49. Chapter 46
Mari
“ Y ou alright, dear?” Nan asked JJ, hushing her voice.
I kept my eyes closed, not ready to face the world just yet.
“Yeah, I’m all good. You should head off. I’ll make sure she gets home,” JJ replied, the hand on my shoulder giving a reassuring squeeze.
“You let me know if you need anything.”
His body lightly shook from the nod I assume he gave Nan.
The door closed with a click, and he let out a sigh. I did too, cracking an eye open enough to see that the training space lights had been turned on, the office lights off.
It must be night.
I closed my eyes once again, still able to feel the puffiness of them.
When JJ had bent beside me, he’d caught me quickly in his arms when the sobbing started. The ugly, loud cries that I’d choked on.
‘ Let it out, Lynnie. Your big heart needs it .’ He’d told me.
That seemed to be true, since I’d woken back to the world with that hollow, numb feeling. As if I was all out of emotions, all out of energy to even feel the hurt anymore.
“ I-I’m falling for him, J ,” I’d sobbed.
It had been a lie, a truth I had tried to twist on myself.
I was already in love with him.
“You could have tossed me on the couch,” I mumbled, opening my eyes to my best friend. “There’s no way that was comfortable for you.”
I sat up, waiting for some kind of mocking, bantering comment to come my way. It never did. JJ eyed me, giving my face a once-over before stretching his arms out in front of him.
“You needed it,” he said, shrugging.
I stayed sat on the floor when JJ jumped up and began packing my desk away, tossing certain things in my bag and certain things in my drawer. He cleared away the packing peanuts, as well as Paige’s photos.
“I need to take some of that stuff home to do on the weekend,” I said. I opened my phone camera and saw the puffy bags beneath my eyes had subsided, sending some of the little red veins in my eyes away. My eyes were still bloodshot, still red and puffy from the tears I’d tried so hard to swallow.
“Stop beating yourself up. I can see you’re hanging shit on yourself for crying before. Stop it.” He wasn’t scolding me, just bringing me back to reality. “I’m covering for you this weekend.”
“JJ, it’s okay. I can work.” I tried to reason with him, but to no end.
He ended up taking my huge pile of paperwork and my work laptop over to his bag and zipping it up.
“The passkey is—”
“120118,” he interrupted. “I know.” He gave me a sympathetic smile, knowing that the 12th of January 2018 was the day Chance had arrived. My cheeks burned in shame.
I’d trusted him.
And he’d lied to me.
Just like he had.
“He hurt me, J,” I whispered, so quiet I wasn’t sure he even heard it.
“Lynnie—” he started.
“I should have known better than to trust a fighter.”
“What do you mean?”
“They all hurt. Every time. It’s what they do,” I said, numb to the very bone.
“Who?” He dropped down beside me once more, giving me his full attention.
“The fighters I love.”
“Come on now, that’s not true,” he tried.
“Jayden, my dad, Chance—”
“Your dad?” he interrupted. “What did Eli do?”
“Of course this is when my deep-rooted daddy issues come out,” I joked.
JJ, for once, didn’t find it funny. “What did he do, Lynnie?” His voice dropped to a silent, serious plea.
“He lied to me,” I mumbled, finding my now-fidgeting fingers very interesting.
“About?”
“He told me he wouldn’t leave me,” I murmured, low and quiet enough that it concealed the thickness of my voice. “When Mum died, he promised he’d never leave me.”
“Oh, Lynnie—”
“It’s stupid and selfish and childish—I know. But, between him and Jayden and Chance, I just …”
“Look at me,” he requested. “Chance is nothing like your dad. Eli lied to protect a little girl’s heart from the inevitables of life. But Chance—”
“I don’t want to hear excuses,” I snapped, voice thick and hoarse. “He’s married. That may not mean much to some people, apparently. But it does to me.”
~
I was in the bathroom, splashing literal litres of cold water on my face, when I heard JJ’s phone ring.
“Yeah, man, she’s with me,” he said with a long sigh. “Yeah, she’s a fucking demon. I swear I see Nanna’s old cross rattle whenever she enters the house.”
I splashed another handful of cold water on my face, willing the puff-packs below my eyes to deflate already.
“I know … I know … I know, man. But you should have told her. I can’t force her to do anything—I won’t force her to do anything.
” There was an edge to JJ’s voice that I had never heard before.
In all of the years I’d known him, he had never taken quite that tone.
“I’ll call you later. I’m driving Lynnie home. ”
“Everything okay?” I asked, pushing the bathroom door open.
JJ smiled and gestured for me to go through the door he was holding open.
“Always, Lynnie.”