Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JACKSON
Helsinki, Finland
The line moves slowly as an older couple passes through the gate and onto the passenger boarding bridge, but I’m almost to the front when I hear my name yelled loudly from behind me.
I’d recognize that voice anywhere. So I do what I think will protect me, and will protect my heart—I ignore it and start to hand my ticket to the gate agent.
“Jackson, please,” Nate pants next to me, his breath coming in short spurts.
“I need to get on my flight,” I say, turning toward him and letting my hand with the ticket fall to my side.
“Please. Just step out of line for a minute so I can talk to you. Don’t leave like this.” His voice is right on the edge of begging.
“Don’t leave like this?” I bark out a laugh. “Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”
Leaving is his specialty.
“Ma’am,” the gate agent says to me. “Would you mind stepping out of line so I can let these other passengers on the plane?”
I’m so flustered as I glance at the line that’s formed behind me, with all their eyes on me and Nate, that I mumble “of course” and step toward him, when what I really should have done was given her my ticket and walked down the jetway.
I should have walked toward Marco, who is waiting on the other end of that flight, and not toward Nate, who doesn’t deserve me.
He takes my arm and gently leads me to the side where there’s a little space near a wall of glass overlooking the tarmac. The airport lights sparkle in the darkness, and I keep my eyes trained on the plane instead of looking at Nate.
“Hey,” he says, tucking his knuckles under my chin and tilting my head toward him. “Why did you disappear?”
“I had a plane to catch.” I shrug. In reality I’d made sure that the entire trip from Levi to Helsinki I was engaged in conversation with someone that wasn’t Nate, then slipped away from the rest of the team the minute we got through security.
I’ve been hiding in the AirFrance priority lounge for the last hour and a half, hopeful I could get on the plane without having to have this conversation with Nate.
“Jackson,” he says, ripping me out of my thoughts. “You know that I wanted last night to happen as much as you did, right?”
My eyes narrow. “I didn’t want last night to happen,” I lie. “That was the alcohol speaking. So thank you for saving me from making a huge mistake.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” he says, his eyebrows dipping low as he considers my words.
“That’s on you.” I shrug. “I’m being honest here and you’re refusing to take me at my word.”
“There’s no way I can take you at your word when every single thing about your body is screaming something different,” he says, looking down at me.
And that’s when I realize how close I’m leaning into him, and that he can see through my thin sweater that my nipples have hardened in response to his proximity.
Ugh. My body is a traitor. I’ve spent all day furious at myself for letting my attraction to him get the best of me.
Again. And here he is next to me and my body is already reacting the way it always does, always has, when he is around.
The further I am from him, the better for everyone. Especially Marco.
“I came back because of you,” he says again.
“Please don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Make it seem like we could ever care about each other like that again.”
“Did we ever stop?” he asks, taking a step closer so that he’s only inches from me. I can feel his breath on my forehead, a warm caress, and my body aches to curl in and get wrapped up in him where I belong.
No, I tell myself, that’s definitely not where you belong.
“Nate,” I choke out through the lump that’s rapidly rising in my throat. My nose feels like someone just flushed it with saline, and it brings tears to my eyes. I punctuate each word as I tell him the truth, finally. “You. Broke. My. Fucking. Heart.”
And it’s still broken. I’m not sure it will ever be whole again.
“I know, Jax, and I came back to make it right.”
I pause for a second at the nickname, the one I haven’t heard in years.
The one I hated, until I didn’t. It’s his pet name for me, and until now he hasn’t used it once since he’s been back.
I want to ask him about it—why he doesn’t call me Jax anymore—but the second half of his declaration, that he came back to make things right, is the one that really needs addressing.
“You don’t get second chances with things like that,” I say, my voice firm and maybe a bit louder than I intended. “You can be the sledgehammer, or you can be the glue. You don’t get to be both.”
“So is Marco the glue, then?” he asks, his voice tinged with jealousy and a hint of sarcasm. “Did he put your heart back together?”
“I’m the glue, Nate. My heart was healed long before Marco and I got together.” That might be the least true thing I’ve ever said; but I wish it were true, and I need him to believe it is.
