Chapter 22
Haley just barely stopped herself from looking for Jason when she stepped back outside and realized that he wasn’t waiting for her.
It was for the best, she told herself as she threw her small backpack in the trunk.
She closed it and slowly walked to the driver’s side door, hoping to catch one last glimpse of him.
Even though she’d told herself that they didn’t have a future, she couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
He’d given her up so easily. Maybe it was a good thing that this was over, she told herself.
If he was able to give her up so easily, then he really didn’t care about her and it was for the best that she found out now.
At least that’s what she tried to tell herself over the next three hours while she drove even as she kept checking to make sure her phone still worked only to end up stopping herself from calling him. She just wanted to hear his voice and…
Why did it have to hurt this much?
All she wanted to do was pull the car over and curl up in a ball and cry, but she wouldn’t allow herself to do that, not yet.
When she arrived at the cottage, then she’d allow herself to finally break down where she wouldn’t have to worry about having to pretend that everything was okay and that this was for the best. Then…
Then, she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do.
She’d promised him that they would always be friends, but she really didn’t think that she would be able to see him after this.
She wouldn’t be able to fall asleep in her bed, knowing just how good it felt to have his arms around her and that he was only a few feet away.
She wouldn’t be able to handle seeing him every day, knowing that she couldn’t be with him, and she definitely wouldn’t be able to handle seeing him with someone else.
She’d figure out what to do about work and her house later.
Not that she had many options. It would take some time before she was able to sell her house, which meant that she was either going to have to hope that she was able to find someone to rent her house until then because staying in that house wasn’t an option.
Work was a different story. She wasn’t sure that she’d be able to find another position that paid this well at another private school.
Until she figured it out, she would have to ask to have her classroom moved and hope for the best.
Thankfully, her stomach chose that moment to remind her that she hadn’t eaten anything since last night and gave her the distraction that she needed.
She took the next exit off the highway and considered her fast food options.
Ten minutes later, she was back on the highway and frowning down at her purchase, an extra-large orange juice, three coffee rolls, two muffins, and three apple pastries.
“Great, he’s got me trained,” Haley mumbled with a sad shake of her head.
She was going to have to break herself of this habit of ordering for a small army or she was going to get really fat, Haley realized with a sigh.
She picked up one of the coffee rolls and took a small bite before putting it down and taking a sip of juice.
When a song that reminded her of Jason came on, she groaned, muttered pathetically and spent the next minute looking for a song that wasn’t going to make her cry.
When she finally found one, she picked up her coffee roll and frowned at the half-eaten baked item.
Apparently, she’d eaten more than she’d thought. Sighing, she took another bite and placed it back on the passenger seat so that she could grab her orange juice and…
“What the hell?” Haley murmured, frowning down at the half-empty bottle.
Worrying her bottom lip, she glanced down at the passenger seat and couldn’t help but wonder what happened to all the food she’d bought.
She was starting to wonder if she was going crazy when a large tan hand suddenly appeared, scaring the hell out of her.
She squealed, jerking the wheel to the right and almost crashed into a tow truck.
It took her a few seconds before her brain started functioning again and when it did, she narrowed her eyes on the hand that was blindly searching for the orange juice.
Glaring, she reached down and pinched the back of the hand, hard.
“Ow!”
Haley stole a quick glance back at the backseat and cursed. Somehow, Jason had managed to fold his large frame onto the floor of her midsize car and covered himself with the large towel that she kept back there without her noticing.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Jason sighed heavily as he tossed the towel away and struggled to climb off the floor. Once he was comfortably seated, he reached over and helped himself to her orange juice. “Having breakfast.” He took a sip. “What does it look like?”
“Why are you in my car?” Haley demanded.
“How else do you expect us to finish our fight?” Jason asked, leaning forward to snag the last apple pastry. He took a big bite before holding it to her lips for her to do the same.
She shoved his hand away. “What the hell do you mean to finish our fight? We broke up,” she said, trying to remain calm.
“No, we didn’t.”
