Page 52 of Fighting For You
How often had I let my wishes draw me back to the moment I’d opted into assessing for EMU and he’d done the same? For days after they’d gotten engaged, I’d cursed the decision to encourage him to try for the unit, too, hated myself for helping him prep and train because maybe if I hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been there the day she walked in. Maybe he wouldn’t have set his sights on her, and I would’ve eventually found the words to ask her out.
She shook her head and studied the bubbles in her glass, then spoke like they were listening. “I can’t even remember what switched in me. How I went from finding him to be too much to finally… thinking I wanted him.”
Thinkingshe wanted him. Interesting phrasing.
“I’m sorry he broke your heart.” With an exhale, I admitted, “Or, maybe I’m sorry I did.”
Damn, I hated the thought, but she’d blamed me all this time, so why did it feel new? Like a fresh wound only just beginning to heal?
She set her drained glass on the bar top in front of us soslowly, it might’ve been slow motion. Without glancing at me, she tossed two twenties into the space between our drinks and turned, grabbing her suit jacket off the back of the chair.
She was leaving.
Panic hit, my gut saying that if I let her leave, I’d never have another chance to clear the air. She’d nevereverlet me. She’d close herself off to anything more than what we’d been doing these last few years, the sniping and irritation and maybe even all the way back to the hatred.
“Jess, wait?—”
She spoke over her shoulder as she walked. “I take it back. I don’t want any of this.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Jude
Despite having almost an entire foot on her in height, I had to work to keep up with her as she button-hooked out of the lounge and down the hallway in what had to be just shy of a jog for her.
“Jess, wait.”
If she heard the desperation in my voice, so be it. I increased my pace until I reached her, daring to set a hand on her shoulder as we arrived at the end of the hallway, only a service entrance and a maintenance door interrupting the opulent wallpaper.
She whipped around and stepped back.
“I don’t understand you,” she said, fire in her eyes like I’d never seen. “I hate you.”
Where did this come from? How had we gone from sitting there so calmly to this? “What don’t you understand? I told you everything.”
“You’ve told me nothing real and then you go and say stuff like that? ‘Sorry I broke your heart.’ What is that?”
I blinked. I thought maybe I should apologize for being the one to report him, though I had no doubt she agreed it was the right thing now that she believed—or I hoped she believed—he’d actually done what I’d claimed. Did she want me to apologize for loving her, too? I couldn’t.
I won’t.
She was so angry. I could feel it radiating from her like desert heat from the Sahara. We’d both been there at the crux of summer and this, rolling off Jess, was more intense.
“Why would you tell me that? At the very least, I thought we’d be honest with each other.”
“I don’t regret reporting him, but I am sorry it all blew up. I never wanted that—never felt good about you getting hurt, even though you deserved so much better than that asshat.” Couldn’t she see it?
She growled out a frustrated breath. “I don’t even care about that. I’m over it. That’s not even the point anymore.”
Disbelief ripped through me, followed by a trail of fiery frustration. Everything that came between us before had been rooted in her not believing me, in her taking Kurt’s word even though he lied to her and left her. And now, she wasover it?
No attempt to soften my reaction prevailed as words punched out of me. “What? You’re magically over the thing that has caused you to hate me for the last five years? Please enlighten me how that happened. I’d like to note the miracle and report it to the local authorities.”
Apparently, having a conversation while she wasn’t feverish and ill meant she got under my skin just like she always did.
She groaned through gritted teeth. “You said you werein love with me, right? And that messed you up enough you felt conflicted and didn’t know whether to tell me about your suspicions and as stupid as it is, I get it. Asselfishas it is, I do get it on some level.”
This woman could shoot her shot and she did not pull a punch. I ran a hand through my hair and tried to find the chill I’d promised myself I’d maintain. “Okay, great. You get it. Then what is your problem? I don’t know what you want from me.”
