55. Chapter 55
He was leaving tonight.
Jason was running out of time to decide what to do about Billy, and he couldn’t get any clarity all tangled up in Theresa. Five days was long enough.
If she could tell he was pulling away, she didn’t say. Just kept one eye on him as if she expected him to bolt.
Her friends wanted to meet at the bar again.
Jason insisted they go. After a few drinks, he’d tell her it was time for him to head out, and her friends could pick up the pieces he would inevitably leave behind.
No pulling himself from her clutches in a mess of bedsheets.
No chance of being talked out of it. A few drinks, then the road as far as the Panhead would take him.
She’d find the check he left in the drawer of her nightstand eventually. It wasn’t the full ten million, but enough to take care of her for a long time and hopefully put a salve on the wounds he was about to inflict.
As if to remind himself of who he was and what was important in life, Jason tossed a quarter into the jukebox and cued up Dion.
He hadn’t played “The Wanderer,” his anthem, in weeks.
The one explaining, without a doubt, what kind of man Jason Young was and why no one—not even the proverbial Rosie—was going to slow the Wanderer down.
Theresa was standing at the bar with her friend Whitney when it started. She tipped her head at the odd music choice after Metallica and studied him as he slowly made his way back to her.
Her fingers curled around his collar and pulled his shirt down at the same moment the song revealed the meaning of Jason’s tattoo. Rosie wasn’t a real woman, just the one Dion loved most.
Theresa swallowed. He watched her face change with understanding.
He wanted to kick the jukebox with the toe of his boot.
“Excuse me,” she said, more to her friend than to him, and brushed past Jason to the bathroom.
He shouldn’t have followed her. No, he should’ve spared them both a bad goodbye and taken off while she shook down the ladies’ room walls. Theresa pounced as soon as the door closed behind him.
“That Rosie? Really?”
She paced the sticky tile floor, arms crossed, a hardness in her face he hadn’t seen since she slapped his bill on the table the first time they met.
“Really?” she demanded, as if there was anything he could say. She stopped pacing and set her hands on her hips. “So when are you leaving?”
“T—”
“Damn it, Jason!”
She threw her arms up and resumed cutting a path in the floor.
“Come on, now,” he said.
“You’ve been acting weird all day. Now this? This is how you try to tell me? With an oldies song?”
“I wasn’t trying to tell you anything,” he said, and it was true. He hadn’t figured she’d make the connection.
Except she’d been fixated on his tattoo since the first time he’d taken off his shirt.
“You’re not the Wanderer, okay? It’s a song.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to go. Is this because I made you put the check in the bank? You can’t leave ten million dollars just lying around.”
“It’s not about the check.”
“Was it the other night? Did it freak you out talking about taking me places?”
“Theresa, you’re getting worked up.”
“You’re damn right I am.” She lowered her voice and glared at the tattoo now covered by his shirt. “I put in my notice at the diner.”
“You—you did?” he stuttered.
“I didn’t think you’d actually follow through and take me anywhere,” she said. “What you said got me thinking about what I want out of life, and I realized it was time to move on.”
“Good. That’s good,” Jason said.
“Good?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the check he’d hidden for her today. “Is that why you left me this?”
Jason froze, staring at the slip of paper. “You weren’t supposed to find it yet.”
“A million dollars?” she asked. “What is this, rent? Payment for services rendered? I mean, knew I was good—”
“That’s not—”
“I didn’t know I was that good,” she retorted. “Or is it so you won’t feel guilty for leaving?”
“I thought you needed it.”
“You don’t know the first thing about what I need if you think you can write me off with a check,” she said. Right there in the bathroom, she tore the check with six tiny little zeros into tiny little pieces and shoved them into his hand. “If you’re leaving me, I want to know why.”
It’s just who I am, honey.
Theresa wouldn’t accept that, and he wasn’t sure he believed it this time.
“I have a job offer,” he said finally.
“A job offer.”
“I thought I told you.”
“A millionaire needs to leave for a job,” she muttered. “Doing what?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Actually, I do.”
“No, really, you don’t want to know.”
“What does that mean?”
“I mean it’s not a good job. It’s not the kind of thing a good man does.” He paused. “You should have a good man, Theresa.”
