Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
I could take no more.
Seeing Rainy cling to the chair in front of her while her pretty face was saturated with pain and fear was akin to torture.
We needed to hash out the past. We needed a clean path forward. But I didn’t want to tear her apart in the process.
“Rae, honey, look at me.”
Slowly, she tipped her eyes up.
“I’m sorry, Jase. So sorry. I know I did this to us.
” She stopped long enough to blow out a breath and lift her head.
Though she was still holding onto the chair like a lifeline.
“It was stupid and yes, you’re right, immature.
Back then, I know why I did it. I couldn’t face seeing you with someone else.
I was jealous even though I had no right to be.
Then I made a horrible decision and continued making them as the years went on.
Back then, seeing you with that blonde broke me.
” She paused again and shook her head. “That’s not me transferring blame to you.
You didn’t do anything wrong. You were free to see whomever you wanted.
All of it is my fault and you didn’t deserve what I did to you.
Not only because I loved you. But you were also my best friend and at the very least you I owed you an honest conversation about what I was going through.
Instead, I was a coward and erased you from my life because that night it hit me in a very real, very tangible, very excruciating way that being your friend meant watching you move on.
It was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done in my life and the one regret I will take to my grave. ”
So, we were starting with Sally.
“Do you remember Brian Williams? He was a year older than me. We played football together?”
Rainy brows pulled together.
“Vaguely,” she stated.
It wasn’t surprising she didn’t remember him. He was two grades above Rainy and not in our direct friend group. Brian’s sister was older and had graduated the year before him, which would’ve made Sally a senior when Rainy was a freshman.
“That night at the bar before you showed up, Brian was there with his sister. He hooked up and left. When you came in, Sally and I were at the bar shooting the shit, catching up, mostly talking about how hard UCLA law school was and how she’d struggled to keep her grades up so she didn’t lose her scholarships. ”
I watched recognition hit.
“I would never have done that to you,” I told her. “I was not hooking up with Sally. The thought never crossed my mind. You ended us, but I never lost hope we’d find our way back. Two years I waited.”
No, now recognition hit, and the way her torso jerked back I knew she understood exactly what I was telling her.
Now the hard part.
“I did not love Shay. Not before I married her. Not when she had Colson. Not when she had Juni. Not at any point during our marriage. There was a time when I cared about her. There were times when I was happy. But I never loved her.”
Rainy’s expression was carefully blank when she very quietly exhaled my name.
That breath sounded painful and I understood why. We’d have to get into Lucas’s father and where he was, and what kind of relationship they had. So, fuck yeah, I understood the blow of taking about Shay because soon, I’d be receiving my own.
“She cheated on me, and honest to Christ, all I felt was relief when she told me.”
“Relief?” Rainy carefully asked.
“I didn’t love my wife, not because in the beginning she wasn’t a good woman who I came to care about.
I couldn’t give her something that belonged to you.
So, yeah, I was relieved it was over. I was relieved that she fucked some other guy because for five years, I’d been carrying on a one-side emotional affair with my high school girlfriend.
With everything that happened between me and Shay, I’m still the asshole in that relationship.
I was relieved but I didn’t blame her for looking outside our loveless marriage for affection she’d never received from me and would never get from me.
Especially when by that time, we were not happy.
And that’s on me, too. I never should’ve married her knowing that I could never give her what she needed.
But I don’t regret it. If I hadn’t married her, there would be no Juni, and I cannot imagine my life without my girl. ”
“Well, I blame her,” Rainy snapped. “I don’t care how unhappy you are; you don’t cheat. There’s never an excuse for stepping out on the person you’re committed to.”
I knew that’d be her reaction. Her father had cheated on her mother before they divorced, and he bailed completely out of both of their lives.
Cheating was a bottom-line deal breaker for her.
“I was cheating—”
“No, you weren’t,” she cut in to come to my defense.
“Rae, you might not have taken my calls, but while I was married to Shay, I did call you. I thought about you. I never stopped loving you. I never stopped wondering what my life would look like if you hadn’t left me.
And this makes me not only sound like a royal dick but flat out makes me one when I tell you the honest truth if you’d come back, I would’ve left Shay.
I wouldn’t have gone as far as physically cheating on her.