“If it’s so healed,” he says, dropping his voice so low I almost have to lean in to hear him, “then why are you still hurting so much?”
I look up, shocked when I shouldn’t be. He’s always been able to see everything I try to hide from him.
He gets me at a level that’s intrinsic to who I am, and he always has.
It’s part of why his leaving left me so devastated.
He shattered my heart, but more than that, he shattered my sense of self—because without him, I wasn’t sure who I was anymore.
And I can never, I will never, give anyone that kind of power over me again.
For a moment there are no words, just the conversation we seem to be having with our eyes.
Come back to me, his plead.
Not in this lifetime, mine insist.
“I have a wedding to get to,” I tell him as I grab the handle of my carry-on suitcase and turn back toward the gate agent who is now waiting for me as it seems that everyone else has boarded through the business class line already.
As I walk through the door to the jetway, I chance a glance back over my shoulder.
Nate is standing there with his shoulders hunched and his head down, pain radiating from his entire being.
Good, I tell myself. It’s only right that he should be the one hurting now.
If only his pain wasn’t also my pain.
Paris, France
I stand next to Marco’s parents as we watch Christian’s older brother finally kiss his bride at the end of the longest wedding service I have ever attended.
My back is killing me from the wooden chair I’ve been sitting on for the past two hours, and the cold stone floor of the Gothic church has my feet almost numb despite the air being warm and stuffy. Finally standing again is a relief.
While lesser known than Notre Dame, Saint-Eustache has a storied history of its own having baptized, wed, and buried some of the most famous aristocrats and writers in French history. And its Gothic exterior and Renaissance interior are among the most beautiful of any church I’ve seen.
As Lorenzo and his bride clasp hands and turn toward the wedding guests, the priest pronounces them man and wife.
Or at least, I think he does. The service has been in French and I speak barely a word of it.
For a brief second I wish Nate was here to translate for me—his mom was French Canadian and he speaks French passably and understands it perfectly—but then instantly I’m chastising myself for the thought.
I need to get Nate out of my head. Tonight is all about being in love with Marco, or making his and Christian’s families believe I am.
From the altar, Marco catches my eye and gives me the kind of smile that the press loves.
It’s not his sly, private smile that I know well, it’s his camera-worthy smile.
His mom doesn’t miss a thing, so she turns toward me and squeezes my hand when she sees her son beaming at me.
Which luckily means she misses the way Marco then glances over at Christian, who is standing between him and Lorenzo.
The bride and groom make their way down the aisle and Marco follows in the long line of bridesmaids and groomsmen.
I find Marco outside the church after we’ve given our best wishes to Lorenzo and Camille, his French bride who I’ve met a few times over the past year.
I rush over to Marco where he stands on the stone plaza outside the church, next to Christian, and wrap my arms around his neck.
He squeezes me tightly in his embrace and I whisper “Less glances at Christian, okay?” quickly before his parents come over.
He plants a kiss next to my ear as he whispers “I’m trying, but you see how he looks in a tux.” There’s laughter in his voice.
I pull back and look him in the eye, smiling at him. It’s easy to play this role because I do love Marco. I just don’t love him like his family assumes I do.
He kisses the bridge of my nose just as his parents catch up to me. “You are a beautiful couple,” his mom says. “Let me take a photo of you.”
While we pose for the photo on the plaza, with the cold blue sky, the church, and the leafless trees in the background, I try not to look at Christian.
It must hurt for him to watch Marco flirt with me.
I wish it didn’t have to be this way for them, and I’m glad that it won’t be this way for too much longer.
Marco’s mom texts us both a copy of the photo, and I’m certain Marco will have it posted on his social media platforms before he even arrives at the reception.
Good, I hope Nate sees it. I hate myself a little bit for this pettiness.
“Camille said you should come with us to take pictures,” Marco says, looking down at me while keeping his tuxedo-clad arm around my shoulder.
“I won’t be in the way?”
“We just need to take the big group picture. We already did photos with her attendants and the groom’s photos with us.” He uses the arm that’s not around me to reach over and clasp Christian’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”