Chapter Sixteen
The rest of the day was an out-of-body experience.
I wasn’t sure how I managed it — getting off the floor, getting dressed, putting on makeup, curling my hair.
It seemed like someone else had jumped in my body and taken over, that it was someone else entirely spending the day with Morgan and Azra, putting reception party favors together, getting manicures and pedicures, going over last-minute to-do items before the welcome party.
The person running the show was managing to smile, and asked Azra about her life, and laughed with Morgan, and dutifully avoided Tyler — which wasn’t hard, since he and his father were running errands around town all day.
But inside, I was still just the girl on the floor, arms wrapped around her legs, tears staining her face, heart shattered into a million pieces.
I knew the decision I’d made for me and Tyler both was the right thing to do. I knew it, deep in my gut. Azra was practically already a part of the family, and before I’d shown up in Bridgechester, she’d been Tyler’s whole world.
How could I ruin that?
How could I even ask him to make that choice, one that I knew would kill me , if I were in his shoes?
I wondered, idly, if this was how Tyler felt all those years ago. If when he’d told me he hadn’t meant to sleep with me, that it couldn’t happen again, that it was a mistake… was he burning on the inside? Was there someone else driving his body while he curled up on the floor of his soul, too?
It didn’t matter.
Nothing did.
I just had to hold on, to keep myself together and get through the wedding.
Then, I could go home to California and figure out what came next.
But, before that, before anything, I had to call Jacob.
It was late when I finally went upstairs for the night, even though everyone else was still downstairs laughing and drinking and enjoying each other’s company. I blamed a headache when I excused myself, and with Azra being there, no one even really batted an eye at me leaving.
Not even Tyler, who simply sipped from his glass of whiskey, keeping his eyes on the table when I stood and said I was going to head upstairs.
I changed into an oversized t-shirt and boy shorts once I was alone, climbing into the bed that still smelled like Tyler with my laptop and a giant knot in my stomach. Again, I knew I was doing the right thing — but just because it was right didn’t make it any easier.
I was going to break Jacob’s heart, which was worse than breaking my own.
There was nothing left to wait for, nothing I could prepare to say or do to make the fall any easier for either one of us. I just had to accept responsibility for my actions, and the consequences that came with them.
Jacob’s face filled the screen of my laptop, and when he saw me, he flashed me the biggest smile. That smile hit me like a drop from a twenty-story building, my stomach hurdling with the fall, but I managed a tilt of my own lips in return.
“Hey there, gorgeous,” he greeted, settling back in his chair and adjusting his screen. He was outside on his balcony, the last bit of sunlight casting a golden glow on his face. “How’s my girl tonight?”
I closed my eyes at the words, and though I’d sworn there were no tears left in me to cry, I felt them stinging at my nose. I shook my head against them, but already, my lips were warping with the resistance, my heart aching and burning and begging for me to let the emotion out.
“Jasmine?”
I let out a long, slow exhale before I opened my eyes, which were blurred by tears I couldn’t fight back no matter how I tried. And Jacob leaned forward, his brows tugging together hard as he searched my face.
“What happened, baby? What’s wrong?”
Where do I start?
I didn’t know how to tell him everything I needed to, what to say first, how to get him to possibly understand what I had experienced since I’d been back in New England. No one could fully comprehend it, because not even I could — and it was me it was happening to.
There was only one way to do this, I decided, and that was to rip off the Band-Aid.
So, I sucked in one last shaky breath, and then I prepared myself for the burn.
“Jacob… I’m sorry…” I whispered the words, shaking my head as I watched his face morph from concerned to confused to a distant and horrible understanding in one breath.
I knew just from the way he was watching me that I didn’t have to say the words.
He already knew.
Jacob inhaled a long, deep breath, running his fingers through his hair before he sat back in his chair on a huff. His eyes were cast somewhere in the distance, and he was silent for a long while before he looked at the screen again. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
That was all it took for me to break.
I whimpered against the sob threatening to tear free from my chest, covering my mouth with both hands and squeezing my eyes shut, but not before more hot tears slid down my cheeks.
