Page 53 of Make You Love Me
Chapter 14
Nora
Jordan knows. I saw the change in him this morning, and despite understanding the consequences, I still allowed myself to hope the pin in that damn truth grenade hadn’t been pulled while he slept.
But the second he awoke, I felt it coming.
“I need a break,” I announce, interrupting Jackson and Sydney’s discussion. Their heads whip to me in unison, startled by my voice. I’d been stuck in my head since Jackson recounted his conversation with Jordan to us, but I can’t listen to their concerns anymore. I’ve already got all of them covered. “Thank you for your help.”
“Nora,” Sydney calls to my back as I storm out of VETS. When I reach the street, I keep going, turning onto the sidewalk with the sole purpose of walking until I can confidently hold my shit together.
What I did warrants being left behind. I shouldn’t be rescued by a phone call and given a chance at forgiveness. I thrusted us both into a destructive situation that could have been avoided. Thinking about the endless emotions he must be experiencing,I’m grateful he’s at least with someone who can help if they trigger another blackout or seizure.
At that disturbing vision, panic rises into my throat, making the busy street blur and coil around me. I lower to the first bench I see and wait for the maddening merry-go-round my life has become to slow to a stop.
Talking to him and hearing he’s safe would go a long way in hitting the brakes on this carnival ride. Then again, are there adequate words to express my regret? To help him hate me less than I hate myself?
Glaring at my silent phone again, I plead with the universe to make him respond. I never should have gotten involved, and I hadn’t been thinking when I let my guard down. Letting him in and sleeping together only made things so much harder than they needed to be. Endless black hole kind of complicated.
There are no good explanations for why I did what I did. Sydney would say something about my heart getting in the way, and she’d be right. That whole fuck-it conversation my heart had with my good judgment on the mountain is to blame, along with dangerous and stupid wishful thinking.
Wishful thinking had me anticipating a buildup before an explosive ending to our arrangement—casual hints, fragments of history coming up randomly in conversations, and a meandering situation that eventually led him to the truth. A gentle lead-in to a confession and subsequent breakup. A loud, messy one because what I did doesn’t deserve careful control.
I never expected all the horrible ways I’ve hurt him to come crashing down at once, snapping our mending connection and me into a million jagged and irreconcilable pieces.
I shouldn’t have let Josie and Sydney talk me into this.
Shit. Josie. I need to tell her.
Opening the contacts app on my phone, I search for her number. Hurried footsteps sound on the concrete nearby, butI’m too distracted, frantically pulling words together in my jumbled brain that might prepare Josie for her brother’s wrath, to pay attention.
The determined heels stop by the bench. “Are you okay?” Sydney asks, sitting beside me.
“No.” My voice strains under the pressure of the honest answer as hot air burns in my lungs.
I grasp at my slippery control, begging for something to ground me, and that’s when it hits me. I’m tired of lying. Tired of running from my feelings. And so damn tired of pretending—for Jordan, for Sydney, for the world. I’m not who they think I am, and I can’t go another minute cloaked by this fake persona.
“You look like you could use a friend,” she says, placing a hand on my back. She means to comfort me, but her friendly touch sends a tangible reminder that I don’t deserve her sympathy. I’ve been lying to her, too.
“I need more than a friend. I need therapy.”
“All right. You’ve offered me that service for years. Let me return the favor. What’s got you upset? Other than the obvious,” she adds.
When I don’t answer, she continues. “But don’t forget why you entered this arrangement. You did it for his wellbeing. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Easier said than done.”
“We’re always hardest on ourselves. Women are strong but notorious for taking the blame, soaking in everyone else’s emotions as our own, and apologizing when we’ve done nothing wrong.”
I puff out a breath and check my phone for messages. Still nothing. “I’ve done plenty wrong. This is just the latest.”
“What are you talking about? I know you, Nora Jean, and you—”
“You don’t know everything about me, Sydney.” I shake my head, disgusted that it’s taken this long to tell her. “No one does.”
“Then, tell me.”
Dropping the phone to the weathered bench, I lean my elbows on my thighs and attempt to ignore how exposed I feel. My entire adult life, I’ve run from the hopelessness the truth always invokes.
