But she could never remember how the song went, and he never came back, and Jay would wake up with tears in her eyes and a stinging sense of failure that she could never put a name to. Lying in the warm bed, with one of Nicholas’s heavy forearms draped around her waist, she felt the fleeting vestiges of those feelings even now.
They whispered,You’re not good enough to be loved.
Looking at Nicholas put an ache in her throat. Being with him made her feel for the first time in her life that she could be enough—and not just for him. For herself, too.
That was terrifying.
She ran trembling fingers along his jaw, rasping over the sawtooth blades of stubble. The shape of his face was as familiar as her own, with those vaulted cheekbones that were sharp enough to gouge and a prominent nose that he spent far too much time looking down at others with.And that mouth, she thought. It was a wicked, sullen mouth that did terrible things to her heart.
“Please don’t hurt me again, Nick.” She touched his nose, thinking about the way that he was always flicking hers with such irreverence. “Can you do that? Can you just—love me?”
His fingers flexed at her hip, but otherwise, he didn’t stir. He would soon, though. The rise and fall of his chest was steady and his breathing was too shallow for deep sleep.
“Thank you.”
Impulsively, she pressed a kiss to his nose before sliding out of his arms and quietly creeping to her own room. She didn’t look back, so she didn’t see his eyes open, following her as she left while his fingers ghosted the path hers had taken.
Jay fed her anxiously pacing cat and patted his butt the way he liked before sliding her arms into a floral blouse and doing up the buttons. As she clasped on a statement necklace that she refused to believe was out of fashion, she studied herself in the mirror.
It wasn’t the loss of Danielle she grieved so much as the loss of a mother who had never really existed at all. She had made excuses for that mother, but every time she stayed out late at night, it wasn’t because she had been trying to provide. She had been looking for a way out—with or without Jay. And when she had needed her mother most, her mother had chosenwithout.
Maynard was scampering around the kitchen and kicking up his heels, so Jay fed him, too. He was an excitable dog, and was beginning to get quite large. Sometimes Nicholas had to walk him three times a day, and Jay would quietly go to the front door to watch their shapes disappear around the curve of the hill, her stomach flipping when he would bend to ruffle the dog’s ears.
The only thing the dog liked more than them was the cat, who stayed locked in Jay’s room. He would claw at the door like a creature possessed, while her cat’s little shadow floated back and forth beneath the gap in the door, hissing audibly.
I bet he’s lonely, she thought, as the puppy sniffed her hand with interest, detecting hints of the cat he could smell but never see. She smiled when he licked her and scratched behind his ear, watching him kick out his left leg in a rhythm of pure blissful joy.
“I get lonely, too,” she told the dog. “But maybe none of us has to be lonely anymore. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Jay.” She jumped guiltily, falling back on her ass as Nicholas placed his briefcase on the kitchen table. The puppy gleefully took advantage of her discomfiture by jumping into her lap. “You ran away again.”
She set the puppy to the side and got to her feet, straightening her shirt. “The cat was hungry.”
He looked at her, with an expression that clearly said,I might be, too.When he slid a hand into his pocket and strolled over to her, her body thrummed in anticipation.
“This is pretty.” He fingered her statement necklace, lifting one of the pink rhinestones.
“It’s just a necklace,” Jay said, looking down at his hand. “I brought it back with me from the city.”
“Would you wear something like that for me?”
“A necklace?”
“No. Something that will go with the lace you wear for me at night. Delicate and sweet—until it’s not.” He gave a tug on the rhinestone. “Something that tightens when I pull on it.”
“O-oh,” Jay heard herself say faintly, as his fingers drifted harmlessly down her blouse.
“I like that reaction.” He pulled away with a grin, which faded when he realized how stiff she was. “What is it? What’s wrong? You don’t want the necklace?”
“N-no, that’s fine—” she flushed. “They’re announcing my role today and I’m just really nervous.”
And now her head was full of explicit images, thanks to him. She shook her head side to side, trying to dispel them.
“I’m worried about how people will take it after that article.”
“It doesn’t matter how they take it. You’ll be the smartest person in that room.”
The praise made her smile unwillingly, even as she searched his face for deceit. Absently, she reached up to fasten his crooked shirt collar, before taking the silk tails of his unfastened tie and knotting them beneath his throat. He smiled at her. The smile was not reassuring.
