Chapter 25
I ’d tried no less than thirty times to speak to Jenna over the last week. And last night had been the longest shift of my life. We’d driven past Cupcake eight times on the rig, and I’d tried to see her face on every pass.
In the history of our relationship, we’d never gone this long without speaking.
Even when I went on family vacations. Even when I was away at hockey camp, we spoke every single day.
I banged on the apartment door with three heavy thuds.
Be home. God, be home.
Knox opened the door, looking rumpled and sleepy. I checked him out of the way when I saw Wren standing in the kitchen.
“Wren!” I wheezed out.
The sandwich she had almost to her mouth dropped to the plate. It fell apart but I had little time to care.
“It’s time to pay you back, isn’t it?”
“What?” I asked because, no, I needed her help, not the twenty dollars I loaned her the other day. She could keep that.
“Oh, how I knew this day would come. Whaddaya need?” she asked, and I held out my arms in desperation.
“I need . . .” The fact that I’d hardly taken a minute to catch my breath this morning was finally catching up with me.
“I need . . . I need . . .” Shit. I couldn’t string a fucking sentence together.
“Say it, Scott. You need what?”
She was toying with me, I knew that, but I couldn’t find it in me to care about that either.
“I need Jenna,” I finally admitted with a conviction I felt in my bones.
“Yeah, you fuckin’ do!” She fist-pumped the air. “Gah! Finally!”
She looked pleased as punch and my brother went from nap mode to cocky motherfucker mode if the eyebrow raise and the smirk he was aiming my way was anything to go by.
Give me strength.
“Okay here’s what you’re gonna do . . .”
I braced my hands on the countertop, my shoulders hunched.
Ready to listen intently.
Ready to do whatever she told me to do.
Any advice she was ready to give, I was here for it.
“You’re gonna . . .” she pauses for dramatic effect, taking a great big breath, “tell her how you feel.”
I nodded and then her words hit. “What? That’s it ?”
She folded her arms in front of her and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, Scotty. That’s it. You’re going to tell your lifelong best friend, the literal light of your life, that of course you love her but not just that, you’re in love with her. Then you’re going to tell her you were scared.”
“I—”
She held up her hand. “Yes. You’re going to tell her you were shit scared. So scared to lose her you bottled it all up and buried it deep. For. Years. But you’ve been so stupid?—”
“So stupid,” Knox parroted, and my jaw clenched.
“You tell her you saw her. You saw her this whole time. You’re sorry you can’t take back the wasted and lost years, and . . .”
Wren lost some of her flair and her eyes watered. Her lip wobbled and Knox was by her side in a second. He kissed her on the cheek, and she sniffed, pulling herself together enough to carry on.
“But you’re ready now. Ready to love her the way she deserves.”
I shook my head. Could it be this simple?
I wanted to ask more but I’d lost both of them after that. It had probably dredged up some of what they had been through. Although theirs was a different story, there would always be a chunk of time they could never get back.
Wren was right, I needed to play this Jenna style. Jenna would need words, not actions. There would be time for big romantic gestures, but it was gonna take a little more than just me standing in front of her telling her the truth.
And then it hit me, I knew exactly what I had to do.
I left Knox and Wren and made the journey back to my apartment.
If I was too late? If I’d pushed her closer to coffee douche? I’d support it. No matter how much it crushed me to do so. I’d regret every day I didn’t get out of my own way. Out of my own damn head.
I really felt for that six-year-old who watched the world crash and burn around him. I felt for the woman not much older than me who lost her husband too soon. I felt for the husband, the father, who knew what he was doing when he said goodbye to the woman he loved on a voicemail message.
And most of all, I felt for the two little boys who lost their dad most horrifically and tragically.
That day changed us all. Changed our family irrevocably, but I couldn’t let it have this hold over me.
Was I seriously ready to spend the rest of my life alone and brokenhearted over the girl I let get away?
Theo and Troy seemed far more well-adjusted than I was. They were living their lives to the fullest. Theo was in love and set to be married. He wasn’t letting the tragedy and trauma hold him back.
My job was dangerous. It was crazy and intense and you kind of needed to be pretty unhinged to do some of the things we did, but I couldn’t live in suspended animation forever—My life standing still, while everyone else, while Jenna, lived around me.
I never saw myself taking this chance, but now that I was, I wasn’t going to let anything fucking stop me.
She’d asked for space, but I had to make sure she was okay.
