Page 73 of The Love Rematch
Emily reaches out to comfort him, but he flinches back. He still won’t meet her eyes. Maybe she’s overstepping. Maybe she should respect his boundaries. Or maybe she needs to show him that she’s not afraid of the darkness that’s always been inside of him. She’ll admit that at seventeen, she found it intriguing, mysterious, even brooding. Now her more mature heart aches for everything he’s had to endure. She can’t walk away. Even if she should, she just…can’t.
“I know about your father, Jake.”
He sucks in a sharp breath.
She barrels on. “And you’re right. Even though I know what a monster he was, I don’t understand everything you and your mom went through. I can’t. I never will. But I know you, maybe better than anyone else in the world. I know you, Jake. And you’re not him. I don’t need all the details to know that.”
“Em…”
His voice cracks and he stumbles. The backs of his knees hit the side of the bed and he drops down onto the mattress. She steps between his legs and cradles his face with her palms. His lashes are wet with unshed tears. She arches his face until he looks at her—really looks at her.
“You hit someone, and it’s obviously ripping you to shreds inside. That alone tells me you’re nothing like your dad. You didn’t act out of some urge for violence. You did it to protect me, Jake. Please, stop punishing yourself on my account. It was a mistake, nothing more, and it’s not who you are. You’re a good person, Jake. You are.”
He reaches up to hold her hands against his cheeks and takes a shuddering breath. A battle rages in his eyes. He wants to believe her—he wants it so badly—but she can see he doesn’t. The shadows in his gaze are too deep for her words to penetrate.
She keeps trying.
She has to.
“You set up a monthly movie night at the nursing home for your grandfather, and then kept it going three years after he passed. You went to every school spirit event even though they made you die a little inside each time just because you wanted everyone else to have those memories for the video yearbook. You did more chores than any seventeen-year-old I’ve ever known—mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, clearing the leaves, doing the dishes—all so your mom’s life could be a little bit easier. And you believed in me, Jake. Always. Even when I didn’t believe in myself. You were ready to drop everything for me. I know you were. I know you would have, if things had gone differently.”
He threads his fingers through hers, tightening them around her palms as their gazes lock. It’s the closest they’ve come to talking about the past, about what really happened between them. A lump forms in the back of her throat. It’s full of the what-ifs—questions she’s never been able to get rid of, even after seven years of wondering, because deep down she wants the other life, the one she thought they were going to have until it all fell apart.
Does he feel the same?
Once upon a time, she would have said yes. But now, after the way he left, she’s not so sure. The movie of what might have been plays in his eyes. To her, it’s a happy film, his favorite kind. She could stand there and watch it all day. But Jake closes his eyes as if unable to bear the sight of it. His brows pinch with pain. It makes her chest ache in an all-too-familiar way.Shewould have been happy in that other life, but not him, and that’s the crux of their problem.
Seven years and nothing’s changed.
Emily drops her hands from his face, but she doesn’t leave. She’s always had a weakness for antiques—maybe that’s why she’s never been able to walk away. But he isn’t a diamond that needs a new setting. He’s not so easily fixed.
Still, she dips her head back into his line of sight.
He refuses to meet her gaze.
“If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe someone else,” Emily says, distancing the conversation from them and their past back into safer ground. “My dad is a police chief, remember? He knows how to read people, and he knew all about your father. But he never once told me to watch out for you. He never once said you were bad news. He never once asked me not to go out with you. He knew you weren’t your father, Jake. He trusted you, and that’s not something he does lightly.”
“I know.”
It’s the first he’s spoken in minutes, and if anything, he sounds worse. More broken. More bruised. As if the ghost of his father were there in the room throwing punches.
“He did trust me,” Jake says, finally meeting her eyes. “And look what I did, Em. Look what I did with his trust.”
She’s not entirely sure which grievance he’s referring to, but it doesn’t matter. For the first time since waking up alone in her bed that fateful morning, her anger simply melts away. It’s been a constant in her life for seven years, always churning, like a pit of lava that appeared crusted over and sealed, yet bubbled under the surface. And now it’s gone. Because the look on his face is so shattered she can’t be mad anymore. He hates himself enough for both of them.
“Jake.”
She puts her hand on his leg to comfort him. The muscles beneath her palm tense and flex. Then he sighs, giving in as his whole body relaxes into her touch. Before she knows what’s happening, his cheek presses against her stomach. His arms wrap around her waist. He holds on to her for dear life, as if she’s the only thing keeping him alive, keeping him going. Emily hugs him to her chest, bending at the waist to wrap him closer. She doesn’t care if it’s a good idea or a bad one, she’s just aware that he needs her right now. He’s battling more demons than she ever realized existed.
She’s never seen Jake cry.
But even though he doesn’t make a sound, she knows he’s sobbing. His entire body trembles in her arms.
The moment is splintered by a knock at the door.
He flinches back with a sharp inhale and rubs at his eyes, visibly rebuilding his walls.
The knock sounds again, this time accompanied by a voice. “Jackson.”
