23. Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Three
I was engaged. The words just came out of Kade's mouth before he could stop them, and he feels as stunned as Jess looks.
Jess opens and closes her mouth a few times before finally saying, "You were what?"
"What are the chances we can just forget I said that?"
"About as good as the odds of me ever stepping foot in your kitchen again," she says and shakes her head, moving to sit on the couch. "When was this? And to who?"
Sighing, he stands and turns towards the door. He can't look at her right now. Not when he talks about Sam. "It ended about six years ago."
"Huh."
It's not a question but a statement. He just dropped a giant bomb, and she can just say "huh." It's actually kind of fitting.
"It's the reason I said I wasn't a commitment guy. After things ended the disastrous way they did, I swore I'd never go through it again."
"I can see that," she says, her voice still filled with stunned disbelief. "Is this what you meant when you said one day you hope you can explain it so I can understand?"
"Yup."
She stays silent, and he almost wants to turn around to look at her. To see if her face gives away anything she might be thinking, but just as he's about to, she asks, "Can I ask what happened?"
Running a hand over his face, he finally turns to look at her. "I'll tell you, and you can ask whatever questions you want as long as you promise me one thing."
"What's that?"
"After tonight, we never talk about Sam again. This is a one-time conversation."
Her body leans back against the couch, and she nods her head slowly. "Okay."
Kade moves to sit back down in the recliner, and his eyes can't meet hers. "Before I jump into that, I think it's probably necessary to remind you about the deep-rooted abandonment issues I have that likely could use some therapy because of what happened with my parents."
Jess is one of the few people in his life who knows everything about his parents. How his father got drunk and flew into a jealous rage before killing his mother and fleeing the county before running his beat-up jeep into a ravine. How he wishes his father would have killed himself, too, instead of having everything dragged through the courts before he finally took a plea and was sentenced to twenty years to life.
The truth is, without Jess, he probably wouldn't have survived his father being released from prison. He told her everything, and she only asked questions when he became disoriented and fell off the linear path of the story. But more than that, she's never brought it up again. Not even when she had every right to call him out for his abandonment issues.
"I know," Jess says, her voice barely above a whisper.
Kade looks at her, and he can't help but laugh at how she looks as nervous as he feels. "Okay, well, we both know that I have a difficult time trusting people and letting them in. All the way in, anyway. I pass it off and blame my father, but there's more than that. I met a girl in high school, and I fell head over heels for her. We started dating junior year, and I was convinced I'd spend the rest of my life with her."
"And her name was Sam?"
"How'd you know?"
"Uh… you said that after tonight, we can never talk about Sam again. I assumed."
Chuckling, he sniffles. "Yeah, that's her name."
"It's a pretty name."
"She fit in with my life and my family. She got along with my best friend back then, Zach. The three of us did everything together, and sometimes, when he had a girlfriend, we'd add a fourth. We planned our entire future, and we all went to the same college."
"You stayed together through college?" Jess asks. "That's really impressive."
He laughs. "It wasn't always easy, but I was so in love with her. She knew everything about my past, and she was there on every anniversary of Mom's death. We lost our virginity to each other at senior prom, and I held her hand through two pregnancy scares. She came with me to my dad's parole hearings when I spoke up to keep his ass in prison, and I supported her when she defied her parents' wishes. They wanted her to be a doctor like everyone else in her family, but she wanted to go into finance."
"You sound like a perfect match."
"You'd think so," he says and looks at the ground. "When we graduated college, she needed to find a job. She wasn't getting any hits, so I talked to Zach to have him see if his dad could pull strings to hire Sam. His dad runs one of the largest investment firms in the state."
Moving to the end of the couch, she sits closer to him and takes his hand. "Were you engaged at the time?"
"No," he says, gripping her hand and shaking his head. His eyes lock on their hands, and he feels a little stronger than he did a moment before. "She got the job, and we all went out to celebrate. I told Zach he was a lifesaver because the only other option she had was to start looking out of state, and I just started at my job. Drew had just found out Sarah was pregnant, and I couldn't leave. It would've had to be a long-distance relationship."
"You make it sound like he came in clutch, but I have a feeling he wasn't as good of a friend to you as you were to him."
He laughs, still staring at their hands. Her attempt to comfort him and give him strength means more than he could ever find the words to express to her. "Two years after we graduated, I proposed. We'd been together for almost eight years, and I wanted to start a life together. Get married, have kids, buy a house, and be happy. Have the family I felt I was always robbed of. When she said yes, I don't remember ever being happier than I was in that moment."
Her hand squeezes his, but Jess doesn't say a word. He stops and swallows, and he knows she's letting him share at his own pace. He's thankful for her patience.
"We had a long engagement. Her parents didn't support her decision to go into finance instead of medicine, and they refused to pay for the wedding. They didn't like how I stood behind her when she defied them, and I had next to nothing to fall back on. She just started in her career, and she wasn't making much. We decided to postpone the wedding and save up."
"Smart."
"I thought everything was good. We moved into an apartment together in a not-so-great part of town because we wanted to save as much money as we could as quickly as we could. She didn't know it, but I squirreled away extra money with overtime to pay for the down payment on the condo I live in now. It was going to be my wedding present to her. She loved it when we were looking at places, and she said she wanted to live in a place just like that."
Jess shifts their hands and interlocks her fingers with his. "And she seemed fine at home?"
"Yeah, it felt like we were happy. We never really fought or even argued, and we had sex three or four times a week. Even to this day, I can't look back and find a single moment where I think I should have known she wasn't happy . That one moment in time when I could say I knew we weren't solid."
"Nothing you're describing screams problematic."
"Which is why I was blindsided when I learned she was messing around behind my back. I found out five months before we were set to walk down the aisle."
