Chapter 33 Old Wounds
Old Wounds
JAMIE
Aphone buzzed somewhere, making me blink. Daylight streamed through that gap in the curtains. Our clothes were scattered all over the floor.
I rubbed my eyes. The phone buzzed again.
Bleary-eyed, I bent over the edge of the bed and fumbled in my pants pocket for my phone, finding Sarah’s underwear instead.
Holding them was enough to make my dick twitch, remembering last night.
Was I ready for another round? By now, probably.
But looking at her sleeping form brought a slew of bigger feelings I still hadn’t quite wrapped my head around.
Ones that quite honestly made me a little panicky.
Like something that felt so good it tipped into pain.
Finally, I found my phone.
“Shit,” I cursed when I saw the time. I swung my legs out of the bed.
The buzz had been a text from Chelsea. She knew I was normally up for an hour or more before this. She was cat-sitting this weekend, free since Seamus was out of town, and had been sending me and Seamus the odd update in a group chat. As expected, it was another one.
CHELSEA: Stu update!
Under that, a photo of Chelsea holding Stu against her chest.
It was unprecedented. Stu usually never let anyone but me pick him up. He was getting soft in his old age. I smiled, ready to type up a response, when I noticed the glint of something on Chelsea’s hand, half buried in Stu’s fur.
I zoomed in. If I wasn’t wrong, that was a diamond.
Had Seamus proposed to his girlfriend? She wasn’t wearing that last week when I walked her around my place, giving her instructions.
For a moment, a warm glow of happiness washed through me. Seamus was getting married.
Then that same panicky feeling I got looking at Sarah, her lashes splayed on her freckled cheek.
Seamus, getting married.
Chelsea was the perfect girl for my son. But the more I looked at it, the more the ring made something slick and painful slide over me.
I knew this was only the beginning. Seamus was head over heels for Chelsea.
I’d seen the way they looked at each other when people teased them with talk of marriage and babies.
There was this sweet hopefulness in their exchanged glances.
I saw Chelsea cooing over babies on TV when they visited.
Talking about houses they could live in when they wanted to expand from the little place they shared now.
I knew this day was coming. I’d been fine with this day coming. Thrilled for my son, actually.
That was, until I thought of Sarah.
I ran my hand through my hair, noticing how wiry the gray was. Noticing how when I sat up straight, a spasm of pain went through my neck. How my knees felt fucking wrecked as I stood up, eyes on Sarah like I was looking at the sun.
Sarah’s hair spilled in waves across her pillow, beautiful lips parted slightly. That little mole I kissed last night before falling asleep.
I pulled the sheet up, covering her perfect breasts I’d ravaged last night.
Yesterday, she told me she was giving me her resignation.
But I hadn’t accepted. I couldn’t accept it.
I didn’t want her to leave. I’d fucking die if she left.
I think some part of me, in my mind, knew I only let this happen because of how finite our time in close proximity was.
A freebie because we were out of town, away from home.
Giddy from the snow trapping everyone in place.
But I also knew I was in love with Sarah Cooper.
I’d known it in that moment in the wine room, when I closed the door on us moving into anything more.
I was just too fucking chicken to admit it to myself.
And trying to distance myself as much as possible—to make her hate me—that had done nothing to squash that.
If anything, it had made it worse than ever, because what kind of fucking man does that?
And now? Having gotten a taste of getting the thing I never dreamed of?
It was like falling into heaven… and then getting kicked right back out again.
I wracked my brain, trying to figure out why I was feeling this way, when I knew, plain as the fucking hands on a clock, that I was head over heels for this woman.
A clock.
I looked down at my weathered hands holding my phone. Felt the throb in my knees. Thought of all those nights I came home from work exhausted, dreaming of my future cabin in the woods.
That was the problem, wasn’t it? That thing I’d tried to shove into the corner and ignore.
I’d already broken the cardinal rule of staying away from my employees, so it wasn’t that, though a shitstorm could always still come.
It was that the years I had left before that retirement were in the single digits.
I had the land already. I was looking into my golden years.
But for Sarah, the best was still yet to come.
This had always been the real problem. I’d known it that first night we’d met—the girl with the billowing sweatshirt and tears in her eyes. I’d known it during her talk, when she spoke of hope for the decades ahead.
When all those people mobbed her afterward, handing her cards and talking about possibilities and opportunities before I slipped out the back door.
Sarah was promise, and hope, and life.
I was everything broken and winding down.
More voices came from outside.
I reached for my clothes. Whatever else happened, I had shit to do today. A committee meeting at eight thirty, the morning sessions I should show my face at, and the closing plenary at ten. After that, I was going to drive home with Sarah and, presumably, Sam, if the roads were cleared by then.
I gave Sarah Cooper one last glance, my chest squeezing. I should have written her a note, but what would I say? Thanks for the good time? I fucking love you but can’t have you wasting your life with me?
I didn’t know that this weekend was over for us. Maybe we’d have another chance to be together again before we left. But I couldn’t hitch my hopes on it. She’d have her own feelings about this when she woke up.
Regret, maybe. Anger, at me, for letting it happen.
I wouldn’t be surprised by any of it.
I allowed myself one last look at the woman who lived in my cells now, committing the image of her in my bed to memory just in case.
Then I did the chickenshit thing and slipped out of the room.