Yelling at him didn’t help matters—it just forced me to recognize how much I still care, how much remains unresolved between us.
When Monday finally arrives, I stand a little longer in the shower, letting hot water spray my shoulders and neck as if it could release all the tension stored in my muscles.
After I wash up and get dressed, it takes fifteen minutes to reach work. The air feels strangely heavy as I step through Lanter Bridge’s glass doors, and the thought of seeing Jake again makes me more nervous than the interview ever did.
A part of me clings to the anger I’ve carried for years, stubborn and insistent, telling me he deserved every word. But more than that, I need to find him. To say something, to apologize, to takeit back, I don’t even know. I just can’t leave things like this between us.
As I cross the lobby and head toward the bullpen, I scan every desk. His workspace sits empty, the usual coffee cup gone from its spot on his desk. All around me, the normal Monday symphony plays, keyboards clicking, phones ringing, quiet conversations murmuring, but there’s no sign of Jake. My heart drops a little more with every empty space my eyes land on.
Disappointment drops into my chest like a stone, sinking deeper with every passing second. He’s avoiding me. Or maybe he called in sick. Or worse… Judy heard about my very public meltdown and decided one of us has to go.
I force myself back to my desk, trying to shake off the crushing deflation settling over me.
Work. I need to focus on work. That’s what responsible adults do when they’ve possibly torpedoed their career and oldest relationship in one emotional outburst.
As I settle into my chair and power up my computer, an unread email from Jake sits at the top of my inbox. My pulse skips as my cursor hovers over it. The subject line gives nothing away—just “Watch this” with a video attachment.
I plug in my earbuds with shaky fingers and click. The screen fills with Jake’s face, his expression uncharacteristically serious. Vulnerable. The shadows under his eyes tell me he’s been sleeping about as well as I have.
“Sarah—I don’t even know where to start. But I need to explain. I owe you that much.”
He pauses, dragging a hand through his already mussed hair. For a moment, he looks exactly like the boy I used to know, the one who could never sit still when something important was trying to claw its way out of him.
“I never meant to hurt you. After we graduated, everything felt…too big. You had this incredible plan, this amazing dreamyou were chasing. And me?” His mouth tightens. “I was an accessory to fraud.”
My spine stiffens as I lean toward the screen. Fraud? The word crashes through my mind with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. What is he talking about?
“Sarah...” Jake leans closer to the camera, his head shaking. “The RainSafe campaign—it wasn’t what you think. It was my uncle’s project. He got my parents involved, and I was the one who asked you to help us develop the marketing for it.”
I’ve never seen Jake this way. He looks so ashamed.
“He used the campaign to present to investors who were eager to be part of it.” Jake scrubs a hand over his jaw, the stubble making a scratching sound that carries through my earbuds. “But it turned out my uncle misappropriated the funds.”
I watch him swallow hard, and a muscle twitches along his jaw before he exhales. “It all began when I got back home from school one Tuesday afternoon. I remember walking in and finding my parents at the kitchen table with this guy in a charcoal suit—perfectly pressed, not a wrinkle—and a suitcase. He seemed like the kind of person who delivers bad news for a living. Mom’s eyes were red-rimmed. Dad wouldn’t look at me.” His voice drops lower. “They told me to sit down, and that’s when I knew something was seriously wrong.”
Jake leans far back into his chair as if his memory takes him somewhere beyond the camera.
“‘What’s going on?’ I asked them, but it was the stranger who answered. He introduced himself as a lawyer—someone the family had hired to help untangle the mess.”
Jake’s shoulders hunch forward slightly. “My parents explained that he was investigating a fraud my uncle had committed, the same uncle whose project we’d been pouring ourselves into for months. The same project you stayed up late working on, obsessing over every detail.”
Chills race down my arms as his words sink in.
“The lawyer started asking questions about who was behind the marketing campaign, the one that convinced dozens of investors to pour money into a product that was never going to exist. Money my uncle pocketed and gambled away.”
Jake’s eyes meet the camera, raw pain in them. “All I could think about was you, Sarah. You with your scholarship to that fancy marketing program in New York. You with your whole future mapped out, the one we talked about for hours under the stars.” His voice is rough. “I couldn’t let you get tangled up in our mess.”
His takes a deep breath. “So when he asked who created the campaign materials, I told him I did.”
My stomach plummets as the pieces snap into place—the abrupt breakup, all of it.
“I couldn’t drag you into that mess. I couldn’t risk your future.”
I sit frozen, my hands gripping tightly the arms of my chair. The blood rushes to my ears so loudly I can barely hear his next words.
“I thought breaking it off would be easier,” Jake continues, his voice trembling beneath the forced composure, eyes locked on the camera with honesty I’ve never witnessed from him before. “I thought you’d meet someone in New York, create this amazing life you’ve always dreamed about. It never occurred to me that you’d come back here, back to all of this.” He swallows hard. “But I was wrong. So wrong. I hurt you in ways I couldn’t even comprehend back then. And I’ve regretted it—every single moment, every single day since.”
His hand rakes through his already disheveled hair. “I’ll be going away for a while. I don’t want to cause you any more pain or stress. It’s the least I can do after everything.”
