CHAPTER SEVENTEEN FALLON #3
“No, it’s... uh, it’s fine. We both kind of admitted to feeling something, and then Peter said he thought you might have had feelings for me.
I, of course, told him he was wrong, and that wasn’t the case at all.
He truly thought you were trying to make a move.
Can you believe that?” I ask, chuckling nervously.
He doesn’t answer right away.
Instead, he stares at me, and I can see something running through his mind as his jaw clenches and unclenches.
The awkward silence stretches to an unbearable length, at least unbearable for me.
I hate awkward silences, but when it happens during a nerve-racking conversation, I feel my fight-or-flight instinct start to kick in.
Right now, the flight is going to win. I’m about to call it a night, extract myself from this moment so I can bury my head in my pillow and hope for the sweet release of forgetting this conversation ever happened.
Finally, he clears his throat. “I can believe it.” Our eyes connect.
“Because it’s true, and hell, I shouldn’t be saying that to you, not right now, not right after you broke up with your boyfriend, but yeah, I have feelings for you, and I would be lying to myself if I didn’t admit it.
I’m a fool for treating you the way I did on our blind date.
You deserve so much better than anything I could offer, but yeah.
.. there are feelings on my end, and they struck me hard when I saw you with Peter.
” He wets his lips. “Watching him touch you, kiss you, claim you...” He slowly nods.
“Well, it just made me realize how much of a jealous asshole I was.”
All of the air that was once pumping in my lungs has completely vanished, and now as I attempt to breathe, I can’t seem to find any sort of oxygen.
He... he has feelings for me? Like actual feelings. Not just attraction or an offhand comment.
Peter was right?
Of course Peter was right—he’s always right. And maybe a little piece of me, even though I denied it, knew Peter was all along.
But actually hearing Sawyer say it? It’s hitting me on a whole other level.
Deep down, if I want to really admit to myself what’s been going on the last few weeks, my feelings for Sawyer have been surfacing as well.
And this is more than a crush, a pounding heart when he touches my face. This is real.
“Hell, I’m sorry,” Sawyer says. “This is the last thing you need right now, me acting like some chump, telling you how I feel. Just forget it, okay? Forget I ever said anything.” He presses his palm to his eye and rubs it. “So, about getting my finger stuck in a bottle. I was in my twenties—”
I press my hand to his leg to stop him.
When his eyes meet mine again, I hold out my hand.
He glances down and then looks back up at me, questioning.
Wanting to help him understand, I reach out and I tug on his hand.
He wets his lips as he once again checks for confirmation.
When I nod, he tentatively places his hand in mine, and I entwine our fingers before resting my head on the back of the couch.
“Okay.” I get comfortable. “Resume your story. You were in your twenties.”
A small smile plays at his lips as he reaches out with his other hand and loops a strand of my hair with his finger, playing with it.
It’s a simple touch, a small, intimate act letting me know that he’s there for me, he’s interested, and when I’m ready, he’s ready.
If I didn’t feel so guilty over Peter, I very well might lean in a little closer to him.
But holding his hand is good enough for me.
“What on earth are you doing?” Jaz asks as I pull her inside the lobby’s entryway closet, shut the door, and turn on the overhead light with one pull of the cord. The small space illuminates, and Jaz’s irritated features come into view. “What exactly are you doing?” she asks, hand on her hip.
“Shhh.” I hold my finger up to my lips. “Whisper.” The Cove is crawling with Tank’s motorcycle club, Sawyer is running from task to task, and I want to have this conversation in absolute privacy.
“Okay, why are we whispering?” she asks softly.
“I don’t want anyone to know we’re in here talking.”
“Why not?” she whispers back.
“Because I need to tell you something, but I need it to be private, and I need you to not make any loud noises that would draw any attention to us.”
It’s the next morning after the breakup and the late-night hand-holding.
Sawyer and I spent another hour on the couch before he walked me back to my room, gave me a gentle hug, and then walked over to Sully’s bedroom.
I woke up this morning to a note on the dining room table saying that he got an early run in and would start patching the wall as soon as he could with limited supplies.
He also put a heart at the end of the note.
