I stood up, leaving tip money on the table for both our coffees. "Lead the way."
chapter
thirty-five
The driveto my apartment felt like the longest eight minutes of my life. In my rearview mirror, I could see Jimmy following in his Honda, and something about that simple act — him choosing to follow me home — made my chest tight with emotions I'd been suppressing for weeks.
My hands were trembling slightly on the steering wheel. Cap's letter sat heavy in my jacket pocket, a tangible weight against my ribs. The conversation at the coffee shop had cracked something open inside me, something I'd spent weeks trying to keep locked away. Jimmy's raw honesty about Lisa Harris, about his fears of not being worthy of fatherhood — it had shattered the last of my carefully constructed walls.
He was trying to protect me by leaving,I thought, the realization still stunning in its clarity.And I was trying to protect myself by pushing him away.
We'd both been so busy trying to save each other from our own perceived failures that we'd nearly destroyed the one thing worth saving.
I pulled into my parking space and sat there for a moment, watching Jimmy park beside me. Through his windshield, I could see his profile, the familiar line of his jaw, the way he ran his hand through his hair when he was nervous. God, I'dmissed him. I'd missed the simple pleasure of knowing someone was there, of having someone to come home to, someone who understood the weight of carrying other people's lives in your hands.
He was waiting by my truck when I climbed out, his green eyes searching my face with the same careful attention he brought to his patients.
"You okay?" he asked softly.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. We walked to my building in silence, the familiar ritual of unlocking doors and climbing stairs feeling surreal with him beside me again. How many times had we done this before? How many evenings had ended with his gentle presence filling my carefully controlled space?
Inside my apartment, I felt the full weight of what I was about to do. This wasn't just letting him back into my bed — it was letting him back into my life, my heart, my carefully guarded vulnerabilities. I was choosing to tear down every wall I'd built since Cap died, every barrier I'd erected to protect myself from the pain of loving someone and losing them.
"There's something I need to show you," I said, my voice steadier than I felt. I walked to my kitchen table where Cap's letter had been sitting for days, waiting for this moment.
I handed Jimmy the envelope, watching his confusion turn to understanding as he read Cap's shaky handwriting. The letter had broken me open when I'd first read it, but seeing Jimmy's face as he absorbed Cap's words — that was almost worse. I watched his throat work as he swallowed hard, saw the way his eyes brightened with unshed tears.
When he finished, he looked up at me with something that looked like wonder.
"He believed in us," he said, his voice thick with emotion.
"He did. Even when I didn't." I took the letter back, folding it with the reverence it deserved. "He said you lovedme, that he could see it in the way you looked at me. He was right, wasn't he?"
"Yes," Jimmy said without hesitation, the word carrying the weight of weeks of separation, of mistakes and misunderstandings and the desperate hope that we could find our way back to each other. "God, yes. I love you, Izzy. I never stopped, not for a single day."
The words hit me like a physical force, and suddenly I was crying again — not the controlled tears I'd allowed myself over the past weeks, but the raw, honest grief of someone who'd convinced herself she'd lost everything that mattered.
"I love you too," I whispered, the admission feeling like stepping off a cliff. "I tried to stop, tried to make myself not care, but I couldn't. You're in my bones, Jimmy. You're part of me."
We stood there in my living room, looking at each other across the space that had once felt like home and now felt like a battleground we'd somehow survived. The weight of everything we'd said, everything we'd been through, hung between us like smoke from a structure fire — invisible but toxic, needing to be cleared before we could breathe again.
"So what now?" Jimmy asked, and I could hear the vulnerability in his voice, the fear that we might have talked ourselves into forgiveness but not back into love.
I smiled then — the first genuine smile I'd managed in weeks. Something was shifting inside me, the ice queen I'd become finally melting away to reveal the woman underneath. The woman who'd fallen in love with a gentle nurse who made tres leches cake and held people when they were breaking apart.
"Now you come here and hold me while I figure out how to be brave enough to let you stay," I said.
He crossed my living room in three quick strides, and then his arms were around me, solid and warm and achingly familiar. I buried my face in his neck, breathing in the scent of him —soap and laundry detergent and something indefinably Jimmy that I'd been craving for weeks without admitting it.
"I'm not going anywhere," he murmured against my hair, his voice rough with emotion. "Not unless you tell me to."
"Don't you dare," I said fiercely, my arms tightening around his waist. "Don't you dare leave me again."
"Never," he promised, and I felt the truth of it in the way he held me, like I was something precious he'd thought he'd lost forever. "Not ever again."
We stood there for a long time, just holding each other, just breathing the same air. I felt something inside me unclenching, the constant tension I'd been carrying since Cap died finally beginning to ease. This was what I'd missed — not just the physical comfort, but the simple peace of being held by someone who understood the weight I carried, who didn't need me to be perfect or strong or anything other than myself.
When I finally pulled back to look at him, I saw my own relief reflected in his green eyes. But underneath it was something else — desire, yes, but also a kind of desperate hunger that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with connection. We'd been starving for each other, and now that we were here, now that we'd said the words that needed saying, the need was overwhelming.