I shook my head, over and over, wishing none of it was true, wishing this moment wasn’t real, wishing I could go back in time to two weeks ago and never get on the plane that brought me back to the place I’d been running from.
But I knew that even if I went back, I’d choose this — over and over, time and time again.
As much as it hurt, as much as I wanted to wake from this dream, I’d have done anything to have the night I had with Tyler last night.
Even if it was all we’d ever have.
“Jasmine, open your eyes and talk to me,” Jacob commanded, his voice harsh. “You at least owe me that.”
I sucked in a breath, shoving it out forcefully as I swiped at my cheeks and nodded. “I know,” I said, finding his eyes on the screen. “I know. You deserve an explanation. You deserve so much, Jacob… and I’m just so sorry that I can’t be the one to give it to you.”
“You could be,” he argued.
“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. “No, I couldn’t. I’ve been running from this place, from what happened here, for my entire life. I never faced it head on. I never dealt with my feelings… with any of it.”
The words I thought I didn’t have poured out of me, as if I was realizing everything in real time.
“My mother left me in Bridgechester. First, for rehab, and then, for a boyfriend and a cross-country move to a new life. My father was a monster, a rapist, a dark shadow that has followed me my entire life. And I’ve let him, because the alternative was too hard.
The alternative was to turn around and face him, and I couldn’t.
I couldn’t face him, or her, or everything that I left behind here. ”
I sniffed against more tears building, looking at my fingers tangled in my lap.
“And Tyler…”
Just saying his name made my heart shrink in on itself, and every muscle in my face constricted, making me cover it as another wave of emotion rolled over me.
When I finally caught my breath, I looked at Jacob, and bless him, he was watching me with furrowed brows not born of anger — but of pain, of sorrow, of understanding.
“I loved him, Jacob,” I admitted. “I still do .”
Jacob swallowed hard but didn’t say a word.
“And I know I’ve told you a little about my past, about how I’ve had my heart broken, how I was hesitant to trust. I told you there was a boy here who had torn me in two, and that I never wanted to come back here.
But I never told you why. I never told you who .
And I think you and I both know it was because there was still a part of me that held onto Tyler, to this place, to my past that I thought could maybe still be my future.
I never wanted to come back here, but then again, I never imagined a possibility that I wouldn’t .
It’s like Bridgechester is a black hole, and no matter how hard I fight it, it will pull me back time and time again.
” I bit my lip, vision blurring. “I think… I think until I face everything that happened here, every source of pain, every scar that was made… I’ll never be able to move forward. ”
It was the worst admission for someone like me, someone who spent every ounce of energy running from the things that cause pain as opposed to facing them.
I was so afraid of getting sucked down into a dark depression and never being able to escape it that I was just always running, staying busy, throwing myself into work and travel and filling my life with fun and joy, pretending like the past never happened.
But here it was, latching onto me after years of chasing me, laughing and screaming, “ Aha! Gotcha!”
Jacob was quiet for a long time, but he nodded, chewing his lip as he digested what I’d said.
“Okay,” he said after a while, his eyes finding mine.
“Well, that’s okay. It’s okay that you feel this way.
We all have pasts, things that hurt us, things we wish weren’t a part of us.
But let me fight these demons with you. I can be the one you talk to about all of it.
I can be the one to hold you through the pain. ”
My throat was so tight with emotion that I swore I wouldn’t be able to take another breath for as long as I lived. But I managed to swallow, to shake my head, to find his gaze again with a shaky breath. “I wish it were that easy, Jacob.”
“It can be. If you let me in, it can be.”
“I slept with Tyler last night.”
Jacob’s head snapped back at the words, like I’d reached through the screen and slapped him.
I might as well have.
“I see.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, wishing I could reach out and touch him, but knowing I didn’t have the right to.
“I wish I could tell you it was a mistake, that I regretted it, that it was never supposed to happen. But that would be a lie, and I can’t lie to you anymore. I can’t lie to myself anymore.”
Something of a laugh came from Jacob’s nose. “So, you’re with him now? Is that your big plan to face your past — to fuck the guy who broke your heart?”
I winced at the accusation, but I wasn’t angry.
I deserved it.