Gasping, she stares at him with wide eyes, her mouth open. His eyes glance up to her face, and he both loves and hates the pain she shows. The pain for his pain. "How'd you find out?"
"I didn't have to go into work until later in the day because of an appointment. I don't remember what it was now, but Sam was running late. We had sex in the shower that morning, and we lost track of time. She left without her phone, which I found when I heard it chime. Realizing she probably needed it for work, I grabbed it to drive it to her."
"It was Zach, wasn't it?"
Kade nods. "The text from him told her what hotel room he was in that night. She told me she had to stay late for a work meeting, and he'd told her to wear the black panty set he bought her."
"That's oddly specific," she mutters.
Laughing dryly, he nods. "Instead of bringing her phone to her, I went through her messages. I'd never felt like I needed to before, but I should have. There were messages between them. Plans, talking about things they'd done, how they couldn't wait to see each other again, and then there were the many, many pictures exchanged. Pictures she never thought to send to me that I would've loved getting."
"And this was five months before you were supposed to get married?"
He nods again. "Yep, I called in sick to work, skipped whatever appointment it was I had, and I went looking through her dresser. She had an entire drawer of panties and lingerie I'd never seen before, and I found the black number he mentioned with the price tags still on them. I took them, set them on the coffee table, and waited with her phone next to it, knowing she had to come back to get it eventually."
"You confronted her? What happened?" Jess asks, her eyes as wide as saucers now.
Kade finds a strange comfort in her, and her eyes look so concerned for him. She sits on the edge of her seat, waiting for him to tell her what happened next. Her hand grips his tightly, and he feels her pulse racing. The fact he thought he could live without this beautiful blonde, green-eyed beauty makes him realize how stupid he really is.
"She walked in and found me sitting there."
"She knew you knew?"
Nodding, he can't tear his eyes from hers. "Yep. She asks if Zach had texted, and I told her he had. I grabbed the panty set he wanted her to wear in case she wanted to go change. She sat down and asked if I'd gone through their text history, and I said yes. She was so matter-of-fact, I wanted to punch the wall."
"She wasn't sorry?"
"No, she wasn't. I asked what the hell this was, and she said she'd fallen for Zach. They hooked up a couple of times in college when I was home for the weekend for family things, and he understood what she wanted from life in a way I never could. They'd been sleeping together for close to five years at this point and carried on an entire relationship behind my back."
Jess blinks and sighs. "I don't know what to say, Kade. Nothing seems like it conveys the right sentiment."
"I know."
"Was she going to call off the wedding at some point? And how long before you walked down the aisle was she planning to wait?"
He laughs. "That's what I asked her. I found out less than six months before we were supposed to be married that she was in love with someone else. She said she never had any intention of running off with the best man or calling off the wedding."
"What?"
"She said the last thing she wanted to do was hurt me, which is why she and Zach never planned to tell me. I asked her what it was I was lacking to make her seek something from somewhere else, and she said there was nothing. We just weren't her long-term goal, but she knew I had abandonment issues."
The moment he says the words, he realizes how similar they are to questions Jess asked him the night after she caught him with Lena. And he'd given her the same messed up answers Sam had given him.
"Wait," Jess says, interrupting his thoughts. "This woman basically said there was nothing this guy, who was supposed to be your best friend, did or had that you didn't? She just felt he was who she was meant to end up with, but she never said anything because she knew you'd have an issue with being left?"
Kade smiles. "Yeah, basically."
"Bitch," she mutters. "Sorry, I know I don't know her, but that sounds like something a bitch would do."
Lifting her hand to his lips, he kisses it. "You can call her whatever you want to. She was going to have her cake and eat it, too. Marry me and carry on a relationship with Zach. I think she wanted to get caught. It made it easier that I found out and left her rather than having the tough conversation to confess what she’d done."
"She got to skip the hard part of breaking your heart."
"I left that night and never came back to the apartment. After I left, I met Zach at the hotel, where he told her he was and beat him within an inch of his life. I took off, crashed my truck, and he had me arrested. He dropped the charges when his father learned of the situation and told him how terrible the publicity would be. And I swore I'd never let anyone get close enough to be able to hurt me like that again because it destroyed me."
"I know the feeling."
Kade nods and cups her face. "I never planned to let anyone in again, and then you happened. Getting attached to you was never part of my plan, and when I woke up one morning to realize it, I panicked. Then I made a stupid mistake, and you left me. Which was well deserved, and it set me on a path to figure out what the hell I actually wanted. I realized I wanted you, but I wasn't ready to be the man you needed yet. I never dealt with what happened with Sam until then, and that's why it took me months to reach out to you."
"I understand. Normally, I don't say this, but I kind of hate your ex. She ruined things for you, and it's not fair. You deserve so much better than she ever gave you."
He laughs. "And for you. Jess, I'm trying. I really am. I just need you to give me a little grace as I figure it all out again. It's been so long since I let myself want a future with someone, and I'm not really sure how to handle all of the feelings that come with it. But I can do commitment. There's just a fear of being hurt like I was that I needed to get over. And the thought of you with anyone else drives me absolutely crazy."
"What happened with Sam and Zach? Did they end up together?"
"Married with two kids. She's the CFO of his father's company while he's the President. She got the life she wanted with the man she wanted it with."
"I was hoping Zach dumped her, and she got fat. That sounds like a better ending than getting what she wants. I might just pretend that's what happened instead."
Rubbing his thumbs on her cheeks, he licks his lips. "Can you please give me a chance? A real chance? I don't blame you for being apprehensive and questioning if you can trust me again, but I promise, I'm trying. And I'm going to keep trying until you tell me to go to hell. I just need an opportunity to show you rather than just tell you."
She stares into his eyes, and he feels like time all but stopped as he waits for her answer.