Chapter 37
JESSE
Jacque was still the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen in my life. Even if she did look as wrecked as I felt.
Damp dark hair curled around her shoulders, wetting the top and back of her shirt like she might only just have gotten out of the shower when I’d arrived.
Those golden brown eyes were completely devoid of any makeup, her skin glowing slightly, as if she’d just scrubbed it, but she still looked tired. Worn out.
Absolutely nothing about her told me she’d been expecting this visit, but the way she looked at me after I’d asked if we could talk made it seem like she’d been bracing for it nonetheless.
“Thank you,” she said finally, glancing down at Hubert by her side. “I mean it, Jesse. Thank you. For all of this.”
“It’s your dog,” I said. “He belongs with you, not stuck in some tiny house on the other side of the world.”
“I know, but you didn’t have to do this for me, so…” She trailed off. “Just, uh, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I meant it, too. What that man had done was vile.
Someone had to set it right, and while I’d like to think that I’d have done this for anyone who had such a disgusting act perpetrated against them, it’d been absolutely nothing compared to the lengths I’d go to for her. “How have you been?”
She hesitated for a moment before she turned, waving me with her to the living room as she headed for the couch. Hubert moved with her like a shadow, immediately curling up on her feet once she sat down.
“Jane came to see me” she said quietly. “Did you know about that?”
I shook my head, taking the seat across from her no matter how much I wanted to be next to her instead. “I really didn’t. What did she want? I’m assuming, since you brought it up now, you’re not talking about a meeting you had with her for work.”
“No, not work.” She folded her fingers in her lap and started fidgeting with them, pausing for a long minute before she finally looked at me again. “She said Alex is looking into the probate case that affected my family so heavily back when I was little.”
I frowned. “He is?”
Jacque pushed her hand into Hubert’s fur, but her gaze swept across my face like she was trying to figure out if I was lying. “You really didn’t know?”
“No,” I said honestly. “I didn’t.”
When I’d asked Jane, Alex, and Nate for that information, it’d been so that I could understand what had happened. Whatever Jacque had dealt with growing up had obviously made her unbelievably paranoid and suspicious of my family. I had to know what had been done to her.
I hadn’t actually expected them to do anything about it, though, and I’d been a little too preoccupied with the international dog retrieval to have done anything with it myself until now. Sliding a hand around the nape of my neck, I squeezed the muscles there and then shook my head again.
“I swear, it didn’t come from me,” I said. “All I did was ask them to look into it. You told me about an inheritance you didn’t get, but I was light on the details. I didn’t think he’d follow through on whatever he found.”
Her expression softened. “Jane said that they are.”
I nodded slowly, part of me hoping it was because Alex cared enough about me to step in instead of doing it just because he was a control freak. It was also possible that he had some kind of bigger plan, but I was really hoping this time, it was only because it mattered to me.
I didn’t say that out loud, though. “I’m glad they’re on it. If anyone can fix something like that, it’s them.”
She held my gaze for a moment longer before she looked down. “I like you, Jesse.”
Although the words were quiet, they hit me like a hurricane and I sucked in a breath, but I’d also heard them before. Our feelings hadn’t mattered then and I doubted anything had changed.
Still, the corners of my mouth twitched upward. “Well, I guess that’s good. It would’ve made this very awkward otherwise.”
A quiet laugh slid out of her, but unfortunately, there wasn’t much humor in it and my chest constricted. This is not shaping up to be a declaration of undying love.
“I mean it, Jesse. I really do like you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Her fingers tightened slightly in Hubert’s fur. “Do you? Do you know that I like you for you, not for your money, or your fame, or your power. It’s not about any of that for me.”
Despite knowing better, I got so close to being relieved, I could almost taste it, but the fact that she didn’t exactly look happy right now told me there was a but coming. Seconds later, she proved me right.
“But—”
I cursed under my breath. “There’s always a but. Why is there a but?”
“Just hear me out.” She looked up at me again, tears swimming in her eyes and a sad smile on her lips. “The but is that I don’t need you, and I’m not saying that to push you away. It’s just the truth.”
My chest felt like it was about to cave in, but if there was one thing I’d known about Jacqueline Calhoun since the very first moment I’d laid eyes on her, it was that she really didn’t need me. “I respect that. In fact, I admire it.”
Her eyes searched mine like she was trying to see if I actually understood. “I can take care of myself. I’ve always taken care of myself.”
“I know that too.”
She lowered her chin in a curt nod and averted her gaze again. “That being said, I can’t sit here and pretend like I could bring anything to the table in your world.”
I frowned. “Jesus, Jacque. That’s not—”
“It is,” she cut in, her voice firm, but not harsh. Just factual. Naturally, that made it worse because she wasn’t wrong. “Your family isn’t like mine. They don’t operate the same way. Everything is strategic with you, a calculated move to advance either the company or the name.”
While I wished it wasn’t true, I didn’t argue because I couldn’t. So I just sat there, feeling like a tool.
“They marry for reasons other than love,” she said quietly. “So far, your brothers have gotten lucky and found it anyway, but every last one of them was willing to live with someone he didn’t love for the rest of his life and their wives agreed to it too.”
As soon as the L-word rolled off her tongue, it hit me like a punch to the chest. The rest of it blurred, but that one word kept ricocheting around my brain.
“What that means is that while I can take care of myself and I don’t need anything from you, I can’t offer them anything either,” she said, continuing without knowing that she’d already broken me. “I can’t offer you anything that fits into that world.”
Jerked back to reality by that little nugget of wisdom, I stared at her and the only thing I could think was that she was wrong this time. So completely, unbelievably wrong.
“You don’t have to offer them anything,” I said. “Why would you even think that?”