Her hands shot to her hips. “Don’t you dare, Jason. You don’t get to decide what kind of man I want.”
“It’s true.”
“Where is this job anyway?”
He was used to a scuffle when women got too attached. He’d take a little beating, feed them a few carefully crafted lines, apologize, then put on his helmet—tonight it would smell like Theresa since she’d been wearing it all week—and drive away. Clean. Simple. Bridges still intact just in case.
This time he really was sorry, and this bridge was already burning.
He cleared his throat. “Arizona.”
She laughed. “Arizona. You knew you were going to Arizona the night I brought you home?”
“No, I hadn’t decided,” he said.
“You hadn’t decided what?”
“If I was going to take the job.”
“You have ten million dollars in the bank. You never have to work again if you don’t want to. If this job is so bad, why take it? What could you possibly need—” She broke off, figuring that out too. “A woman.”
“No… It’s complicated.”
“Damn it!”
The bathroom door opened, and a brunette in a pair of skintight jeans walked in, hesitating at the sight of a man where he didn’t belong.
Theresa skirted around her and out the bathroom door and Jason followed.
“I can’t believe I’m so stupid,” she was saying to herself.
“You aren’t stupid.”
She whirled on him. “I didn’t say I was stupid. I said you are stupid. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“There was nothing to tell.”
“You’ve been living with me for a week with a girlfriend and you didn’t think it was worth mentioning?”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Aha! So there is a someone else!”
He’d be better off swallowing his fucking tongue than trying to explain.
“I told you, it’s complicated.”
“Oh, damn you,” she said. “And damn me too.”
She shook her head and scanned the room, for what Jason didn’t know. Another one of her friends had shown up and was watching them from a stool beside Whitney. Good, she shouldn’t be alone tonight.
Once he left her that way.
The moment branded itself in Jason’s skin like unwanted ink.
The jukebox playing Skynyrd. Her chest heaving the way it did when she stared death in the face or he drew out an orgasm from somewhere deep.
Neon signs behind the bar casting Theresa’s face in a blue glow.
And something a shade more painful than sadness in her eyes that would haunt him across the miles.
Loneliness.
He had the sense not to reach out and touch her. The thought of her ever being lonely and him being the cause was the closest thing to heartbreaking Jason had ever felt, and he knew if he put his hands on her, he’d never walk out the door.
He started backing toward the exit.
“Why did you do it?” she asked over “The Battle of Curtis Loew” pouring out of the speakers.
He paused, every bone in his body urging him to keep moving.
She faced him again, and her lonely eyes were on fire. “Why did you stay here and make me fall for you?”
They weren’t usually so blunt. Fall for you. His throat clamped around any lies or the excuses he usually made.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”
She marched up to him in a ball of determined fury and sweet perfume.
“I want you to look at me and tell me you aren’t falling for me too.”
“What?”
“Look at me, Jason, and tell me you aren’t head-over-heels, butt-crazy in love with me.”
“Butt-crazy in love?” He probably shouldn’t have laughed, but he’d never heard it put that way.
“I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you say you can go back to Arizona for a bad job and another woman when you have everything you could ever want standing right in front of you right now.”
“I—” Jason started. His throat closed again. “Fuck.”
“I happen to know a lot about loving the wrong men,” she said. “And you aren’t the wrong man. You think you are but this—me and you—this kind of thing doesn’t just happen. This is once in a lifetime, Jason. You might not want it, but you’ve got it. How can you even think about letting it go?”
“Christ, T.” He shouldn’t call her T outside the bedroom, and he was certain he’d never get her into bed again. “Theresa,” he corrected.
She took his arms. She deserved the world, and he wanted to be the one to give it to her, but he didn’t know how without giving up everything he knew about himself, everything he knew about living, in the process.
“Tell me you aren’t in love with me,” she said.
“I can’t,” he admitted.
“Then tell me you are.”
He’d never told anyone he’d been in love, even those few, fleeting times it felt possible. He took her hands and squeezed them. She was shaking under his touch the way she’d done in the diner after the storm.
Back when it was still sex, before it changed, and he was staring at a woman wondering if he loved her and how he’d know for sure.
“Jason—”
“Theresa.”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he was. “I can’t.”