Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jude
Five years ago
J ess stood at the door of my house, eyes red and jaw set with watery determination.
“Pop, come in.”
I couldn’t call her by name—not her real name. I’d forbidden myself from it the day she accepted Kurt’s proposal—maybe even the day after I’d taken her to lunch with the grandparents. It seemed too intimate, and the same held true now.
She moved quickly inside, stopping to stand with her arms folded and tucked tight against her like a shield at the edge of my living room.
“Have a seat.” I hoped she would, but when her head shook just once, I accepted the inevitability.
This wasn’t a catch up. It wasn’t a friendly house call.
This was it.
I sat in a chair a few feet from her, wishing she’d join me and knowing she wouldn’t. I couldn’t stand next to her for this—I couldn’t tower over her small form without feeling worse about all of this.
Silence stretched between us, only the crackle of my fireplace providing reprieve from the roar of nothing filling the space. She needed time, and I wouldn’t rush her.
Jess was petite to begin with—a tiny powerhouse of determination and brilliance and grit. She was also knee-weakeningly beautiful, but I’d long since forbidden myself to notice her dark hair or the slope of her neck or the curve of her lovely top lip.
I’d never identified so sharply as a failure until lately when I faced ruining the happiness of someone I… cared so much about while also doing the only thing I felt I could. There was no way to do this without someone getting hurt. Without her getting hurt.
Finally, her lips pressed thin before she spoke. “How could you do it?”
The final word in her sentence trailed off into nothing as her voice cut out, full of exhaustion and pain. My stomach clutched and a knot tied my tongue.
“I—I can’t explain what happened. All I can say is I didn’t lie. I didn’t make anything up. I swear to you.”
She swallowed hard, lashes fluttering like she might be staving off tears. Crap. I didn’t want her to cry—couldn’t take the sight of it.
“How can I believe you? Why can’t you just tell me what happened?” Her arms pressed tighter to her, a vise against her body.
But I couldn’t tell her. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t tell her he’d been cheating on her—and that he’d tried to force someone, and that he’d hurt her when she refused him. He’d promised me he’d tell her, and I hated myself for agreeing not to be the one. Maybe it was selfish to avoid being the person to destroy her world, though obviously it hadn’t done me any good.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry this happened.”
Her chin jutted out. “Clearly. You’re just so sorry you got my fiancé fired and now he’s so devastated he’s?—”
Her head whipped away and she swiped at her cheeks, dashing the tears away before I could see them.
I mentally glued my feet to the floor to keep from going to her. She wouldn’t want it—wouldn’t want me, even if it killed me to leave her there, breaking.
I’d wrap my arms around her and just hold her. I’d tell her he was nothing and she was everything. That he never deserved her and she deserved every good thing—someone who would love her and be faithful to her and want her as much or more than she wanted them.
Hell, I’d lay myself open, get on my knees for her, if I thought she could hear me or see me. But wresting this moment for myself—for my own gain—would do nothing but hurt me and her. It would be a real betrayal of our friendship and a denial of her pain, even if it killed me that she cared enough about him to be so broken by this.
She didn’t have to finish the sentence. Kurt had gone to the schoolhouse under the guise of finishing out his last six months before retirement, but he hadn’t been given a choice. That he was still retiring was a generosity I wasn’t sure he deserved, but the unit had at least given him that .
What loss would there be if I did tell her? Hadn’t he broken his promise to tell her the truth when, instead of admitting he’d assaulted someone, and it wasn’t the first time, he blamed me for ruining him and left her?
Guilt slashed through me because even now, I felt the question slither through my mind. Are you keeping your promise to him, or are you protecting yourself so you’re not the one to have to tell her the whole truth?
“Pop, I’m sorry you’re hurting. I wish I could take it from you.” Damn, how I wished I could. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore, and I’m worried telling you what happened will only make it worse.”
She turned to me, tears in her eyes. “Worse than losing the life I thought I was going to have? Worse than being abandoned again by someone who said he’d love me? Worse than giving up on the home I was building, the stability and family I’d finally found? Yeah , sure. Try me.”
The challenge in her eyes had something in me rising to the occasion, pushing past the circumspection that’d kept me from blurting out the truth about her ex-fiancé and burning everything down.
“You really want to know? He assaulted someone. A woman. And after talking with him, I know it’s not the first time. He’s cheated and?—”
“Just stop. He might be outgoing and a little too flirty and charming, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad man.” She swore violently before continuing. “He said you’d do this. He said you’d blame him, and it’s just bullshit.” Her voice was brittle and so full of anger, it cut.
“He left you. If he was really innocent, wouldn’t he stay? Wouldn’t he fight for you?”
You deserve to be fought for. She deserved so much more than he’d given her—even from the beginning. But she’d taken the scraps, and I wouldn’t criticize her for it now.
“How can he fight for me when you took his purpose? When you crushed the thing he’d built his identity around?”
Her voice was shaky and she looked like any second she might bolt.
Bile climbed up my throat and my head nearly swam with disgust and anger and a raw sense of heartbreak I hadn’t encountered before. How could she buy the act, even still? “Do you hear yourself? He would’ve retired in a few years anyway, and the fact that you take his word above the unit’s judgement, and my word, just shows how oblivious you’ve chosen to be. You’re a smart woman, Pop. It’s hard to imagine you really don’t believe what actually happened.”
She reared back like I’d hit her, and my stomach rolled. I jumped to my feet and reached for her, but she did run then. She ran to the door, then out to her car.
“Wait!” Shit. “Wait, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
She stood with her car door between us like a shield. “I hate you for this. I’ll never forgive you.”
In seconds, she’d slammed the door and sped off, and I watched long after her car had disappeared from my drive. An ache had settled over my heart, caging it in like insulation, muffling any other feeling.
Except one.
Because if this woman who’d been my friend and my teammate and my—well, whom I’d cared about, if she was so determined to hate me, I couldn’t keep on this way. I’d bleed out if I didn’t stitch up all of this, but not before surgically removing the parts of me that belonged to her.
Then maybe I’d hate her, too—for believing the lies of a man who’d duped her repeatedly for years. For choosing him over me time and time again, even when she didn’t know that was what she was doing and especially once she did.
How much could one man give? How much could a fool hope before he surrendered? When would it finally get through to me that she refuses to see me?
Maybe now.
Reality sank in, a wave crashing over me, pulling me under to the truth.
She might hate me and never forgive me… But after this, I was fairly certain I’d feel the same way.