Chapter 25
But as I turned to Billy’s beaming face, I knew it was already too late.
‘’Billy . . .” It must’ve been the way I said it because his shoulders sagged, and his smile melted. “I’m so sorry.”
My chin dimpled as I stared at the sadness in his eyes. “I can’t live on a farm.”
He reached for my hand. “But how do you know?”
“My uncle had a farm, and my brother and I spent school holidays there when I was a kid.”
“This won’t be the same. You’ll love it, I know.” His voice had changed; the pitch was higher, pleading.
I sighed. “But it’s not just that—it’s the isolation. I love living near the ocean and knowing that a coffee shop or restaurant is not far away. I couldn’t go back to the country. I’d be miserable, and that would tear us apart.”
“I could move here.”
I covered my mouth, shocked at his offer.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I shook my head. “Oh, Billy. The farm is your life. I see it in your eyes when you talk about it, about the animals, about your parents. You couldn’t live here. It would crush you.”
He reached for my hand, and we squeezed our palms together. “We’d make it work. The two of us. We have something special.”
I looked to the ceiling, and when I squeezed my eyes shut, a tear trickled down my cheek. Billy thumbed it away, and after a deep breath, I lowered my gaze to look at him. I swallowed back the enormous lump in my throat.
I needed to be strong. This was best for both of us.
Our lives were too different, we were headed on different paths, and if we carried on, one of us would end up miserable. This needed to end before it was too late.
No . . . it needed to end today.
My heart tore apart at that decision, but deep down, I knew it was the right one.
With our fingers woven together, I led Billy to the bed and sat him down. I took off the hat, placed it on the cover behind him, and sat at his side. “I’m sorry, Billy. This . . . us, it would never work. It’s been beautiful, special, the most incredible journey, but it has to end. We were never meant to be together.”
“What were we meant to be then, Jane?”
The anger in his voice caught me off guard, and when I shifted to look at him and saw tears welling in his eyes, I wrapped my arms around him and sobbed into his shoulder. Great racking sobs tumbled from me.
My tears spilled down his back, and I could barely breathe. But Billy didn’t move. He didn’t put his arms around me—he just sucked air through his clenched teeth, fighting what I assumed were tears.
Sucking in several shaky breaths, I pulled back, determined to finish what I’d started.
I wanted a relationship that was one hundred percent perfect.
What Billy and I had was not.
I sat on the bed and flicked tears from my eyes. “I’m sorry, Billy. I never meant to hurt you. I just wanted it to be fun. But I know we went so much further. Too much further.”
“There’s never too much when it comes to love.”
His words pierced my heart, and I closed my eyes, nodding. “I know. I’m sorry.”
We sat in silence, the two of us sucking back shaky breaths. It was an eternity before I formulated what I needed to say. I reached for his hand, wove my fingers into his, and squeezed. “I want to thank you.”
His jaw squared out as he blinked at me.
“I want to thank you for showing me everything good there is in a man. We shared some truly magical times both in the bedroom and outside. I am stronger because of you, and I feel blessed that we met.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, but that was his only movement.
“But I know we won’t be happy together. We may be for a while, but soon, the cracks will show. We’ll begin to fight a little, then it’ll be a lot, and one day we’ll wake up hating each other. I don’t want that to happen. I want to remember this year and all the magical moments we had together. I want to remember you exactly as you are—incredible. I’m sorry, Billy. I never meant to hurt you. I hope that in your heart you know I’m right and will one day forgive me.”
I kissed the back of his hand and stood. My heart pounding in my ears was the only sound as I strode to my bag, which was still on the floor at the front door. I picked it up and, with my hand on the door handle, I turned back to Billy.
He hadn’t moved. His bare back faced me, but in the mirror, I saw his slumped shoulders, his downward face, and most of all, I saw the sadness in his eyes. “I will never forget you, Billy.”
I pulled open the door and stepped into the corridor. Every step toward the elevator was hell. My heart squeezed so tightly I could barely breathe, and tears blurred my vision making it impossible to see.
Somehow, I made it to my room. I strode straight to my bed, flopped down face-first, and bawled my eyes out.
Poor Billy.
I couldn’t get that final image of him from my mind.
He was a broken man, and it was all my fault.
It was an eternity before I was able to move again, and when I rolled onto my side, I tugged my phone from the inside zipper of my bag and dialed Lolita.
It rang a few times, which wasn’t like Lolita, but when the phone clicked, and the raucous music blared down the line, I was surprised she’d answered the phone at all. “Hey, babe.”
I didn’t even get a word out before I broke down sobbing.
“Hey, are you okay?”
I still couldn’t speak.
“Hang on. Let me go outside.”
I wiped snot from my nose and rubbed it on my dress. As I inhaled and let it out slowly, I hoped I’d be able to speak again soon.
I heard a door shut, and the noise simmered down. “Are you okay?”
“Yes . . . and no.”
“Okay, babe. Tell me what’s happened.”
“I broke up with . . . with . . .”
“With who, honey?”
“With Billy.” I howled, squeezed my eyes shut, and flopped back onto the bed.
Lolita spoke to me, but her soothing voice only made me cry more. Eventually, I couldn’t cry anymore.
“Hey, do you want me to come over?”
“No.” I rubbed tears from my lower lashes. “I’ll be okay. I’m just being a sook.”
