Chapter 14 Helena #2
I felt an excitement brewing that drove out the cold.
I rubbed my hands together. “Can I text you as soon as I’m ready?
I’ll have to persuade him to leave me alone in his apartment first before you lure him out.
” It was no use my still being out in the hallway; I had to get Jessiah to invite me in to talk for a while.
To trust me a little, if that was even possible.
“Sure. I’ll wait nearby.”
I couldn’t put the moment off any longer, so I made my way to the door of Jessiah’s building.
He buzzed me in without using the intercom, and as I entered the foyer and headed up the stairs, I was more nervous than ever.
The hallway that led to his apartment seemed to go on for miles, and I thought about turning back several times.
But then I remembered my goal, summoned all my courage, and knocked.
As I waited, I took a deep breath and tried to get my heart rate under control. Without much success. It must have been going about two hundred beats per minute when the door opened.
“You?” Jessiah stared at me, nonplussed. I could hardly blame him.
“Hi.” I smiled—cautiously, or he’d have known immediately that something was off.
I let my gaze wander discreetly over his clothes—a plain black T-shirt and a pair of dark, slightly faded jeans—and lingered a little too long on the toned arms protruding from his sleeves.
Hello, Helena, remember the plan? I pulled myself together and looked him in the eyes. “Have you got a minute?”
“A minute? For you?” He hesitated, then stood aside and let me into the apartment.
It was as gorgeous as I’d remembered, cozy and warm, with wooden flooring and dark furniture.
I loved the open space, and the industrial charm of the exposed brick and steel beams. The furniture also seemed to be the same as when Adam had lived here, at least I thought I recognized the large dark-green sofa, as well as the rustic wooden dining table and the barstools at the kitchen counter.
The last time I visited, it hadn’t smelled as good as it did now, though, which presumably had something to do with the many pots bubbling away on the stove.
“What are you doing here, Helena?” Jessiah asked.
I turned around to face him. He’d folded his arms and seemed a lot more abrasive than the previous times we’d met. I couldn’t blame him. I remembered his reaction to my comment about Adam.
“I wanted to apologize,” I said, my shoulders tensing involuntarily.
Again he looked surprised. “Apologize?”
I nodded. “Yes.” I’d planned to use it as an excuse to get into his apartment.
But looking at Jessiah now, I really did feel the need to ask for his forgiveness.
“For what I said to you about your brother yesterday. I’m sorry.
I was angry, and I wanted to hurt you because you spoke about Valerie as if she…
oh, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t okay. That’s not normally me, and I don’t want to be that person. ”
Jessiah opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment, one of the saucepans began to boil over. He crossed quickly to the stove, picked up a wooden spoon, and stirred the contents.
I took a few steps in his direction, stopping when I reached the island.
“It was a pretty shitty thing to hear, more than two years after the fact,” Jessiah said, holding my gaze. “But… I guess you were provoked.”
“Maybe.” I nodded. “Still, it wasn’t okay.”
He shrugged. I didn’t think he was really going to forgive me just like that, but he seemed to want to put the issue to rest. “And here I was, thinking you were going to apologize for that number you pulled at training,” he said, a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Nope,” I replied, with a cautious grin. “That you deserved.”
Jessiah gave a soft snort, but somehow it sounded like he was agreeing with me. Then he put the spoon aside, leaned his hands on the worktop, and seemed to be considering. “Do you want something to eat?”
“To eat?” I repeated, confused.
“Yeah, you know, nutritional intake. Don’t tell me you live off Coke Zero and undressed salad.”
Nothing could have been further than the truth, and I shook my head in earnest. “No, I… I’d love to eat something. But…”
“But what?” For the first time since I’d arrived, Jessiah smiled, and something flipped in my stomach. “It’s just pasta with olives, feta, and sundried tomatoes. I haven’t laced it with poison, if that’s what you were thinking.”
I gave a curt laugh. “I wasn’t. I just didn’t expect you to offer me food.”
He shrugged. “Why? Because our families hate each other?”
“There’s that. There’s also the fact that our last meeting wasn’t exactly a success.
And let’s not forget you think my sister was the worst mistake your brother ever made.
” That was what he’d said, back then, after she died.
I remembered the way he yelled it, full of rage, full of hatred for Valerie.
And although I was here because I desperately needed that notebook, and I couldn’t afford to turn Jessiah against me again, I couldn’t stop myself from saying it.
He lowered his head, then ran a hand through his hair and met my eyes again. “Would you believe me if I told you I regret saying that?”
“Do you?” I held his gaze.
He said nothing, and I felt a stab of disappointment, even though I knew it was silly. Just because I’d apologized and he’d offered me something to eat, it didn’t mean we were friends all of a sudden. Nothing had changed between us.
What I really wanted to do was say my goodbyes and leave, but I was there for a reason and I had to see it through. Using the kitchen island as cover, I took out my phone to give Malia her signal.
But then Jessiah spoke.
“I’d only been back in town for a few days after…
after it happened. My life was in Australia—I’d been insanely happy to finally get away from this place, and I hadn’t really been paying attention to what was happening in New York.
I knew Adam would take care of everything, like he always did, fucking Good Samaritan that he was.
” He laughed sadly. “But then suddenly he was gone, and my mother was giving all these interviews. I didn’t want anything to do with it, but the reporters followed me anyway, of course, with their cameras, their microphones, their obnoxious questions.
What do you have to say about your brother’s drugs death?
Why you think Adam took cocaine? Do you think he overdosed because he didn’t want to live anymore?
” Jessiah exhaled heavily. “I ignored them for a day, two days, three. I tried to control the things I could, just like Adam had always done. But one night, after a week of no sleep and no let-up, they staked me out. I wanted to just get out of there, as usual, but then one of them asked: Do you blame yourself for your brother’s death? Is that why you’re refusing to talk?”
I gasped, horrified, although I knew exactly how the press could be. “That’s what the guy said to you?”
Jessiah nodded. “It made me so angry, angrier than I’d ever been. I flipped out and yelled at them, yelled whatever was going through my mind without giving it much thought.”
He looked up, and his gaze seemed to pierce right through me.
Maybe because of how openly he’d spoken.
Or maybe it was the hurt in his eyes that reminded me of my own.
Like we were two sides of the same coin, the deaths of our siblings binding us together in some inexorable way.
A moment passed between us, of silent understanding, unlikely as it was.
And it touched me in a way I never expected.
“So… so you never wanted to be a part of the smear campaign?” I asked softly.
That put everything in a whole new light.
Especially Jessiah. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d said to me—at training, and before that, in the Rainbow Room—but right now, it felt as though those words had come from someone else.
“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to lie to you—the little I know about Valerie, I don’t particularly like. But that didn’t give me the right to say that about her in public.”
“You said it to me as well, though,” I reminded him.
“I know. And I’m sorry for hurting you.”
He said it so sincerely that I believed him.
I knew from the way he said it that he wasn’t apologizing for what he thought about Valerie—but rather for how his words had made me feel.
I could still accept his apology, though.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to forgive—he was a Coldwell, after all.
It was just… I didn’t want to fight with him right now.
It felt too good, whatever all this was doing to me.
So I simply nodded, while Jessiah took two plates from a shelf behind him and, without asking a second time, served up a portion of delicious-smelling pasta and pushed it toward me.
“So is this, like, a truce?” I asked with a crooked smile.
He smiled back. “If you want it to be, then it is.”