But I would’ve packed my shit and left her.
Meaning, I would’ve left the home I shared with my kids.
Thankfully when you came back, I was already out of the house we’d shared.
My kids are good. Things have smoothed out. And she’s hitched to another guy.”
She had nothing to say to that, which was good because I wasn’t done.
“She was a hook-up. My first after we broke up and I moved back to HP. I was in the academy—”
“I don’t need to know this.”
She did need to know how Shay and I started. I also needed to explain why so it didn’t come up later and bite us in the ass.
Before I came here, I’d made the decision that no matter how hard Rainy tried to push me away I wasn’t going to let her. At the bare minimum we were going to be friends. Not acquaintances. Not two people who shared a past and lived in the same small town.
Friends.
I’d lived the nightmare of not having her for sixteen years.
That ended today.
“Baby, you do,” I asserted. “Trust me, it doesn’t fill me with joy laying my shit at your feet.
None of this makes me look good. But we need a clean slate, and for that to happen, you need to know that the first time I hooked up after we broke up, I was drunk off my ass.
But that’s not why I did it or an excuse.
I was back living in HP, I was at the academy, I was trying to get on with my life.
So, I fucked her to prove to myself I could.
“And after I felt like shit. Shay knew it. She knew us both from high school. She knew how much I loved you. For the next few months, we’d hang out—no sex, nothing physical—but we became friends.
Then it happened again and we decided a friends with benefits situation might work.
She knew where my head was at. I was busy with the academy.
She was working fulltime at an insurance company, trying to work her way into a better position.
She didn’t want a boyfriend or anything that would suck up her time.
Then a condom broke. She told me she was pregnant and she wanted to keep it.
It was my idea to marry her. I didn’t want my kid growing up without both parents around. ”
“Prove you could,” she muttered. “I did it because I was lonely. Because I needed to convince myself I could live without you.”
“Yeah?” I asked leadingly.
“All I did was remind myself that nothing would ever compare to what I’d lost.”
Rainy didn’t lose me, but I didn’t think she needed to be reminded that it was she who ended us.
Her blue eyes turned shiny and she frowned. “I didn’t lose anything. I threw it away. I lost it because I was too stupid to hold on.”
“You’re not now nor have you ever been stupid,” I corrected.
“Really? So me breaking up with you because I was overwhelmed and confused about what I wanted out of life was smart? And me not only ending us, but then deleting you completely because I was jealous and hurt was smart? Looking back, it wasn’t only stupid, it was monumentally asinine.
I wasn’t confused about you or us. I was confused about what I wanted to study.
I mistook the way our relationship had shifted when you left for college.
I continued on that bent when I left and it felt like we’d gone back to being only friends.
Did I talk to you about it? No. Instead, I made stupid assumptions.
I made a stupid decision that at the time I had no idea the horrific impact it would have on my life, and yours. ”
“You were nineteen.”
“So? I was fourteen when I knew I’d found the boy I was going to love for the rest of my life. And I wasn’t wrong.”
With that, I was done.
I stalked across her small living room, skirted the chair, and pulled her death grip free from the cushion.
Then I finally did what I’d wanted to do for the last sixteen years and wrapped my arms around her.
It wasn’t something as simple as a hug.
It wasn’t an embrace.
It was heaven.
Having my Rainy back where she was always meant to be, with her head tipped back, eyes locked with mine? Fuck yeah, heaven.
“Goddamn, you’re gorgeous.”
Her hands resting on my chest balled up the material of my tee. “Jase.”
I dropped my forehead to hers.
“I’ve missed you, Rae. And when I say that, I mean, I really fucking missed you, baby.”
I heard the hitch in her breath before she returned softly, “I missed you, too, Jase. And when I say that, I mean, I’ve missed you every single day for the last sixteen years.”
Rainy’s phone rang. She jolted back and I knew the moment was ruined, and whatever traction I’d gained had been erased when the soft leeched out and uncertainty leaked in.
“I have to get that,” she said. “It could be the school.”
I let her go. She immediately hightailed her ass down the hall. She might’ve been in a hurry to get to her phone to make sure the school wasn’t calling but that wasn’t the only reason she was running away.
But this time, I was old enough and smart enough not to let her get away.