Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
jade
I spend a few days beating myself up for getting into the car with Sam, and then I realize that’s not the real reason my relationship with Reeve is in no-man’s-land.
It’s not why he hasn’t called or why his text responses all amount to him being too busy with football to type more than five words.
It’s because this was always going to happen.
Our strength was just an illusion. This vague relationship was never meant to last. Yes, it was real, but it was fleeting. And didn’t I always know that?
Every morning when I wake up, before I’ve even opened my eyes and remembered what day it is, there’s that tiny ember of hope still glowing inside me. Maybe today is the day when he’ll come back to me. But after three days, my stomach aches, sickened by the unknown. I need to talk to him.
Thursday, an hour before I’m due for my shift at Somerset, I text him.
Jade: Are you working tonight?
Reeve: No.
Jade: Where are you right now?
Reeve: The Phantom.
Jade: I’m coming by.
I wanted him to be home, alone and wishing for me like I’m wishing for him, not out at a bar where he’s among dozens of people who love him when they don’t even know him. Not getting drunk and thinking about which girl he wishes he’d chosen over me.
When I reach the bar, my eyes find him immediately.
He’s leaning down to talk to a petite, curly-haired brunette, his hair still damp and spiky from his postpractice shower.
Jealousy stabs me right in the gut, hot and sharp.
They don’t touch. They’re not flirting. With her baggy jeans and thick sweatshirt, she definitely doesn’t look like the type who would catch Reeve’s eye, which somehow makes it hurt worse.
Nothing about this moment makes me want to stick around and see how it plays out, except for the fact that he is still my boyfriend, even if it doesn’t feel like it anymore.
Only when the girl turns to the side do I realize it’s Maisy.
“Reeve,” I call out.
When he looks up, his gaze is soft for a single instant before it hardens over. He’s not happy to see me. He says something to Maisy without taking his eyes off me, then approaches.
He stands in front of me and crosses his arms, his body rigid. “What’s up?” is the first thing he says to me. The same words he could say to anyone on this campus. His voice is so hard that all my follow-up questions die on the spot.
“I guess we need to talk,” I say. I’ve imagined a dozen different scenarios for this first conversation, but whatever ideas I had for handling them are lost to me.
We walk outside and find a quiet spot against the side of the building that’ll give us privacy but somehow feels ten degrees colder than the rest of the street.
“So what’s going on?” I start us off.
“Same old shit.”
“I mean with us.”
“We’re both busy.” He watches the campus shuttle rattle slowly down the street.
Suddenly I’m right back where I started, when things were new between us and all I wanted was his eyes on me, when with every move I make I’m more and more aware of my own pent-up aching for him to touch me.
The difference is back then he looked at me all the time, and now he’s looking everywhere but at me.
What wouldn’t I give to go back and relive these last months with him over and over?
“Not that busy.”
“You know where I live.”
“So you expected me to just show up and wait around to see if you had time for me?”
He shakes his head. “No, I definitely wouldn’t expect you to do that.”
“You’re still angry about Sam? Look, I’ll apologize for that as many times as you need me to. I made a mistake, and you have a right to be mad. But he’s not worth this.”
“I’m not mad, I’m just living my life. Same as you.”
I let out a humorless laugh, impossibly frustrated. “Why are we even doing this? Just say you’re done with me and let’s make this breakup official.”
For the first time, he focuses his eyes on me. “Breakup,” he repeats, and I swear his voice breaks slightly on the word. “Is that what you want? Right here on the street next to a shitty bar?”
“Well, you don’t want to talk to me, and you don’t want to see me, so what else is there for us?” Can he see how desperately I want him to say there’s so much more for us?
But he drops his gaze to the ground and my heart plummets. “I guess not much.” When he looks at me again, his eyes are cold. “You want it to be official, you got it.”
Pain slashes through me to my core. I want anger out of him. I want him to yell at me, tell me I’m the worst thing that ever happened to him, even. Anything other than indifference. “Tell me why you’re acting like this,” I demand. “How did everything you felt for me disappear just like that?”
His eyes widen. “Is that what you think? I woke up one morning and didn’t care about you anymore? You think I went from imagining a future with you to wishing you’d just get lost so I could be lonely again? Wake up, Jade. Look at what’s right in front of you.”
