too, her voice breaking, but I couldn’t stop—found the words tumbling out of me against my better judgment.
“You could stay here if you need to—”
“And ruin your friendship with Daniela?”
“If being with you is able to ruin my friendship with her, then I don’t want a friendship with her.”
“Jesus, don’t say that,” she said. “You have a friendship that goes back so far and means so much. I don’t want anyone to throw anything away for me when I’ve already caused enough trouble.
” She shook her head. “Even if Daniela came around, how’s it going to be with everyone else?
With finding and keeping a job here? I didn’t realize people were holding grudges against me, and it’s like…
why on earth wouldn’t they? I don’t know how to mind my own business.
” She wiped her eyes, giving me the most heartbreakingly sad little smile.
“But I’m really stupid and selfish, because I’m still glad I didn’t mind my own business when it came to you.
You’re amazing… and I’ve loved getting to be with you. Thank you.”
“Alyssa—”
“Please just promise me you won’t keep diminishing yourself, okay?” She spoke through shaky breaths, wiping her eyes. “It would make me really happy to know I could at least… leave your life… better than I found it.”
I choked. Dammit, I was trying really fucking hard not to cry, but hearing Alyssa say something like that with tears on her cheeks was more than I could handle.
I wiped my eyes, and when the tears were still there, I wiped them again more frustratedly this time.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” I said. “You’re not going to end up going back to Sawyer, right? ”
“Of course.” She hugged herself tightly. “It would be a disservice to everything everyone did for me if I just…”
“Even if going back to Sawyer were the only option that you thought wouldn’t inconvenience people?”
She wavered. “Of course,” she said again, but God knows nobody would believe it like that. I wanted to scream—hold her close and never let her leave this room if it was the only way to keep her safe.
“Alyssa—”
“I promise. Please don’t worry about me.”
What could I even say to make her listen? I felt like I was boiling over as I shifted over to sit on the couch with her, and I wrapped my arms around her, pressing her tightly into me. “Dammit, Alyssa,” I choked, my voice thick and broken on tears. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Or do you think everyone’s trying to get rid of you?”
“I…” She buried her face against my shoulder, and I held her while her small frame shook with barely concealed tears against me. “I don’t want to leave either,” she said softly. I gripped her by the back of the head, holding her like I could keep her from drifting out of reach if I did.
“So help me god, if I end up getting a job in a place as boring and miserable as rural Indiana just to be close to you…”
She laughed thickly. “Don’t do that to yourself. You love… things. All kinds of things that aren’t cornfields.”
“We don’t know that. I might have a secret undiscovered love for cornfields.”
She laughed again, burying herself deeper into me. “Jesus, you cannot do that for me. But if you did…” She shook her head. “I can’t even say that. Don’t do that for me.”
And if I wanted to do it for myself? What then?
Wouldn’t even matter if I could say that. Not a thing in the world that would convince this woman. She’d always been so headstrong, so… determined to do what was right, no matter what. Or what she thought was right.
“Promise me you’ll be safe,” I whispered, and she nodded against me.
“I promise.” She paused. “I’ll even make sure not to hit any trees.”
I laughed despite myself. “Dammit, Alyssa, don’t make me laugh right now.”
She pulled back from the embrace, and she cupped her hands on either side of my face.
“You’re the most luminous person I’ve ever met, Jade,” she said, her eyes locked on mine—those damn eyes that made everything else stop existing—and my heart missed a beat, missed a hundred beats, a lifetime’s worth. “Please. Have a good life without me.”
I swallowed, the lump in my throat too thick for me to say anything. I nodded, finally, because—what else was there for me to do? She smiled sadly.
“Can I… stay here tonight?”
“God, I’d never forgive you if you didn’t.”
“Thank you.” She kissed me, her lips warm against mine while the tears on her cheeks were cold on my skin. “I’m going to…”
She didn’t need to complete the sentence, to add the miss you at the end. I knew I would too.
∞∞∞
I hated pretty girls.
Alyssa and I had the most emotional sex that night, and I never thought I’d cry myself to an orgasm, but fucking sure. Life was full of new experiences all the time. Whatever.
Then it was the next day, and just like that, she was gone.
Out the door, stuff all packed up in her car, and poof, no more Alyssa.
Left everything tidy in her wake, not a single trace of the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, nothing except my million and one stupid scent samples from a stupid fucking candle that I shouldn’t have even been making in the first place, but I guess that was what happened when you were fucking stupid.