“Yes, we did.”
“I don’t think so,” he said calmly, finishing off the rest of the pastry as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Jason, I dumped you!” Haley snapped, feeling the last thread of her patience snap.
She looked up in the rearview mirror when he didn’t say anything only to find him frowning. Finally, he shook his head. “No, I think I would have remembered that.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“Anyway,” Jason continued as if he hadn’t just left her speechless with that announcement, “after our talk, I realized that you planned a week away for us and I really couldn’t agree more. A week away is exactly what we need to work through our problems.”
“Oh, my God, you’re insane,” she mumbled weakly.
Another careless shrug.
“So, where are we going anyway?” Jason asked, getting comfortable.
“We aren’t going anywhere. I’m leaving you at the next rest stop. You can hitchhike your way back home.”
“That’s really not going to work for me,” Jason said, giving her an incredibly sexy smile when she glared at him through the rearview mirror.
Her grip tightened on the steering wheel as she prayed for patience that she was pretty damn sure that she didn’t have. “Jason, it’s over. I’m sorry, but you have to accept it.”
“No, I don’t,” he said calmly, irritating her even more.
“Jason,” she said tightly.
“Haley,” he mocked in the same tone, making her lips twitch, damn him!
She sighed heavily. “Jason, you don’t trust me. I don’t think you-”
“I know that I really fucked up, Haley, but if you remember, I did tell you when we started that I was most likely going to mess this up,” he said, cutting her off.
“Yeah, you did, Jason, and last night you proved beyond a doubt that you aren’t capable of being in a relationship.”
“No, last night I proved that I’m a fucking idiot,” Jason said matter-of-factly.
She wasn’t going to argue with that since she’d come to the same conclusion after hearing what happened, but that didn’t change the fact that he didn’t trust her.
As much as she loved him and god, did she love him, she couldn’t be with someone that didn’t trust her.
When she was little, she remembered her mother meeting her father at the door with a smile that slowly turned bitter after the first lie until one day, she’d stopped bothering to act like she even cared.
Her smiles turned forced, their interactions became painfully polite, and she’d realized just how much they’d hated each other.
She didn’t want that.
“Jason, we’re over,” she said more softly.
He snorted. “No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are! Stop saying that!”
“No, we’re just fighting. You love me and you damn well know it.”
She opened her mouth to deny it, but she couldn’t. She did love him. More than anything on this earth, but he broke her heart last night and she wasn’t sure that she could trust him not to do it again.
When she didn’t say anything, he settled back in his seat and said, “I’m coming with you so you might as well accept it. The sooner we get this fight over with, the sooner we can move onto the next phase.”
“What phase?” she asked cautiously.
“Makeup sex,” Jason said, grinning hugely as he threw her a wink that had her biting back a groan, wondering why he had to make everything so damn difficult.
“What are we doing here?” Jason asked as he climbed out of the car, but not before Haley did. He wasn’t an idiot after all. She was still pissed at him and was probably still looking for a way to ditch his ass. In retrospect, he probably shouldn’t have mentioned makeup sex until after the fight.
The hour they’d spent at the rest stop had proved that.
She’d tried everything she could to get him out of her car, but he’d refused to budge.
Finally, when she was out of breath and exhausted from trying to drag him out of the car, it was a sad attempt, she gave up, slammed the door shut, drove off, and ignored him for the next two hours.
“I need groceries,” Haley mumbled with a sigh, throwing another glare in his direction. When her eyes shot between the Super Wal-Mart center and her car, he snatched the keys out of her hand.
“Hey!”
“Sorry, my little grasshopper, you’re not ditching me at Wally World,” Jason said, pocketing her keys and headed for the store, leaving her to follow him or stand there, fuming as she contemplated his murder.
Although Wal-Mart wouldn’t be his first choice, this solved one problem.
He didn’t have any clothes since he’d been in a bit of a rush to hide in Haley’s car before she came back out.
But this would work out rather nicely for him and since he could smell salt in the air, he knew exactly what to buy.