As I turned the key in the lock on the front door of Cupcake, I knew I shouldn’t do it, and yet as the door slipped open, I stepped inside Jenna’s bakery and locked it back up behind me.
Music was coming from the kitchen, and I cautiously made my way toward it. I looked through the porthole and saw she was by herself. It was late in the afternoon, but I didn’t want to assume anything anymore. She could have asked Seb or Kate to stay and help.
Jenna had her back to me, a long floaty skirt doing everything for her beautiful curves. Her hair was piled up on top of head, wispy pieces falling around her neck and I couldn’t have looked away if I tried.
She went rigid, every muscle in her gorgeous frame locking—she knew I was here. I pushed on the door, breaching the physical divide between us.
“Hey, cupcake.” My voice was low, pained.
“Please, Scott. I don’t have the energy to get into it with you right now.”
“We have to.”
“This isn’t space,” she said into the dough she’d begun pummeling.
“It’s been over a week. I’ve been trying to contact you.”
“I haven’t had anything to say to you,” she snapped.
I wanted to snark back, but I didn’t, I stayed as calm as I could. I wasn’t angry with her, I was furious at myself.
“I’m sorry I reacted the way I did. I didn’t mean to fuck everything up.”
She turned slowly and I got my first glimpse of the damage I’d done. Her usually smiling face looked red and puffy and her eyes seemed vacant.
I didn’t want to flatter myself by thinking she’d spent all this time crying over me, but I hoped she wasn’t ill.
“I can’t do this with you, Scott. Not right now anyway.”
Let me fight for us, cupcake. I begged silently.
“Jenna, we’ve never gone this long without speaking. I-I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you looked at me like you wanted to chew your own arm off to get away from me.”
“What?”
Even I could hear the panic in my voice. She had no idea what she meant to me. No idea how I fought against myself on her behalf. I wanted her, but I wouldn’t let myself have her.
She just shook her head. “I want my key back. How dare you let yourself in after everything.”
Jenna didn’t do it very often, but sometimes she knew how to deliver a punch to the gut.
“You don’t mean that.” She couldn’t.
“You made me feel like shit. You hurt me more in those five minutes than anyone ever has. Like I was just a cheap lay you couldn’t wait to escape from the morning after.”
Her shoulders fell and she seemed so resigned, my trepidation was coming back. I pushed it down, though, pushed it away.
It had no place here in this moment. I was breaking free. Breaking free of the decisions a dumb twenty-one-year-old made and even dumber twenty-eight-year-old was still making.
She canted her head. Assessing me like a puzzle.
“The thing I don’t get though is I was there, Scott. I saw your face the other night. I felt you shudder at my touch, and I heard the things you whispered in the dark.”
This was the closest she’d ever gotten to figuring it all out and I was done for. I was losing her, and she was working it all out anyway. She was almost at the truth.
The panic continued to claw at me, and I didn’t know what to do. She had seen straight through me, and I was glad, but I was still me, so I tried to push back.
“I—”
“What are you so afraid of, Scott?”
“I’m . . . I’m not scared of anything.” My mouth was dry. My voice gravelly. The words flew out automatically. Like my go-to lie was always ready, and I shook my head vehemently.
“No. I see you. I’ve been trying to put my finger on it, but there’s something I’m missing.”
I just kept shaking my head. Balling my fists and clenching my jaw.
“For God’s sake, Scott.” She threw her rolling pin against the wall so hard I thought the force would shatter the thing, her frustration was that palpable.
“I said I needed some time away from you. Away from us,” she practically growled.
“I need some space to work through how I feel about you and sever it. I’m sorry if this is hurting you, too, and it feels like the rug is being pulled from under you, but you don’t get to control or dictate?—”
“It’s not like that. I just don’t want to lose us. Can’t you see you’re the most important person in my life?”
She shook her head and closed her eyes, total confusion on her face.
“And yet you’d be happy to let me be with someone else. One day marry someone else? Have a family with someone else.”
“I would if I knew you were happy.”
What are you saying? I really was dumb.
This time when she stepped forward she was completely in my space, completely pressed up against me.
“Have someone else touch me. Fuck me? Make me come.”
I stepped back but she followed. “Don’t say that. We don’t talk like that.”
Not about our sex lives. Unless, well, unless it was us having sex. Then she could say whatever the hell she wanted. In fact, I wanted to hear every dirty thought that came into her head. But not like this.
