Page 68 of Make You Love Me
He points to something behind me, and I twist to see it. A sign directing patrons to…I squint to read it through the haze of dusk.
“Ax throwing?” Turning back to him, his kind smile has evolved into smug assurance.
“Yep. We’re going to imagine the target is anyone who has ever hurt you. You’ll name each one and say goodbye, never again, or fuck you. Whatever makes you feel better.”
Not meaning to, my shoulders slump in a physical display of my first thought: It’s never that easy. But I straighten andintentionally adopt Jordan’s positive thinking. Besides, with him by my side, anything is possible.
In case the stars are aligning above us and something magical is happening in this moment, I toss up a wish. A simple one for sweet, tender-hearted Jordan Jones to forgive me.
Chapter 19
Jordan
You’re doing great,” I encourage Nora from my stool at the corner table. She’s on a roll, landing the sharp edge of the hatchet on the target three times in a row, after the first six smacked against the wall with a resounding thud. “Who are we saying F U to next?”
Her eyes brighten as she plucks a name from her mental list of wrongdoers—the sources of her pain and reasons for her always settling for less than she deserves. “Tristan.”
“Okay. Who’s that?”
After crossing the booth to collect the last two hatchets she threw, she strolls back to the starting position beside me. “High school boyfriend.”
She sets one hatchet on the wall hook and raises the handle of another, adjusting her grip. “Whoa. Wait a second.”
“What?” The hatchet falls to her side as her arm and shoulder relax.
“Does that mean you dated only one guy in high school?”
“I thought we discussed this,” she says, not grasping my confusion.
“One guy.”
She studies me as she puts the pieces of my questions together. “Yes,” she says with conviction and a touch of exasperation. “I was committed to one guy for three years. He was the only one to stand up for me until he didn’t. He broke my heart…hence the start of my disdain for relationships.”
She raises her arm and flings the hatchet toward the target. Bullseye.
“Yikes. Guess you meant that one.”
“He was the total package and concluded someone with a few dents and scratches wasn’t good enough for him.” She shrugs and removes a bottle of water from the small bucket on the tall bar table, holding me up. “I’ve accepted it, but he confirms the theory.”
“For the record,” I begin and wait for her big brown eyes to give me their full attention. “Not all boyfriends leave.”
She hands me a bottle. “No, but some leave even when they don’t want to, and that’s worse.”
“Nora.” I remove her hand from around the water bottle and warm it in mine. Our eyes meet. “You can’t let the tragedies of others control your life. What happened to Sydney and countless others who lost someone they love won’t happen to you.”
“You don’t know that. It could have happened every time you deployed.”
Tiny hairs on the back of my neck rise in response. “You worried about that?”
Her gaze drops to our hands before she nods.
“I thought…”
“That I didn’t care? That if you died, I’d go about my life like we never met?”
I swallow hard. “Yeah. I had no reason to believe otherwise.”
A sudden tear pooling on her thick lashes surprises me, but I can do nothing but watch it glisten in the light as it leaves a trail down her cheek.