“I hate you,” Haley mumbled, storming past him to grab a carriage.
“You love and adore me,” Jason informed her as he deftly snagged her carriage away from her and headed towards the men’s department.
Along the way, he stopped at the women’s department when a little black bikini caught his eye, deciding that it would look great on Haley.
He threw it in the carriage as well as the red one behind it.
He wasn’t too worried when Haley didn’t follow him.
He figured that she was somewhere in the store trying to calm down or looking for a baseball bat to beat his ass into submission.
Either was fine with him.
They had a whole week to work out their problems whether she wanted to or not. She was his, plain and simple and the sooner she realized that they were going to be together forever, the sooner he could correct the mistake he’d made last night and show her how good it could be between them.
After he grabbed swim trunks, enough clothes for the week, and a few toiletries, he headed for the grocery section.
When he spotted Haley’s carriage, he couldn’t help but snort in disgust. Did she really think buying single servings was going to last them for a week?
Clearly, their fight had addled her brain.
He paused near her carriage, ignoring her cute little glare and dumped all his things in her carriage.
“What the hell are you doing?” Haley demanded, trying to stop him.
“I need more room in my carriage for food,” Jason simply said as he headed towards the dairy section, hoping she wouldn’t just ditch his shit to get back at him. Then again, she should know that if she did, he would just take that as an invitation to walk around naked.
“Why do you need bubble bath?” she asked as she joined him in front of the dairy coolers.
He placed two gallons of milk in the carriage. “It’s for you,” Jason said in a tone that let her know that it should have been more than obvious who it was for.
His little grasshopper loved taking long hot bubble baths to relax and he really needed her to relax if he was going to convince her to forgive him and forget about this breakup nonsense.
“O-kay,” Haley said slowly, picking up a familiar black cardboard box. “And what about these? A twenty pack and magnum size no less, someone thinks highly of himself.”
Sighing, Jason reached over and snatched the box of condoms out of her hands.
“Only one box? I thought I’d grabbed three,” he murmured, making a show of looking in her carriage for the other boxes.
Finally, with a resigned sigh, he threw the box back.
“Remind me to grab a few more boxes on the way out.”
With that, he headed to the cookie section, knowing that she was definitely going to follow this time.
“Why the hell would I remind you? We’re not going to need condoms,” she bit out softly with a glare.
Jason really couldn’t help but smile at that announcement. “Okay,” he said, grabbing the box of condoms and sticking it on the top shelf next to a stack of jelly cookies. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
The damage had already been done last night.
Granted, if it had been any other woman, he would have already dragged her ass to the emergency room for the morning after pill, but with Haley, he felt oddly calm about the whole thing.
Actually, he felt a little excited at the idea of Haley having his child.
Up until a few hours ago, he hadn’t given much thought to the consequences of last night. He’d been scared out of his fucking mind that he’d lost Haley for good to really think about it, but once he found himself squeezed into his hiding place, he had nothing but time to think about everything.
When he’d allowed himself to consider the possibility that she was pregnant, he may have freaked out just a little.
Thankfully, Haley had been blasting the radio, so she probably hadn’t heard him hyperventilating.
After he finally managed to calm down, he’d realized just how badly he wanted a child.
Soon, he’d been picturing little girls with mischievous green eyes and pigtails asking him to play tea.
Of course, they’d use real food. There would be none of that pretend food bullshit for his little girls.
By the time Haley stopped for breakfast, he’d been able to breathe a little easier. He’d already decided to ignore that breakup nonsense, knowing that Haley would realize that he was an idiot, so that they could get started on making their all-girl baseball team.
“You were?” Haley asked, looking adorably confused.
“Damn straight. Nothing should come between us when we’re making love,” he explained, loving the way her face went bright red as he tossed a box of cookies in the carriage.
“We’re not doing that again!” she hissed quietly.
Not making love again? Puhlease. If there was one thing that he knew about his little grasshopper, it was that she was just as insatiable in the bedroom as he was. He’d have her in his bed by the end of the day, guaranteed.