Chapter 15
Ithought yelling at Jake would feel like relief, like lancing a wound that’s been festering for four long years and finally letting the poison drain.
But now I’m standing in my empty apartment, staring at a blank wall where the echo of my words still seems to cling, and all I feel is hollow.
Empty. The knot in my chest hasn’t loosened, it’s cinched tighter.
My hands shake as I snatch my keys and phone, shoving my feet into the first shoes I find by the door. The hallway stretches ahead as I hurry toward Jake’s apartment, my heartbeat thundering against my ribs.
Standing before his door, I hesitate. What am I even going to say? I’m sorry for screaming four years of hurt at you in front of everyone? I’m sorry for finally saying what I’ve been choking down since you left?
I lift my fist and knock, but no footsteps answer from the other side. I knock again, harder, my knuckles stinging as urgency strips away my caution.
“Jake?” My voice cracks, splitting the silence of the hallway. “Are you home?”
Nothing.
I press my ear to the door and hear nothing, no movement, no hint of him inside. Maybe he’s still at the party. I step back and pull out my phone.
Please call me, I type, thumb hovering over the send button for three heartbeats before I press it.
For the next hour, I check my phone obsessively. I stare at it while I pace my apartment. I check it again after I brush my teeth. I set it on my nightstand where the screen will light up the whole room if he texts back.
Morning comes, the sunshine signaling the end of my sleepless night. My phone remains silent, the message still unread.
The weekend drags on in a haze of waiting and second-guessing. Somehow, this sharp ache in my chest feels worse than being angry at him. At least anger was clean. Simple. This tangled mess of regret and longing and hurt makes it hard to breathe.
Yelling at him didn’t help matters—it just forced me to recognize how much I still care, how much remains unresolved between us.
When Monday finally arrives, I stand a little longer in the shower, letting hot water spray my shoulders and neck as if it could release all the tension stored in my muscles.
After I wash up and get dressed, it takes fifteen minutes to reach work. The air feels strangely heavy as I step through Lanter Bridge’s glass doors, and the thought of seeing Jake again makes me more nervous than the interview ever did.
A part of me clings to the anger I’ve carried for years, stubborn and insistent, telling me he deserved every word. But more than that, I need to find him. To say something, to apologize, to take it back, I don’t even know. I just can’t leave things like this between us.
As I cross the lobby and head toward the bullpen, I scan every desk.
His workspace sits empty, the usual coffee cup gone from its spot on his desk.
All around me, the normal Monday symphony plays, keyboards clicking, phones ringing, quiet conversations murmuring, but there’s no sign of Jake.
My heart drops a little more with every empty space my eyes land on.
Disappointment drops into my chest like a stone, sinking deeper with every passing second. He’s avoiding me. Or maybe he called in sick. Or worse… Judy heard about my very public meltdown and decided one of us has to go.
I force myself back to my desk, trying to shake off the crushing deflation settling over me.
Work. I need to focus on work. That’s what responsible adults do when they’ve possibly torpedoed their career and oldest relationship in one emotional outburst.
As I settle into my chair and power up my computer, an unread email from Jake sits at the top of my inbox. My pulse skips as my cursor hovers over it. The subject line gives nothing away—just “Watch this” with a video attachment.
I plug in my earbuds with shaky fingers and click. The screen fills with Jake’s face, his expression uncharacteristically serious. Vulnerable. The shadows under his eyes tell me he’s been sleeping about as well as I have.
“Sarah—I don’t even know where to start. But I need to explain. I owe you that much.”
He pauses, dragging a hand through his already mussed hair. For a moment, he looks exactly like the boy I used to know, the one who could never sit still when something important was trying to claw its way out of him.
“I never meant to hurt you. After we graduated, everything felt…too big. You had this incredible plan, this amazing dream you were chasing. And me?” His mouth tightens. “I was an accessory to fraud.”
My spine stiffens as I lean toward the screen. Fraud? The word crashes through my mind with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. What is he talking about?
“Sarah...” Jake leans closer to the camera, his head shaking. “The RainSafe campaign—it wasn’t what you think. It was my uncle’s project. He got my parents involved, and I was the one who asked you to help us develop the marketing for it.”
I’ve never seen Jake this way. He looks so ashamed.
“He used the campaign to present to investors who were eager to be part of it.” Jake scrubs a hand over his jaw, the stubble making a scratching sound that carries through my earbuds. “But it turned out my uncle misappropriated the funds.”
I watch him swallow hard, and a muscle twitches along his jaw before he exhales.