“What’s right in front of me?”
“Me wanting you. All the time.”
My mind races, confused. “How was I supposed to know that? When did you ever say you wanted a future with me?”
A look of regret flashes across his face.
“That night over pizza? I thought you were considering staying after graduation so we could be together, and I was working up the nerve to ask you to go ahead and make that choice. And maybe it’s better I never got around to it, because you know what I realized in that moment?
You don’t feel what I feel.” He swallows.
“And the fact it took me this long shows what a dumbfuck I really am.”
I shake my head. “That’s not true. I—”
“Don’t. If you felt what I felt, you wouldn’t have been able to stop yourself from telling me you want me in your life. You wouldn’t have gotten in Sam’s car. You would have wanted a future with me more than anything else in your life.”
“I did want a future with you. I thought about it all the time!”
“Yeah, the same way you probably thought about what our babies would look like or how your name would sound with Dalton on the end of it. Stupid, meaningless thoughts. You would never have acted on it.”
I don’t know whether he’s right or wrong.
I was so close to changing everything for him.
But close doesn’t amount to anything, does it?
“Okay, so I’m not good at this stuff,” I admit.
“I owed you more than I gave, but how was I supposed to know you wanted me to stay here? You never told me you needed me.”
His mouth opens in disbelief. “I never told you? What about taking you to my house, letting you see the shit I came from? What about asking you to my games? I didn’t ask you there because I needed another fan in the stands. Football games are my life, and I needed you there with me. You knew that.”
Anger spikes suddenly—anger at myself for getting it all wrong once again, at him for thinking I should give up Spain while he gave up nothing, at both of us for being so pathetically afraid of our own feelings.
And most of all at the small, foolish part of me that believes we could still make it work.
“Why couldn’t you have told me in plain fucking English? ” I demand.
“Because I was afraid! I didn’t have the balls, okay? I told you in every way I could without just saying it.”
“And I was with you everywhere you asked me to be. What do you want from me, Reeve?”
He exhales, all the chill in his eyes gone, replaced by unmasked hurt. “I want you to feel what I feel. I started rethinking everything when you came along. Everything I thought I wanted was thrown into question. That life didn’t look right anymore without you by my side.”
“I do feel what you feel.”
“Then why are you leaving me?”
The rawness in his voice could crush me. “Don’t do that,” I whisper, trying not to cry. “That’s not fair. You want me by your side, but you never even thought about being by mine. You want me to change my life while you keep on living the dream.”
“Is that what it takes? You don’t budge until a man throws away everything he’s worked for? That’s what you think love is?”
“You wanted me to throw away everything. To give up on my dreams and follow you around.”
“Your dreams? Spain isn’t your dream; that’s you running away.”
I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek. “I’m sorry.” I can’t meet his eye. “I’m only trying to follow the rules we made together.”
“There were no rules.”
“Then what are you angry at me for?”
“I’m not. I just can’t believe I’m standing here thinking about how I kissed you and how nothing ever looked the same again. Meanwhile you kept living your life like nothing had changed.” He glares out at the street. “Because nothing did change for you.”
“Wrong, Reeve. My life changed and I’d change it all over again for you. But don’t you remember what you said to me that night at the carnival? ‘Let’s never be like our parents.’” I swallow. “I’m not going to sacrifice what I’ve worked for—”
He puts up a hand to stop me. “Either you feel it, Jade, or you don’t.”
“I do.” I feel everything for him. “But that doesn’t save us, does it? You still want something I can’t give you.”
“All I want is you.”
I stand no chance against those words. Tears blur my vision as thoughts battle against feelings inside me, what I know—I don’t want to end up like those other women—warring with what I feel: He already has all of me.
He searches my eyes before his gaze drops to the ground and he rubs a hand over his mouth. He was holding out hope for us, I realize, until this instant. I think my heart breaks at the same moment his does. “That’s how I know you don’t feel it,” he says, his voice hollow.
I watch him turn around and walk away from me, knowing he’s wrong but wanting desperately for him to be right.
If he’s right—if I don’t really love him—I can keep living my life.
I can take care of myself. I can be safe, and I can make sure I never end up miserable and trapped and love starved like my own mother.
And if he’s wrong? Then I’ve just lost everything.