Page 85 of Fighting For You
I’d never forget when Omi sat me down around fourteen and leveled with me.“You’ve got the looks, honey, and you’re going to have the size. You’ve got the manners. Now we need to get you the skills.”She’d taught me the basics of cooking but from then on, she got serious about homemade sauces and from-scratch pie crust and biscuits… so many recipes I’d carved into my heart.
I continued to stir, the moment braided with grief and love and nostalgia.
“She was wise. I’m sorry to say I don’t have much in the way of cooking skills beyond grilled chicken and really basic stuff on the stove. I can keep myself fed decent food, but it was never an art or an act of love like it seems to be for you.”
Her gaze flicked up to meet mine and my gut clenched.There’s that word again.
“Why are you sorry?” I asked, instead of pushing on the words that came after, forcing her to confront how she’d let those four letters cross her lips so many times tonight.
Her eyes followed her fingers as they traced a pattern in the granite of my countertop.
“I guess I’ve always felt the need to apologize for what I don’t bring to a relationship, especially if it’s stuff that traditionally a woman does.” Then her head snapped up and her eyes were wide. “I mean, not that we’re in a relationship, or that we?—”
“Are we not?”
She swallowed and breathed through the panic shining in her eyes. “Um, I mean, are we? We have this history…”
Cheeks blazing, she wouldn’t look at me anymore.
“I think it’s obvious we are.”
She nearly singed my eyebrows off with the fiery glare she sent my way, but no words issued from her lips. Apparently, my statement had stunned her—or possibly infuriated her.
This required full attention and not splitting between avoiding burning dinner and her. I turned the burner off and grabbed her hand, guiding her to the living room and taking a seat, which she did, as well.
A hundred things shot through my mind—reasons she had to know we were dating and not just hanging out or some such nonsense, the way I felt about her, the things I wanted…. And all of it felt too soon and too little and not enough.
And then, taking her hand in mine and cradling it like the precious part of her it was, I stopped hedging and protecting myself. I stopped hiding behind my pride and the fear of rejection it masked. I stopped hiding behindbitterness at not being chosen over Kurt the first time or not being believed when her world crashed down around her.
I stopped everything but honesty.
“For me, this has never been small or temporary. I have wanted more from you since the moment I met you.”
She reared back and I rushed to continue. “Yes, we have a past, but we’ve apologized. And it doesn’t make it go away, but I believe we can change—that we already have.”
She swallowed hard.
After a moment, her mouth dropped open and she blanched, but no words emerged—not the response I wanted. Where had I lost her? She seemed stunned. I’d never witnessed a deer in headlights until now. But now that I’d started telling her how I felt, it was welling up in me, spilling over, and I couldn’t stop myself.
“I have loved you since the minute you said my name and I’ll die with your name on my lips. Jess, I can’t pretend you weren’t the person who means the most to me. If you want it, then yes, we’re in a relationship. If you say so, then yes—yes to anything you want.”
Her eyes glazed with tears. “How could you keep this from me if you really felt that way?”
Panic struck. No, this wasn’t how this would go. She wasn’t still questioning me, was she? “I didn’t keep it from you. I’ve told you from the beginning how I felt?—”
“How youfelt.Past tense. Before we started fighting and hating each other.” She stood and paced away. “And it’s not about what I want, Jude. It’s?—”
I followed close behind, though stopped shy of hauling her into my arms. “I’m sorry for that. I felt like I couldn’t fight my way through the weeds between us, and evenif I had?—”
She turned, jaw clenched, and waited, but when I didn’t speak, she prompted me. “Even if you had…”
My chest caved in, sand funneling to the lowest point of gravity and collapsing the structure of my heart. “You deserved more.”
Instead of appeasing, this only seemed to inflame her frustration with me.
She glanced at her phone, which had started ringing, then shoved it in her pocket and put a hand in the middle of my chest. “Don’t you dare act like you had self-esteem issues. I know you. I know your grandparents loved you, and your friends, all except my idiot ex, would die for you. Don’t you pretend you thought I was too good for you or that you’d put me on a pedestal.”
I was shaking my head, ignoring the phone in my pocket that’d started buzzing. “It wasn’t that. It was how I’d bungled everything else. How I’d treated you even though I felt the way I did?—”
