“I’m in love with him,” I spit out, the words bitter and barbed on every syllable. “He ruined me the first time, and this time it’s doubled. Thought he just didn’t care, but then I heard him talking to Wayne in the barn, saying hedidn’t know how I feltback then, that he loves me too. He saw me there. He didn’t come after me.” I tear my eyes away from her, too vulnerable with the way she’s looking at me, and fix my gaze on the wall behind her head. “I’m not playing games with him anymore. I’m not listening to a single thing he has to say until he actually backs it up with actions. I’m not getting left behind again.”
My voice breaks over those last words, and I hate myself for it. I bite down onto the inside of my cheek to stem the tears that threaten to overflow, unwilling to cry for him again.
“So you thought he didn’t care because he didn’t tell you he loved you, and it sounds like he thoughtyoudidn’t care becauseyoudidn’t say it either.” Her voice is firm, but not sharp, so reasonable that I kind of want to throw something at her. Hearing it in so few words makes it all sound so ridiculous, but she just doesn’t get it. “Sounds to me like you’re both in the same place, Jenny.”
I scoff, bitter and unrepentant. She can try to boil it down to the bare bones as much as she wants, but the fact is that Lucas just doesn’t care enough to actually give me what I need. He doesn’t even care enough to listen when I try to tell him.
“What might that place be, Mary?” I ask caustically, shaking my head with a vicious grin on my lips.
Mary doesn’t flinch, simply arching a thin brow at me and standing from her seat. She pushes the chairs back under the table, taking her time before responding. It makes my skin crawl with impatience, and I’m tempted to just storm out before she even says anything. I didn’t want to have this conversation in the first place.
“From what I’m hearing, neither of you are communicating. You’re both split between blaming each other and blaming yourselves, but both of you are too scared to actually talk to each other and admit what you want out loud.” She shrugs like she couldn’t care less, but there’s a challenging glint in her eyes when she turns to face me again. “I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather talk to someone I love than have both of us hurting. What’s the harm in trying?”
What’s the harm? Jesus fuck, just look at me. I’m like this because I believed that Lucas would try. I can’t open myself up again. Either he puts effort in to fix things between us, or I wipe my mind clean of him entirely.
I laugh, dry and angry, and roll my eyes. “You sound like a fucking therapist. Be realistic.”
She purses her lips and sighs through her nose like I’m a particularly stubborn child, and then her eyes go hard and testing, daring me to look away.
“Didn’t take you for such a coward,” she says plainly.
The words hit me like a punch to the jaw.
I gape at her in furious shock, but she just meets my eyes, unapologetic and unafraid.
“Fuck you.” I spit the words at her as I shove off the counter, but I’m mostly angry because there’s not a goddamn thing I can say to argue her point. “I’ll handle my own fucking life, thanks so much.”
I storm out of the room and down the hall toward my office, slamming the door behind me so hard that the walls shake. I refuse to collapse against the door this time, instead carefully making my way to my chair and falling into it. My teeth are clenched against the onslaught of emotion clawing its way up my throat, my eyes closed against the tears that threaten to burst free.
I struggle to calm my breathing, knowing that if I let myself fall apart, I’ll start screaming. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop.
Mary’s words echo in my skull, guilt and heartbreak setting them on a brutal loop.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am a coward.
I’d rather be a coward than a fool.
I’d rather be too scared to say anything than hear the brutal truth straight from Lucas’s mouth.
If that makes me a coward, fine. At least I’ll keep the last tattered remnants of my heart safe.
JENNY
I’m forgetting about everything.
I don’t care if that means I have to forget myself in the process. As long as I clear my mind of every memory of Lucas Cross, it’ll be worth it.
I can’t afford to be distracted by someone Iknowwill only wind up breaking my heart again. It doesn’t matter how often his words echo around my skull, the overheard declaration of love morphing into imagined whispers against my skin, promises of more, ofbetter. None of it’s real. None of it was ever real.
Things between us won’t work, no matter how much I want them to. I have to believe that.
If I don’t, I’ll go insane.
I’m already halfway there.
Dad and Mary are thankfully giving me some time to sort myself out, even Wayne offering me space to hole up in my office for days on end. I haven’t gone out to the barn for anything in almost a week, keeping the curtains in my office firmly shut to avoid catching so much as a glimpse of Lucas. Or, worse, the lack of him.
He’s still here, I’m sure of that. Someone would have told me if he left already.
