He nodded and pushed back his chair. “Thank you.”
“It won’t be easy,” Maile warned.
“We can make it work.”
“I mean getting her back.”
A cold sensation ran down his spine. “I know.I’m confident, though. I’ll tell her how much she means to me. Then and now.”
“And you think that’s all she needs to hear?” Maile’s words were cruel, but her tone was gentle, as if she were delivering a necessary stab wound. “That you decided you want to be with her, and she’ll fall in your arms?”
He remained silent, and Tani picked up a sketchpad and a pencil.
“Good luck,” she said.
Nicholas wasn’t sure if that sentiment was sincere or not, but it didn’t matter. He’d take every well wish he could.
Chapter 20
“I’M GOINGto kill you,” Livvy growled when Jackson opened the door to his crappy hotel room.
Her twin studied her, then opened the door wider. “Want a beer first?”
So that was how they came to be seated side by side on his bed, nursing beers.
Livvy took a long sip of the alcohol. It was good beer, which didn’t surprise her. Jackson had always insisted on drinking and eating the best. She rested the cold bottle on her stomach and stared straight ahead at the ugly, faded, rose wallpaper. The hotel had seen better days, but it wasn’t as seedy as the place she and Nicholas had used. “It was a dick move you pulled, talking to Nicholas. Telling him about my episode back then. If I’d wanted to tell him, I would have.”
Jackson set his jaw, and for a second, he looked eerily similar to Paul. “I’m not sorry. He’s so goddamned self-satisfied and rich and confident. He needed to know what he did.”
Her cheeks turned red, and she spoke through gritted teeth. “You had no right to do that.”
Jackson closed his eyes, irritating her more. “It was my right as your brother.”
“You haven’t played my brother in years,” she snapped back. “You can’t roll in whenever you feel like and pick up the title.”
He froze, mid-sip, then lowered the beer. “Fair enough. All I could think about was what he put you through. Guess my temper got ahold of me.”
Livvy’s lips twisted. “You understand that episode wasn’t exclusively about the breakup right? It was everything. Like an avalanche of triggers, combined with my depression.”
Jackson worried the label on the bottle. “I guess I didn’t think of it like that. It was an avalanche of stuff for me, too, and then Nicholas fucked shit up. I know I’m not much of a brother now, but your hurt was mine then, remember?”
“I do.” Two peas in a pod.
“It scared me,” confessed her big, tough brother. “I couldn’t lose you, too. I guess in my head it was easier to place all my anger on Nicholas.”
At Jackson’s stark admission of fear, Livvy deflated. While Paul drank in their father’s study and their mother unraveled, Jackson had been the one to hold her on her bedroom floor. “I guess I haven’t been much of a sister either. We’ve both been too busy running.”
“Yeah.” He looked out the crack in the drapes at the depressing parking lot. “You over him now?”
“Yup,” she lied.
“He hurt you?”
She breathed out a low exhale but didn’t respond. There was no easy answer. Of course he’d hurt her. He hurt her by existing because she knew they’d never be together.
“I told you not to stay here,” Jackson said, when she didn’t reply. His tone was infinitely gentle. “This place isn’t good for you.”
No.
