“Flattered?” Going from hurt to anger, her temper flares. “I just told you—the first man ever—that I’m in love with you, and the best you can come up with is thatI’m greatandyou’re flattered.”
Shit, her first, and I’m blowing it for her. But I can’t give Jordyn back the words she wants to hear. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Your response says it all.”
“Jordyn—”
“No.” She shakes her head at the apology she sees coming and stoops to pick up her top. “You’re good. You stuck to the rules; that was our deal. I’m the one who let my heart get in the way. That makes it my problem.”
“If I could love you back, I would.”
She stops and holds the tank top in front of her, looking up at me across the semi-darkness. “Why can’t you?”
“I loved someone before, and it didn’t end well.”
“Do you still love her?”
“Not in the way you mean. But I’m still tied to her…and to our past.”
“She must have hurt you badly.”
All the air leaves me. Jordyn thinks I’m the victim because she can’t fathom me as the villain. How I wish that were true. How I wish I didn’t have to disillusion her.
“It was me. She did everything right, and I did everything wrong.”
“Oh. I thought—”
“I know.” My eyes meet hers, and it’s too much. Jordyn has a way of making me feel like I’m not a bunch of hopeless, jagged fragments. With her, I feel almost whole. But it’s just an illusion—a trick played on my heart and my mind.
“I’m fucked up, Jordyn. I’m not good or honorable. I let her down. I let myself down. That’s why I left the army. Not because Pops needed me, but because I wasn’t worthy of serving my country. I didn’t trust my instincts or my judgment anymore. I’m not the kind of man you deserve.”
Jordyn stares back at me with stunned incredulity, my admission hitting her out of left field. But rather than shattering her impression of me, she jumps to my defense.
“I don’t believe that. You are a good man to the very core of you. I know that without a doubt. But...” She comes to stand close to me and lifts her hand to my cheek. “I can tell by the look on your face that you’re not willing to accept that. You’re stuck in time, and I can’t pull you out of the past if you won’t let go. Under the circumstances, it’s better that we end things.”
No! Christ. No. Every part of me, right down to the bone, revolts against the thought of losing her. “You said if things got complicated, we’d review and revise.”
“That’s what I’m doing. I can’t go back to the way it was, knowing I’d be giving you all of me and not getting the same in return. I’ll come to resent you and lose respect for myself.”
I break into those jagged pieces all over again because she’s right. We can’t go back to the sham of rules and the tenuous gray space of in-between. “It’s late. I’ll follow you home.”
She inhales, and tears shine in her eyes. My response had crushed any last bit of hope, but that was necessary. I’d already given her enough of that. Every touch, every kiss, every way I had let her into my life and my heart was false hope. I’d let Jordyn fall when I never had any intention of catching her.
“I’ll be fine.” She steps back, tough as grit, and squares her shoulders. “I’ll text when I get in.”
Heart thundering, it kills me to watch her go. But I’ve lived the last four years with one mindset, and it’s a mountain of guilt and self-loathing that I can’t see my way around.
* * *
“Boy, wake up!”
I groan at the loud voice and rough shake of my shoulder. When I’m jostled again, I lift my two-ton head off the kitchen table where I must have passed out after drowning my misery in a bottle of whiskey. I’d started as soon as I saw her get safely home through the surveillance camera and received her text. I hadn’t messaged back.
Squinting against the stream of sunlight, I cast a bleary gaze over at Pops.
“What the hell is going on, Junior?”
“She’s gone,” I murmur.
