Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Mom,” I sighed in exasperation. “I told you I haven’t talked to him.”
“It’s been two days,” my mom unnecessarily reminded me.
I hadn’t forgotten it had been two long, excruciating days since I’d found out Jase had turned into an asshole.
“Don’t you think you should call and check on him?
Maybe I should call him and see if he needs me to bring him dinner.
Last I heard his mom moved out to Tybee Island when she retired so he doesn’t have anyone close.
I should call Janis, make sure she’s okay. ”
Shay was close.
Gah. That was petty.
Obviously, I hadn’t told my mother that Jase had been a jerk at the hospital. I also left out the school parking lot debacle and the following Saturday night fiasco.
“How do you know Janis moved to Tybee?” I asked, as I readjusted the picture frame in my office and stepped back to study it.
It still looked crooked.
I glanced down at the other frames stacked on the floor. I needed a level and a measuring tape if I was going to finish the mural I had planned.
Now that I had a proper office, I didn’t have to blur the background when I was on a video call with a client. I could show off my pretty, well-put-together space like a real professional.
I should’ve asked my landlord if I could paint the walls. The white was boring. A soft Seafoam green would look amazing, or a teal. My gaze drifted to the window—the early afternoon sun spilled into the room with natural light. I needed to hang sheers.
I was planning a trip to the hardware store after I picked up Lucas from school when I realized my mom hadn’t answered. “Mom?”
“Just because you and Jase broke up didn’t mean that me and Janis weren’t friends.
We’ve kept in touch over the years. She visits me when she’s in Hollow Point and Allen and I have been to Tybee to visit her and Jonathan.
They have a lovely condo on the bay side in one of those country club, resort-type living complexes. ”
Shot to the heart.
“Johnathan?” I wheezed, since I was having trouble breathing upon learning my mother had kept in touch with Jase’s mother.
“Her man friend.”
Man friend.
“Man friend, like Allen is your man friend, or a friend who happens to be a man and her roommate?”
“Man friend,” she repeated then added, “You don’t call a sixty-four-year-old man a boy friend.”
I had nothing to say to that, not because I’d already had this conversation with my mother fifty times in reference to Allen but because I was speechless and more than a little hurt my mom had never mentioned her friendship with Janis stayed strong.
“Rain—”
“You knew Jase got married,” I whispered. “You knew he had children. You knew and you never told me.”
“Rainy, please listen—”
A knock at the door saved me from hearing an explanation I didn’t want to hear.
“I have to go. There’s someone at the door.”
“Rain—”
“Love you, Mom.”
I should’ve felt bad for hanging up on my mom, but seriously, she’d kept in touch with my ex’s mother and kept it a secret.
My head was full of my mom’s betrayal mixed with my instant need to call her back and apologize for hanging up on her, so I opened the door without checking the peephole.
If I had, I wouldn’t have opened it. I would’ve ignored the knock and scooted my happy, blissfully na?ve ass back into my office and pretended my new life back in Hollow Point hadn’t been blown to shit.
“Rainy Cross?” the woman asked, holding a large bouquet of flowers.
Carnations. Red, pink, and freaking white.
How the hell had Julian found me?
I glanced over the woman’s shoulder, half expecting to see the smug asshole leaning against his stupid BMW. Not that he’d ever been present when I received one of his many deliveries. No, the asshole just happened to be in the area every time I’d run into him.
As if he’d slummed it in my part of town. Never, not once, during the time he was married to Zoe or while they were dating had I ever seen him in a pizza parlor. But suddenly his wife dies, and he had a hankering for a pie.
“Miss?” the woman called. “Are you Rainy Cross?”
I wanted to tell her no, and she should take the flowers back to the shop and toss them, but it wasn’t this poor woman’s fault Julian was a creepy douche.
“Yes.”
She held out the flowers with a sweet smile. “Sorry for your loss.”
Punch to the stomach.
Asshole.