“Well, we do now. You want me to let someone else inside of me. Fill me up. Whimper and pant and moan for someone else?”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Stop. Stop it right now.”
The thought of her with someone else had that flame igniting in the pit of the stomach again. Of course, this one flickered green. Envy, jealousy, I could name the feeling whatever I wanted, and it would still rage the same. The thought of her with someone else drove me to near madness.
I fucking hated it.
“Ride their dick as they watch from below. Scream their name? Mark me, claim?—”
“He left her, Jenna!” I roared, and she sucked in a breath, her hand flying to her mouth. Shock streaking across her face.
It was a completely visceral reaction.
“He loved his family so much and he still left them. Troy barely remembers him. His own son! And I would do that, too, in a heartbeat. I’d go in, Jenna. I. Would. Go. In.” I pounded on my chest to punctuate the words as the truth finally came out.
A fresh wave of tears sprang from her eyes, but I continued on.
“That’s why I felt like we couldn’t be together. I love you, fuck I do, but I’m no good for you. I could worship you for a million days. I could be everything you needed, you wanted, but on day one million and one I’d give it all up. I’d leave you.”
“Oh, Scott.” My name was a whisper, and she covered her face while quiet sobs racked her body.
My breaths sawed in and out and my vision went blurry and hot. When I touched a palm to my cheek, it was wet.
She threw herself at me. Her arms wrapped around my waist, and I didn’t have the strength to push her away. She felt too good, and she was where she belonged, no matter how much I fought it, so I closed my arms around her.
“Don’t you get it? That’s the life I’m living anyway.” She shuddered as she spoke.
“I know you worry about me; you’re caring that way. Tender. But this would be different, this would be worrying about me on another level.”
“Jesus, you are so, so dense sometimes. There is no other level. I couldn’t worry any more than I do already.” She shook her head like she didn’t understand how I wasn’t getting it.
Her liquid-gold eyes found mine, and I was lost.
“I hear the trucks leave, Scott. Every damn time, no matter if I’m awake or asleep. I watch you go by and then the wait”—she clutched at her chest—“God, waiting for you to return is agonizing. Sometimes it’s hours, and I stand in that window, and I wait.”
I couldn’t swallow. I always thought that my mind was playing tricks on me, but it wasn’t.
She was there all along and somehow, I just knew.
“I didn’t . . .” I tried again, “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“And it won’t matter. It won’t matter if I’m with someone else or you are, I’ll always watch and wait. Scott, I love you. I’m in love with you.”
I staggered back. “You are?”
“Yes. For a really, really long time. I just thought you didn’t feel the same way. Until the other night in my bedroom, I had no idea you had any feelings for me other than platonic ones.”
“You don’t want this life?—”
“Don’t you dare tell me what I want. That’s not up to you. It’s my life and I want to spend it with you.”
“I’ll wreck us.” I nearly choked on the words.
She shook her head vehemently. “You won’t. You couldn’t.”
I just kept shaking my head. “I’ll make a mistake.”
“You don’t make mistakes.”
“Things go wrong.”
“They do.” She nodded solemnly. “They can. But you can promise me you’ll always try to come home.”
I felt like I was going to pass out. Was this really happening?
I held out my hand, fumbling with the shittily wrapped proof of how I felt and how long I’d felt it for.
“This is for you.”
“What’s this?”
“Just open it.”
She tore the tissue paper and it fell in pieces to the floor. “A puck?”
I nodded.
“Thanks. I guess.”
I cleared my throat. “Read the, umm, read the tape.”
“Taught Jenna to skate Dec 11th, 2003.” Her eyes rose to mine and I passed her another one—this one wasn’t wrapped but it did have tape on it.
“Me and Jenna 1st time we stayed up ’til midnight.”
Then I just handed her the plush bag my first goalie helmet came in. She pulled them out until her hands were full and contorted to each one.
“Jenna opened Cupcake.”
“Graduation: Me and Jenna.”
“Jenna was accepted to ICI.”
“Jenna started her apprenticeship in Verona.”
“Me and Jenna Prom.”
“The first time I kissed Jenna.”
“Me and Jenna won the Kid’s Olympic swimming relay.”
“Me and Jenna . . . Me and Jenna . . . Me and Jenna . . . Cassiopeia,” she whispered, and her eyes lifted to mine.
“Scott, what are these?”
“It’s our life together. Or at least how I documented it.”
“You taught me to skate when we were eight.”
