Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
C harlie slammed the door to Jacks open. Cassie, Penny, and Kelley glanced up from their spot at the bar where they sat, looking over wedding magazines.
“I need vodka, and I need it now.” Tears clogged her throat, making the decree less demanding and more pathetic than she’d intended. Kelley hurried to acquiesce to her request, because she was a bomb-ass bartender and an amazing friend.
“Oh, sweetie.” Cassie wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “I take it things didn’t go well?”
Her friends knew all about her relationship with Luc and his radio silence over the past week because she’d gotten sad and tipsy a few evenings ago at girls’ night and spilled the beans. They also knew she planned on confronting him today. Hence their presence. They’d all agreed to wait here for her to come explain the situation or text with a “can’t make it, too busy with making up!”
Damn. She’d been really hoping for the second option.
She sniffed, swiping vigorously at a rogue tear that dared to escape and run down her cheek. Shit! She’d been so sure Luc had a good excuse for dodging her this week. He wasn’t a cruel person. The man didn’t wham, bam, thank-you ma’am like some of the guys she’d dated. In fact, he was nothing like any guy she’d ever been with. Maybe that’s why it felt as though her heart was being pulled out her throat with a rusty fishhook. She’d been so sure this thing with him was different. So sure she was different. That she mattered.
But it was all a lie.
Sure, he had to deal with his father and that horrible situation.
An alcoholic. No wonder he always got all strange around booze and had that weird reaction when he found out I co-own a bar.
Poor guy. She had no idea what it was like to grow up with something like that. To watch a loved one hurt themselves on a daily basis and be utterly helpless to stop them. It had to suck big time. But it was no excuse for what he’d done. There were twenty-four hours in a day and one-hundred and ninety-two in eight days. Plenty of time to pick up a phone or shoot off a text.
But this wasn’t about that anymore. She could deal with him not contacting her. He had a stressful week. She got that. A forgivable slip up. What she couldn’t do was be with a person who didn’t see her as a whole partner. Someone to lean on, share the load. She could be useful, dammit! If only he let her. But no. Luc didn’t need her. No one did.
Story of her life.
“Here ya go, sweetie.” Kelley slid a lowball glass with a large round ice sphere, twist of lime, and a generous pour of vodka across the bar.
“Thanks.” Grabbing the glass, she tipped it back and drank a hefty swallow. The smooth clean alcohol barely left an impression on her tongue. All she could taste was a slight sting and the citrus. The sign of good vodka was the ability to taste almost nothing, and the Jackson family made the best vodka in Colorado.
“Tell us what happened.”
Cassie moved her arm from around Charlie’s shoulders, grasping her hand instead as Charlie started in on her visit to the hospital. She skipped over the bit about Luc’s father being an alcoholic. The information didn’t feel right to share even if the guy was being a complete jackass. She wasn’t so gone in her misery to retaliate by sharing something so private. Instead, she simply told them his father had some problems and when she offered, he’d shut her down.
“Yeah, but that’s just guys, sweetie. They never think they need help. The boneheads.” Cassie shook her head. “Del spent two hours driving around Denver because he got lost and didn’t know where a concert venue was, and he refused to ask me to look up directions because it was a surprise to see my favorite band. Luckily, we only missed the opening acts, but if he would have asked me to map it, we wouldn’t have missed anything.”
Penny nodded. “Last week BJ ruined a cake he tried to make me. It was very sweet, I was craving an angel food cake, but the store didn’t have it so he tried to make it for me, only he couldn’t get the recipe right. I offered to help, but he wanted to do it himself. It didn’t taste very good, but it was sweet of him to try.”
“But those were both romantic reasons for not wanting help.” She shook her head at her friends. “They were being sweet, in their own stupid, pigheaded ways. Luc…he doesn’t want my help. He doesn’t need me.”
Which was fine. She didn’t need to be needed. It would be nice. For once to have someone who saw her as an imperative part of their life. Sure, her mother and brothers loved her. They needed her to do the accounting for the distillery and restaurant. They wanted her in their lives. But she wasn’t the first person they wanted to see in the morning. The one they went to with news, good and bad. The person they leaned on, celebrated with, shared the deepest and darkest aspects of their very being. She wasn’t the other half of their piece. Dammit, she wanted to be someone’s other half. She thought she might be Luc’s. He sure as hell felt like hers.
“Sometimes, you just have to give a person their space. Man or woman,” Kelley said, a tight frown turning down her dark red lips. “As much as it sucks and rips you to tiny little pieces inside, sometimes the people you love are too scared to face what you have together, and you have to let them live without it and hope like hell they realize their mistake and come back to you.”
Feeling even more like crap now, she released the death grip she had on her glass and grasped Kelley’s hand. How could she have forgotten her friend was going through a rough patch as well? Now she felt like a real Jackasson. “She’ll come back.”
The woman nodded. “And so will he. If he ever gets his head out of his ass and realizes what a mistake he made, that is.”
She let out a watery laugh, releasing her friend’s hand and lifting her drink. “To idiots with their heads up their ass. May they pull them out and take a good long shower before commencing their groveling.”
Everyone raised their glasses, Kelley and Cassie also enjoying a vodka and lime, Penny with a ginger ale. They clinked, chanting together, “To idiots!”
For the next few hours, until the tasting room opened, the women sat and talked. They had one more drink before switching to waters. It was the middle of the day after all and though she was hurting, she didn’t want to hurt more by inducing a massive hangover.
Her heart still ached, but some of the pain was soothed away by the wonderful friendships surrounding her. But when Jacks opened, Kelley had to work. Penny had a craving and went to the restaurant to eat. Cassie had some deliveries to make, leaving Charlie, once again, the odd one out. She went back to her office. Alone. She had work to do. Tons. But she made no move to turn on her computer. Didn’t flip open any files. Left the paperwork on her desk where it was.
The growing twinge in her chest began to spread throughout her entire body. Her mind started to fill with doubt. What if letting Luc go was the wrong thing to do? What if he didn’t come back to her? Should she have stayed and fought? Demanded he allow her to help him?
Normally that was what she did in any situation. Insist she was right and to have her way. It didn’t always work. Her bonehead brothers ignored her left and right, but that was okay because they loved her, and she could demand and yell without fear of losing them. But she had no idea how Luc felt about her. He cared to some degree, she knew that, but did he love her?
She had no freaking clue.
And for once in her life, the fear of receiving an answer she didn’t want held her back. Because if she admitted she loved Luc, opened herself up, exposed her very soul to him and he didn’t feel the same?
It would destroy her.