“Thank you,” I muttered and took the vase.
As quickly as I could without slamming the door in the woman’s face, I closed it and turned the lock.
Red. Pink. White.
After the third time I’d received this exact arrangement, I’d looked up the meaning of the colors.
Pink, remembrance.
White, innocence and love.
Red, admiration and love.
Love.
At first, I’d thought the white and red carnations were Julian’s way of expressing his love for Zoe.
Then the dinner invitations started.
Then he started showing up in random places.
Now Julian was taunting me.
I will not be afraid of some creepy jerk.
On my way to toss the flowers in the trash, another knock came. With the vase in hand, I clenched my teeth to stop myself from shouting as I turned around and retraced my steps.
This time I checked the peephole.
Jase.
Jase standing on my front porch looking healthy and amazing. Though his perfect kissable lips were downturned as he watched the delivery van pull away from the curb.
Two more knocks came, followed by, “Rae, I know you’re home. Open the door, honey.”
Honey.
No.
Hell no.
He didn’t get to act like a total jerk then two days later use his sweet, cajoling voice on me.
I opened the door and let it rip. “Oh, no, you don’t, Jason Turner. I don’t know why you’re here and I don’t care. Turn your ass around and get back in your car and go home.”
His gaze had dropped to the bouquet of flowers I hadn’t realized I was waving at him.
“I don’t drive a car,” he told me.
“Huh?”
“I drive an SUV.” He smiled.
He thought this was funny.
“You think this is funny?” I accused.
His eyes that had come up to meet mine, dipped back down to the flowers.
“Who are those from?”
At Jase’s question, my stomach cramped at Julian’s creepiness. But more, my stomach twisted at the reason he could be creepy—Zoe was gone.
“Why do you want to know?” I asked to buy myself time to think up a lie.
“Because if they’re from someone special you might wanna stop swinging them around. You’re losing blooms.”
I glanced down at bricks that made up my porch and sure enough, some pink and white carnation heads had landed near Jase’s boots.
Boots. Jeans. Light blue henley with two of the three buttons at his neck undone.
When I’d met him, he was a sneakers kind of guy.
The first time he’d come home from college he’d switched up to wearing boots.
It would seem the boots stuck. But he’d always worn t-shirts or henleys.
In the winter he’d throw on a hoody or a jean jacket or occasionally a fleece-lined flannel.
In the summer, he’d wear shorts if we were going to the beach.
Trunks if we were going to a pool. But mostly even in the height of summer he wore jeans.
I both hated and loved I knew this about him. I both loved and hated in the years we’d been separated he hadn’t changed.
Well, he had changed. My Jase would’ve never lashed out and treated me like shit.
Though, to be fair, his Rainy wouldn’t have a fortified wall around her to keep him out.
However, his Rainy had never been in the throes of emotional devastation.
Okay, so that was a lie.
I had put up a wall to keep him out.
And I’d succeeded in that for sixteen years.
My reason for doing it was embarrassingly stupid. Immature. Lame. Cruel.
“Honey, get out of your head and come back to me.”
Come back to me.
Four words. Twelve letters strung together to make the most beautiful invitation I’d ever heard.
But now was not the time to contemplate why I’d felt those words so thoroughly I wished that invitation was a different kind and Jase wasn’t just calling me back to the present.
“You really should leave.”
“Not until we talk.”
I didn’t get a chance to deny his declaration.
I quickly stepped back as Jase pushed his way into my house.
Without an invitation to do so, he closed the door and walked farther in.
With no other choice, I followed him. Actually, I had a choice—I could’ve thrown a fit and demanded he get out, and he might’ve listened or he might not have, which would’ve necessitated me getting ugly to make him mad and want to leave.
And since I was already carrying around guilt, I didn’t want to add to that.
So, I had a choice, just not one I was willing to use.
I was suddenly very uncomfortable watching Jase take in my living room, kitchen, and small dining room.