“Because that’s how it works, Jesse. You can’t just say that I don’t have to bring anything to the table and will it to become true.”
“Yeah, okay, but that’s not what I’m doing,” I countered. “Because that’s not how it works. You really don’t have to offer them anything.”
“I would have to, but it’s more than that.
” She lifted her gaze back to mine. “If I was absolutely convinced that you’d be happy with someone normal for the rest of your life, then maybe it wouldn’t matter so much.
Maybe you and I could take the chance, but I’m not convinced.
I honestly don’t think you would be happy. For now, maybe, but not forever.”
Normal. Fuck, what a joke. Nothing about her has ever felt normal to me. Nothing about this either. Being with her? Really not normal.
I wanted to tell her that. The words filled my throat and pressed at the back of my tongue to tell her that none of this shit she was worried about mattered. Not my family, or their expectations, or what everyone else had done. Not any of it.
The only thing that mattered to me was her. Her happiness.
Love.
The word jumped back into my mind and I really, desperately wanted to say it. Just to put it out there. Right now, there was nothing I wanted more than to tell her how I felt. Let her know that she was it for me.
If I thought she was ready to hear it, I’d have done it. Just laid it all out there for her, but I swallowed it back instead. Jacque really believed what she was saying about me and about my family, and after finding out how her own mother had been treated, I couldn’t even blame her.
The Westwoods in Europe had been terrible to them. The more I learned, the more sick I felt. It wasn’t just the inheritance. Obviously, that had been a huge injustice and the court case had been nasty as fuck. Some of the stuff Nate had said had come out during that trial had been awful.
She was sitting on a lifetime of trauma caused by people I was related to. Clearly, it would take more than just some pretty words to make her believe she was wrong about us, in general, but also just about me.
I couldn’t blame her for what she thought about me either, though. While I’d felt the changes happening inside over the last couple months, she hadn’t—and a few months ago, she would’ve been right. I would’ve gotten bored sooner or later.
But saying any of that now would only wreck whatever fragile balance we still had, so instead of simply laying it all out and pleading my case, I dragged in a breath and did the one thing that felt even harder.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “Then tell me how to fix it.”
“Jesse…” She trailed off, somehow looking even sadder as she shook her head and started fidgeting with her hands again.
“What?” I asked gently. “Just tell me what you need. Tell me what I have to do and I’ll do it.”
Tears filled her eyes when she looked up at me. “You don’t have to do anything, Jess. There’s nothing to fix.”
I shook my head, a deep ache starting to build in my chest. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” she said, confidently enough that it cut straight through me. “Being together was supposed to be fake. That’s how this started.”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“There’s nothing for us past this point,” she said quietly. “Deep down, you know that.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I think we both knew this wasn’t sustainable.”
I blew out a heavy breath. Sustainable. God, I hate that word right now.
It sounded so logical. Reasonable and safe. Not wrong, though.
I let out a dry laugh. “I wanted to do it right, you know?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I wanted to follow tradition for once,” I said, glancing back at her. “I wanted to prove I’m not the irresponsible jackass who skirts around responsibility every chance he gets anymore.”
Her expression softened, but she didn’t interrupt.
“But in the end, I let that box me into something. I let it turn me into someone I’m not and I roped you into it with me.
” I scoffed, my head dropping as I rolled my lips into my mouth for a beat.
“I like who I am with you, Jacque. That’s not something I’ve ever really said before, but in this case, with you, it’s true. You make it easy to just be me.”
Her lips parted slightly, like she was about to say something, but I knew before she even verbalized the thought that it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “I’m sorry, Jesse, but that’s not enough.”
And there it is, the final thought. The only thing that matters.
Even though it felt like my chest cracked open, I nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
Nothing I said would change where she stood or what she believed, so I let out a long, slow breath and forced myself to sound less like I felt that the world was ending. “For the record, I still think you’re wrong.”
The smallest hint of a smile ghosted across her lips.
“I know, but I just don’t think I am and I just got out of an eight-year relationship.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t let the same things happen again.
I can’t be with someone I’m not a hundred and ten percent sure is as committed to me as I am to them, and I can’t allow myself to disappear into someone else’s life again. ”
I sighed but nodded and pushed to my feet, shoving my hands into my pockets as I met her eyes. “I’m always going to be here for you, Jacque. I mean that. Whatever you need, whenever you need it, I’m here.”
She swallowed hard. “Thanks, Jesse.”
“We started as friends, right? It would be a shame to lose that too.”
It sounded easier than it felt, but I’d rather have her in my life in a different capacity than not have her there at all.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “It would.”
Fuck, she looks sad.
If she’d been angry, I could’ve worked with it. If she’d been cold, I could’ve pushed, but I didn’t know how to fight this quiet, resigned, profound sadness.
I held her gaze for a second longer, every instinct in me screaming to say it. To just tell her that I was in love with her, but if everything she’d said was true and she already believed there was nothing for us, then telling her the truth would only make it harder to walk away.
For both of us.
“Take care of him,” I said instead, nodding toward Hubert, who was still lying on her feet.
She gave me a small, shaky smile. “I will.”
I backed toward the door, every movement feeling heavy, but I pushed through anyway. “Goodbye, Jacqueline.”
“I’ll see you later,” she said. “Thanks again, Jesse.”
“Yeah.” I reached for the door, pausing for half a second before opening it. I really wasn’t ready to do that, but I did it anyway.
She’d made her choice and I had to respect that, so I finally reached for it and pulled it open. I stepped out into the hallway and shut it behind me.
After everything, it was hard to believe that it was over just like that, but at least she had Hubert back. At least I’d done that for her and I’d do it again. All of it, a million times over, as long as I got to see her smile the way she had when that dog had launched himself at her.
Tonight, Jacque was happy, and as long as that was true, I could live with it.