“It all began when I got back home from school one Tuesday afternoon. I remember walking in and finding my parents at the kitchen table with this guy in a charcoal suit—perfectly pressed, not a wrinkle—and a suitcase. He seemed like the kind of person who delivers bad news for a living. Mom’s eyes were red-rimmed.
Dad wouldn’t look at me.” His voice drops lower.
“They told me to sit down, and that’s when I knew something was seriously wrong. ”
Jake leans far back into his chair as if his memory takes him somewhere beyond the camera.
“‘What’s going on?’ I asked them, but it was the stranger who answered. He introduced himself as a lawyer—someone the family had hired to help untangle the mess.”
Jake’s shoulders hunch forward slightly. “My parents explained that he was investigating a fraud my uncle had committed, the same uncle whose project we’d been pouring ourselves into for months. The same project you stayed up late working on, obsessing over every detail.”
Chills race down my arms as his words sink in.
“The lawyer started asking questions about who was behind the marketing campaign, the one that convinced dozens of investors to pour money into a product that was never going to exist. Money my uncle pocketed and gambled away.”
Jake’s eyes meet the camera, raw pain in them.
“All I could think about was you, Sarah. You with your scholarship to that fancy marketing program in New York. You with your whole future mapped out, the one we talked about for hours under the stars.” His voice is rough.
“I couldn’t let you get tangled up in our mess. ”
His takes a deep breath. “So when he asked who created the campaign materials, I told him I did.”
My stomach plummets as the pieces snap into place—the abrupt breakup, all of it.
“I couldn’t drag you into that mess. I couldn’t risk your future.”
I sit frozen, my hands gripping tightly the arms of my chair. The blood rushes to my ears so loudly I can barely hear his next words.
“I thought breaking it off would be easier,” Jake continues, his voice trembling beneath the forced composure, eyes locked on the camera with honesty I’ve never witnessed from him before.
“I thought you’d meet someone in New York, create this amazing life you’ve always dreamed about.
It never occurred to me that you’d come back here, back to all of this.
” He swallows hard. “But I was wrong. So wrong. I hurt you in ways I couldn’t even comprehend back then.
And I’ve regretted it—every single moment, every single day since. ”
His hand rakes through his already disheveled hair. “I’ll be going away for a while. I don’t want to cause you any more pain or stress. It’s the least I can do after everything.”
A knot forms in my throat, hot and suffocating. He’s leaving...again.
The video ends with Jake staring directly into the camera, his gaze so intense I can almost feel it burning through the screen. “I just hope that someday you’ll be able to forgive me.”
The screen cuts to black, Jake’s face swallowed by darkness, but I can’t move.
I can’t even blink. I stare at the blank rectangle as if my eyes can force it to bring him back, as if it didn’t just shatter everything I thought I understood.
My mind whirls, and regret that settles deep within me.
All these years, I’d believed he left because I wasn’t enough—not beautiful enough, not ambitious enough, not anything enough to make him stay.
And now I know the truth. He left because he was convinced he wasn’t.
Pushing back from my desk, I stand on wobbly legs, suddenly desperate for air.
I hurry to the restroom, lock myself in a stall, and press my palms against my hot, damp cheeks as tears spill over.
Four years of anger begins to dissolve, leaving in its place hurt I hadn’t allowed myself to experience before.
The restroom door squeaks open, followed by the click-clack of heels and female voices—coworkers chatting as they enter.
“I can’t believe Jake’s transferring,” one of them says, her tone hushed but clearly audible in the tiled space.
“Yeah,” the other replies with the casual confidence of someone spreading authorized gossip. “Amanda said it’s because of Sarah. Something about them dating ages ago.”
“Seriously?” The first voice drips with disbelief, not shock but something sharper, uglier—like disgust, as if I never had any right to date someone like Jake. “Ugh. She should’ve been the one transferring. Jake is so hot.”
They know nothing—nothing about the history, the pain, the truth that’s been buried between us for years. And yet the words still land, still sting. Confronting them is beyond me right now. I don’t have the strength.
After they leave, I step out on shaky legs and splash cold water on my face. Working today? Impossible. Not with my past and present colliding so violently.
Minutes later, I’m calling in sick.
Outside, I grab my phone and type out a message to Jake with trembling fingers: I need to talk to you. Please call me when you get this.
The seconds after pressing send feel like hours, each one stretching impossibly long. No reply appears.
Finally, my phone vibrates against my palm, but my hope dies as quickly as it comes to life. It’s Wendy’s message flashing across the screen: Where are you? Amanda’s snooping around your desk.
My heart lurches into my throat. Oh no. The video Jake sent is still open on my monitor.