“You’re not a sook. Do you want to tell me what happened?”
I wiped my nose again and sniffed a few times. Then I told her everything, from the mind-blowing sex on the kitchen counter, to the hat, to what I’d said, and finally, to the shattered man I’d left sitting on the bed.
“Listen to me, babe. What you did shows how strong you are.”
“You should’ve seen the look on his face, Lolly. He was a broken man.” I waited for her response and prayed her words of wisdom would lure me back from the swamp I’d fallen into.
“Most women would’ve carried on with a man like Billy for all the wrong reasons, even when they knew deep down it wasn’t right. You, though, are a smart woman; you knew that the two of you weren’t made for each other. Sure, the sex was amazing, and his company was special, but love . . . well, that needs a hell of a lot more than that. And if it didn’t feel right now, then it wasn’t going to feel right when one of you moved thousands of miles to live a completely different lifestyle.”
As I rolled her words of wisdom around my brain, I did feel a little better. Deep down I knew my decision was right, but it didn’t make me feel any less cruel.
“I feel so mean.”
“You’re not mean. You were true to your feelings. A guy like Billy will find a woman. Trust me, babe—he was pretty special.”
“Yeah, he was.”
“You feel better now?”
“Yes, thank you. I’m sorry to interrupt. Where are you anyway?”
“At home.”
“Oh, it sounded like you were at a party.”
“Nah, kids are at a sleepover. Cal and I cranked up the music, opened a bottle of wine, and we were playing naked Twister when you rang. I was winning, of course.”
I burst out laughing, and it felt so good. “Oh my god, why did you answer the phone?”
“’Cause it’s you, of course. Don’t worry. Cal will wait.”
I smiled, once again feeling the love from my best friend. “Thanks, Lolly. I love you.”
“Love you too, babe. Now go and have a hot bath and pour yourself a huge glass of wine. But remember, you did the right thing.”
We said goodbye. I clicked off the call and went to the bathroom. My face was a disaster. My eyes were bloodshot, and the tiny bit of mascara I’d worn had turned into black streaks down my face. I put the shower on, and as I waited for the water to warm up, I removed my makeup.
The shower was hot and therapeutic, and as I stood under the cascade, I replayed my decision over and over. By the time I stepped out, dried off, put on my PJs, and grabbed a bottle of wine and a glass, the decision was still boiling in my brain.
I opened my sliding glass door, stepped onto the balcony, filled my glass to the top, and placed both on the table.
It was a beautiful night.
The cool breeze drifted up from the ocean like a lover’s touch. I stepped to the railing, clutched it, closed my eyes, and inhaled the salty air. It was a cleansing potion to my soul. I breathed long and deep, over and over, performing my own form of therapy. When I finally opened my eyes, a wonderful sense of calm enveloped me.
I went inside, grabbed my diary and a pen, and returned to the table. After a couple of sips of my wine, I turned to the 7th of December, and at the top I wrote, Cowboy Billy, Room 50.
Between sips, I filled the page with details of my night. Everything from the wonderful sex on the kitchen counter where together we soared to extraordinary heights, to his Christmas gift, and finally, to my decision to let Billy go.
By setting him free, I, in turn, had set my heart free.
My soul was open, ready to be captured by the right man. With that thought, I wrote Capture my Heart at the top of the page.
I carried on writing, recalling in vivid clarity everything that had happened so I could look back and know I’d made the right decision.
I wrote about the childhood memory that’d triggered my reaction, the clarity of which was a brutal reminder of how tough living on the land was.
No tears came as I described breaking up with Billy, not even when I wrote about how shattered he’d looked as I’d said my last goodbye.
Love was meant to be easy, but if it involved a complete lifestyle change. . . how easy could that be? It wasn’t that I wasn’t willing to move. I’d do that in a heartbeat for the right man.
But if I were to move, it would need to be somewhere that made me happy because I couldn’t imagine my love sustaining if I was miserable in my own home.
My decision to break up with Billy was the right one. I knew that. I’d probably known it for a while. My judgment had been clouded by the incredible sex and his wonderful company.
But I want more than that.
I want a man who I want to spend the rest of my life with. I want us to share dreams together and set about making those dreams come true.
I want everything about our life to be perfect. I want to fall asleep in his arms every night, knowing that each day we’d shared something special, something that I couldn’t experience with any other man but him.
Was I asking too much?
I decided the answer was no. I wasn’t.
I, Jane Nichols, would find the man of my dreams.
I flipped my diary closed and stood with my wine in my hand.
I eased against my railing and listened to the crashing waves. The loss of Billy meant I was down to just two of my regular men—Henry, my suave tutor, who melted both my body and my heart, and Hunter, who captured me in so many ways but didn’t even know my real name.
I tried to picture my future with these men, and it was Hunter who popped into my mind. I could see my future with him. I pictured the two of us living by the ocean and traveling to exotic corners of the world together.
My heart swelled but two seconds later deflated at the brutal realization that he didn’t know me at all.
Wonderful visions of Hunter danced across my mind as I finished off my wine.
Would he forgive me?
Was there any hope that the two of us could have a life together?
There was no way to answer those questions. But what I did know was that the next time I saw him, I had to tell Hunter about all my rotten lies.
My heart crumbled at that horrible but necessary decision.