Obviously, I’d never seen his house, but the neighborhood he lived in was much nicer than mine, the houses much bigger, and the yards, too.
I lived in a crackerbox house in an older neighborhood that was clean, nice, and safe but it was no Griffin Park.
The house was also perfect for me and Lucas, not to mention much bigger than the apartment we’d lived in in Florida.
“I always wondered,” he muttered as if he was talking to himself.
Yet I still asked, “Wondered what?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead he finished his slow perusal of my belongings.
When he was done, his eyes came to me, and he said, “How you’d decorate. What our home would’ve looked like.”
I lost his eyes when they went back to my bookcase, which was a good thing because he missed the blow he’d delivered.
My stomach dropped all the way to hell and my insides started bleeding. No—hemorrhaging.
There were so many times over the years I’d had to physically stop myself from thinking about him.
An image of him would pop into my head and I’d have to clean my house to stop the memories from invading.
I’d begin to wonder where he was and what he was doing and I’d have to find Lucas to make the pain stop.
But there were things I’d never allowed myself to think about and one of those things was the home he’d made for himself.
Another was who he’d married or if he had children. Those thoughts would’ve killed.
“Jase,” I whispered. “I don’t think—”
“That’s your problem honey, you’re thinking too much. You’re going back when all I want is to go forward.”
Go forward.
Was there a forward when there was so much between us?
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Why not?”
Leave it to Jase to ask the hard question and be logical when my heart was pounding in my chest so hard my ribs were rattling.
“Because the past will always be there.”
He took another look around my living room and I really wanted to ask what he thought, if how I’d decorated my home with Lucas was how he’d imagined our home.
But I didn’t.
And not only because he was stalking my way.
Not because I was shocked when he pulled the vase from my hand and walked it to my small, four-person round dining room table I’d bought at a yard sale, and set the flowers down.
Not because he’d turned and now he was studying me in a way that made me feel both seen and under a microscope.
I didn’t ask what he thought because I couldn’t hack his answer.
I couldn’t know what he’d imagined the home we’d share would look like.
Not without bleeding out and collapsing in a puddle of misery.
“I got your text,” he announced. “To answer your question, Cole’s fine. Minor sprain.”
Okay, what was happening?
“Glad to hear it wasn’t anything major.”
He nodded. “Right. Shay or Sally?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. I knew Shay was his ex-wife, but I didn’t know who Sally was. But she was female and I didn’t want to talk about any females in connection with Jase.
“Jase—”
“Let’s start with the easy one,” he interrupted me to declare.
I lifted my hand and waved him off. “I don’t want to do this.”
“I know you don’t. But we need to, Rae. This shit can’t sit between us anymore.
We’re no longer twenty-somethings fumbling through life, making decisions on raw emotion and immaturity.
What we had was good. It was real. It was pure and if nothing else, I want those memories back without the accompanying pain that comes from remembering the first girl I ever loved who turned into the only woman I’ve ever loved.
I want those memories to be sweet, baby.
And they can’t be that until we clear the air and untangle the mess we created. ”
I reached out to the chair in front of me to stop myself from swaying as one hit after another battered into my chest.
The only woman he ever loved?
No, that had to be a slip of the tongue. Surely, he loved his wife.
I hung my head and stared at my fingers curled around the navy-blue corduroy fabric of the cushion. Another yard sale find.
That’s what my life had turned into, taking other people’s castoffs. Not because I couldn’t save or work more to afford to buy new, but I didn’t see a reason in buying something from a store when used was perfectly fine.
God, why was I thinking about yard sales?
Because it’s what you do, you idiot. You overthink something meaningless, so you don’t have to face the painful reality of life.
Damn. My inner voice of reason had turned into a bitch.
“You’re right,” I told the chair, too afraid to look at him. “About all of it. We need to clear the air and I need to apologize.”
It was time to pay the piper.
I just hoped when I came clean, those memories he wanted weren’t completely, irrevocably screwed.