I just simply nodded. “Then we had dinner and my dad and I walked you home. It was such a good day, after my shower I taped the puck and wrote it down, so I’d never forget.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I wrote down all the most important events in my life. I have a few for myself but really the standout times were all with you, Jenna.”
“And the ones that are only mine?”
“Those are the ones that hurt the most. Pride and loss all mixed together. I think, I think that’s what heartbreak is for me.”
“ What? ” she breathed.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing you every day.”
“I didn’t want to leave you, either. But I had to go.”
I nodded. She did. We needed things that were separate from each other. We were always good at balance when it came to that. She had baking, I had hockey. She had the culinary institute and I had college. She had her scholarships, I had probie school.
“What does this mean?” she asked, looking down at the bag of the pucks.
“I know I’ve fucked up. Wasted all this time. And I’m such an asshole—especially now, you’re probably going on a date with Greg?—”
“Gabe.”
“Right.” I couldn’t help the smirk, but then I remembered why I was here. What it was I needed to finally say. Finally tell her.
“I have loved you for our entire lives. Every single day since the moment we met.
You’re my other half, Jenna. My better half. I can’t live without you. When the whole world feels like it’s burning down around me and when I can’t see or think—when I can barely breathe, and I know I’m runnin’ outta time . . . All I see is you. You talk me through. Waking up my brain—making it sharper, helping me work through the problem. You are my person.”
I took the bag from her and placed it down on the cool metal worktop. Then I entwined our fingers together.
“I’m in love with you. And this proves it. Jenna, I didn’t wake up yesterday and think oh wow I love her . You’ve always been mine.”
“Why now though? If you’ve loved me all this time, why now?”
How the hell was I going to explain this?
She saw me hesitate and squeezed our fingers tighter together. “Please, Scott.”
Hell.
“When I decided to sit the entrance exam for the Fire Academy I gave myself an ultimatum—I was either gonna pass the exam or be with you. Ask you out on a date.”
“Why couldn’t you have both?”
I pulled one of my hands free and scrubbed my face. This was so frustrating. I was barely able to understand it myself, so how was she supposed to?
I had to try, though, right?
“I felt like I’d be shackling you to a life of misery. Worry. While I was married to the department. Too scared to lose you. Scared to leave you, should the worst happen. You saw what happened after”—I swallowed—“after losing Tommy. You saw what it was like for Theo and Troy and my Aunt May. God, she was crushed. How, how do you ever come back from something like that? She was so strong, and it still nearly killed her.”
“I can’t believe you’ve carried this around for so long.”
Tears tracked over her cheeks again and I brushed them away with my thumbs.
She reached up and put her arms around my neck, and I hugged her to me, burying my face in her.
“I know.”
“Scott, do you think you should talk to someone about this? These are pretty deep-rooted fears.”
I nodded into her neck. “Yes, I think I do. I’ll set up some time with the department chaplain.”
“I think that’s a good idea. We’ll work through this together. You don’t need to carry this weight around alone.”
“I went to see Aunt May.”
“You did?”
“Yeah, last night. She has all these . . .” I swallowed around yet another lump in my throat. “He called her. He said goodbye. Told her he loved her and the kids just . . . just in case and then hung up.”
“Wow. That’s heartbreaking.”
I nodded again.
“But so beautiful and romantic too.”
“He loved her, there was no denying it, but the pain in his voice . . .”
“He did what he had to do.”
“I believe so, yeah.”
We stayed there like that; I don’t know how long for. But something settled in me. I felt lighter. Exhausted, but lighter.
We could do this. I could have both.
“Come on. Will you come sit on my couch while I make us some dinner?”
“I can help.”
“I think we’ve had enough upset for one week. How about I do the cooking and you can do the talking?”
“I’ve opened up the floodgates, huh?”
“Yeah. By the end of the night, you’re gonna be the best sharer of feelings ever.”
“Well, let’s not get too crazy. I’m not Casey.”
She giggled. “That’s true. Okay, the second-best sharer ever.”
She was fucking beautiful, striking even, and she took my damn breath away every time I laid eyes on her.
I pulled her in at the waist. “Can I kiss you?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“I’ll be anything you want me to be,” I said against her lips.
“I just want you to be you, Scott. The good, the bad, and the broody.”
“I’ll love you forever.”
She dipped her head. “You always say that.”
“I’ve always meant it. It was my way of telling you without you knowing the truth.”
“Every time?”
“Every. Single. Time.”
And I punctuated each word with a kiss to her plush lips.