Chapter Nine
Dylan
I gave Jamie a day. One single day after she got back from Montreal to come to her senses and pick up the phone.
The call never came.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. She never thought of me in the way I wanted her to. Which made it all the more maddening that I still thought of her as often as I did.
I was back at her front door, waiting for someone to answer. This time, my stomach wasn’t in knots, and my head was definitely not in the fucking clouds.
I was just mad. Really fucking mad.
When she opened the door, the hint of guilt on her face did nothing to cool me down.
“Dylan. I was going to call you.”
“Sure you were. Right after you thought up a bullshit excuse to feed me about why you ran off with my kid again.” I didn’t even try to keep the acid out of my tone.
She stepped back, arms crossing, pink coloring her cheeks. “I didn’t run off—”
“Stop.” I was done listening to her spin her selfish fucking actions.
How many times had she called me inconsiderate, told me I hadn’t tried hard enough, said I was to blame for not having built a better relationship with Hunter from the start?
Too fucking many.
No more.
“Please come inside so we can talk about this like adults.” I knew every move she had—the hair, the hips, the softened voice. None of it was going to work today.
I followed her to the kitchen and stayed on my feet when she offered me a chair.
Mojo came bounding in before either of us could speak, and I crouched to scratch behind his ears, grateful for the interruption. “Where’s Hunter?”
“He’s at the park…” She bit her lip, a worried frown settling over her face. “With Eric.”
“Good.”
She looked stunned. Like she’d expected me to snap about my son spending more time with the man I considered my nemesis.
“I need to say something, and I need you to actually hear it this time.”
“All right, I’m listening.” Her gaze dropped to Mojo as he trotted off to his bed.
“What you did was shitty.” My throat was tight, but I forced out the words I’d been practicing for days.
“I don’t care why you did it. I don’t care if you’re sorry.
I need you to understand that he’s my kid too.
You want me to be more involved—you’ve begged me for it.
And I want that too, but every time I show up, you find a new way to lock me out. ”
I raked a hand through my hair, breathing deep. “When are you going to let me be the father you keep asking me to be?”
The words hung between us. I’d said them a hundred times in my head, in the car, in the shower, at three in the morning when sleep wouldn’t come. They’d never sounded this raw out loud.
She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the floor.
The floor, where three days ago Chantel had been half-naked, after coming apart under my mouth. Fuck.
I dragged my attention back to Jamie.
“I’m sorry,” she said, voice cracking. “I’ve never tried to keep you from him. I know it feels that way, but that was never my intention.”
“Your intentions don’t change what happened, Jamie.” I kept my voice level. Losing it would only give her an out. “I had plans with my son. Plans he was looking forward to. And you took that from him without a second thought about how it might affect either of us.”
She flinched. “You’re right. I handled it badly.”
“You’ve handled a lot of things badly when it comes to me.” There was no heat behind the words, just fact, and somehow that made it sound even worse. “I’ve been trying to figure out for years why that is. Whether it’s something I did. Or something I am…”
Something neither of us had ever acknowledged out loud.
I liked women and men, but I’d loved Jamie most. In the end, that should’ve been all that mattered.
It hadn’t. Not to her. And I’d spent years shrinking that part of myself to fit inside the space she was comfortable with. Biting my tongue, guarding every glance, performing a version of myself that was easier for everyone else to swallow.
But I was the one choking on it.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I do care about you, Dylan. I just—”
“I know you do. In your own way.” I held her watery gaze. “But caring about me and respecting me aren’t the same thing. And I need you to respect me as Hunter’s father. That’s all I’m asking.”
The silence that followed was different from the ones we usually shared—less charged, less weighted with everything unsaid between us.
“I guess it’s just hard for me to let go,” she said finally, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “But I promise…I’ll do better.”
Her soft voice, the tears, the arms pulled tight around her middle—all of it should have done something to me. Six months ago, it would have. I’d have read into it, filed it away as progress, convinced myself it meant there was hope for us. For a future.
Now, it didn’t do a thing.
My mind was already somewhere else. On the kitchen floor, with Chantel and the sounds she’d made, the way she’d held onto me like a lifeline, the relief when she took my orders without question.
And on a frosty car ride with Sean, the way he’d gone soft and willing under my hands, no expectations attached to any of it.
No history. No damage. No carefully maintained distance between who I was at my core and the person I was supposed to be.
Jamie looked up at me, like she was waiting for me to say something that would put us back on familiar ground. The push and pull we’d been doing since we were teenagers.
I didn’t give it to her.
I'd spent half my life trying to be the man she could love. Pretending I didn't want what I wanted. Swallowing every honest thing I could've said about who I was and what I needed, because I was terrified that saying it out loud would be the thing that finally made her stop loving me for good.
It never occurred to me that she'd stopped already. That the pieces of myself I'd been hiding were the parts that might have made her stay.
Or maybe they wouldn't have. Maybe she would have left anyway. But at least I'd have been honest about who I was while I lost her.
Either way, I was done lying.
“Take care of yourself, Jamie.” I straightened and called Mojo over one last time, giving him a final scratch. “And tell Hunter I’ll see him on the weekend. I’m taking him to a movie.”
I walked out without looking back.