I stuffed the note in my jean shorts and then came flying down the stairs to the lobby, where I found Jaz, and, without another thought, pulled her into the closet.
“Why aren’t we drawing attention?”
I’m not quite sure how Jaz is going to react to the news. She was never consistent in her feelings about Peter. She had her moments when she really liked him, and then there were times when she could take him or leave him.
But when it comes to Sawyer, a.k.a. Julia.
.. well, I’m pretty sure she’s not going to be thrilled about that development at all—hence why I need to trap her in this closet and swear her to normalcy, so she doesn’t create a scene in front of Tank, Sully, my dads, and all the guys from the motorcycle club.
“Now I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise me you won’t freak out.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “There’s no way in hell I’m promising that.”
“Please, Jaz. I need this weekend to go smoothly, but I have to tell you something as my best friend, and if I don’t get it off my chest, I think I might combust. But it’s something big. Something really, really big.”
Her eyes widen, and she grips my shoulders. “Oh my God, you’re pregnant.”
“What? Good God, no.”
“Oh.” Her face falls. “Then what’s so important that you have to stuff me in this old coat closet that honestly could use a clean out. What is that smell? Is that mothballs?”
“Peter and I broke up.”
Her eyes flash to mine in a hurry. “You broke up? Why? Who did the breaking up? You or him? Is that why he’s not here right now? I call dibs on the fritter I bought him—just calling it now so there isn’t any confusion.”
“That’s what you’re concerned about, the fritters?”
“I’m always concerned about fritters, but I’m concerned about you too.” She robotically pats my shoulder, her lack of maternal instincts on full display. “But are you okay? Was he the one who broke it off?”
“Why’d you assume that?”
“Well, because he was all jealous yesterday. It was frankly a little embarrassing. He was throwing a tantrum when you went to do the carpet with Julia. He asked me if anything was going on between you two, and of course I said no, but that didn’t seem to satisfy him.
I just assumed it would have been too much for him, and he called it quits. Is that what happened?”
“Well, sort of. We both kind of called it off. It was amicable. And in the end, there was no tension. We just... we outgrew each other. We’ve changed a lot since we first met, and I think that set in last night, when we finally got it all out in the open.”
“Makes sense. I’ve seen the downfall coming for quite some time, but I wasn’t about to put that thought in your head. Better for you to realize it on your own.”
“What do you mean you could see it coming? For how long?”
“Months,” Jaz answers, sticking her hand out in front of her and examining her nails. “I could see you pulling away, talking about him less, not getting upset when he couldn’t make it up for the weekend. The fact that you weren’t able to tell him you love him. Just a culmination of small things.”
“Oh... I wonder if Peter noticed those things.”
“Clearly he noticed something if he was good with the breakup.” She looks up from her nails, concern in her eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I am. Surprisingly. I think you were right—it was coming for months now, and it finally happened last night. I feel guilty that I might have been stringing him along.”
“You weren’t stringing him along. I just don’t think you understood your feelings, and that’s okay—it takes time to work out those things.
But I’ll be honest, that news isn’t really closet worthy.
You could have told me that in front of Miss Daphne Lynn Pearlbottom, and we wouldn’t have had an issue. ”
Yeah, she very well might be right, but that’s not the big news. That’s not why we’re in the closet. It’s what I have to tell her next.
“I held Sawyer’s hand last night.”
“What?” she shouts.
“Shhhhh.” I clamp my hand over her mouth. I knew it was smart to hide away. “Come on, Jaz. I told you to be quiet.”
She swats my hand away, and her eyes blaze with questions. I steel myself.
“You can’t tell me that you held Julia’s hand last night and expect me to act chill about it,” she whispers, angrily.
“That is not something to be chill about. That’s something to.
.. to...” Before I can decipher what she’s going to do, her hands connect with my shoulders, and she pushes me into the wall of the closet.
I knock into it with a clunk and look at her, startled. “What was that for?”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her hands out, startled just as much as me. She pushed me... into a wall. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. Julia? You held Julia’s hand? When? Was Peter still there? Is that really why you broke up?”
“Oh my God, no. I would never do that. It was after.” I swallow hard. “Like right after. He was in the kitchen when I said bye to Peter, we started talking, he told me that he has feelings for me, and then—”