Page 12 of The Comeback Road
I threw my bag over my shoulder, the icky feeling of overstaying my welcome starting to bristle across my skin, even though it wasn’t something I could see. I could only feel it, and I felt it everywhere. Poking and prodding at my insecurities, at my past, at everything I was.
I needed to go home, but where was that?
Chapter Nine
Jace
I couldn’t believe she was sitting there, in front of me, after all that time. I barely registered that she was talking to me as my gaze transferred from her to the two coffees and donuts that sat forgotten on my desk.Lexie.
I looked over at my computer screen and realized the time was 8:45 a.m., and she should have been there by now. But the office was eerily quiet, as if they knew I felt like my world was crumbling in. I removed my gaze from the cold coffee and put it back on Jess. “Are you listening to me, Jace?” She pouted.
At one time, her pouty lips would have turned me into a puddle and made me chase after her like a lost puppy dog with his heart on his sleeve, begging her to take it. I didn’t know what I felt—shock, unease, possible relief—and I hated that I felt the slightest simmer of feelings I shouldn’t have had—love, regret, confusion.
It was a ghost of what I felt before, an echo, but it was still there; a small, simmering flame that refused to die out in the embers of what had been. I’d been living with the ghost of my wife for a long time, and I could suddenly see how ignoring that fact was coming to bite me in the ass. “Not really. Why are youhere?” I was trying to douse that flame that I felt flickering as she looked over at me. Her round, brown doe eyes and brown hair that always looked like the ends were kissed by the sun had always been my undoing, and I really didn’t like that there was still an attraction there.What does that mean?
She huffed, her eyes full of surprise, clearly a bit shocked that all my attention wasn’t on her as it always had been in the past. I could admit that I had been a bit of a possessive ass where she was concerned, and it had taken me a while to realize that she liked that—lovedit, really. “I was saying that I think it’s time I come home.”
“Home?” I questioned. “Where exactly is your home, Jess? I can tell you it isn’t with me. It hasn’t been for quite some time now.” Her lip started to quiver at my answer, and once again, I felt a whisper of something that reminded me of our past.Am I not over her?The feeling made me pale as Lexie’s face popped into my mind, and I immediately felt like a phantom hand had reached inside my chest, grabbed my heart, and squeezed.
My hand flew up to rub at pain in my chest, trying to ease the ache that suddenly lay there. “I was young, Jace, worried about missing out on life. I made a mistake.”
“A mistake is forgetting milk at the grocery store. A mistake is having one too many margaritas and paying for it with a hangover. A mistake is forgetting to fill up your gas tank. Leaving your husband in the middle of the night with a note and no words or ways to contact you for years is far more than a mistake, Jess. It’s a choice.” I glared at her.
Her tears started flowing freely down her cheeks, and I had to stop myself from wiping them away like I would have in the past. “I love you, Jace. I always have. I just…I needed time. I wasn’t ready back then. I told you I wasn’t ready,” she whispered. Jess looked down, tears still flowing, and I felt my heart crack at her admission—the guilt I held. It was why I hadn’t searched forher. She was right. Jess had told me she wasn’t ready, that she wanted to wait. But I loved her, and she was mine, so I pushed and pushed until she gave in. Not wanting her to change her mind, I booked the flights to Vegas, and that was all she wrote.
It was why I had never taken my ring off before; I had convinced myself that when she was ready, Jess would come back to me. It was all I had wanted. Until Lexie.
Lexie.
My hands started to shake at the thought of her.Lexie.My starlight, the one who brought me out of the darkness that no one else had noticed, the one who made me want totryagain, the one I spent all my time thinking of.
Jess was there, and she was offering me all that I had been waiting for.Her.
My mind seemed to split into two as I looked at her. A road split. At one end was Lexie, a new future—an uncertain one, as we’d barely begun, the road paved with unseen obstacles that may or may not come to fruition. At the other one was Jess—a bit damaged, but a journey I knew, a road I’d traveled before, somewhere familiar. I thought I’d spend my life traveling with Jess by my side.
“Jace?” Jess’ voice called me again. Even though I looked at her, I couldn’t help but picture Lexie in my mind.
I knew then which road I was going to take. I knew before the conversation had even barely begun what I was going to do.
I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was about to be making the worst mistake of my life.
Chapter Ten
Jace
I spent the day after I had ushered Jess out of my office with my door closed and my mind going over every possible outcome of the situation I was in.No matter what I do, someone gets hurt because of me.I was sitting with my head in my hands when Dexter knocked on my door. “Come in.”
He entered slowly and cautiously, as if knowing any sudden movement might set me off. “Jace,” Dex said, but it sounded like more of a question. “Jace, it’s after five.” I lifted my head to look at him, not fully believing I had spent the entire day there, knowing that the hardest thing and the right thing were often the same. Knowing I had made my decision. Knowing I was just about to hate myself as much as she would.
“Ah,” was Dexter’s only response once he took in my face. “So, you made your choice then.” I could see the disappointment on his face. He didn’t even need to tell me how he felt. I just knew.
“Dexter, it’s not that simple,” I stated as I leaned back in my office chair and put my arms behind me, trying to delay the inevitable.
“It could be.” He didn’t even try to hide his glare.
“I know you don’t like Jess because of what she did, but she’s my wife, Dexter, and she came back to me. That has to mean something,” I offered. “I used to think she was the love of my life. We have a history. I owe it to that history to try,” I whispered. And even though the words tasted like burnt ash on my tongue, it was the choice I was making.
“Did you even notice that you said the wordsused to?”
