Her disbelief morphed into fury, sharp and unrelenting.
“Oh my God!” she snapped. “Why did I ever expect you to think of anyone other than yourself? Why do I keep falling into this fantasy that you actually care about me?” The way she said it wasn’t an attack on me—it was on herself. She was kicking herself for letting her guard down. That hit me harder than anything else.
I swallowed the sting of her words, but my emotions’ racecar was going way too damn fast to stop. She wanted to see the real Chris—how different he was from the dream version—and here he was. My voice came out darker, rougher than I intended.
“Of course, I care about you. You’re the one pushing me away.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “You drink like a sailor and sleep with half the women under thirty in this city. You’re rude to everyone, and I’m supposed to ignore that and welcome you into my children’s lives so I don’t hurt your megastar feelings?”
I flinched at the accusations, even if I deserved them.The drinking. The women.I’d spent so long convincing myself that none of it mattered, that it was part of the life I chose.
“You make it sound worse than it is.”
Was it true? Yeah. But it wasn’t the whole story. There were a million reasons why I’d been the way I was. The isolation, the frustration of wanting a connection I could never seem to find. And for twelve years, the constant ache of not havingher. But things were different now. Since Jules came into my life, I hadn’t been that guy. Or at least, I was trying not to be. I hoped she’d noticed.
Apparently, she hadn’t.
“The drinking or the whoring?” she shot back.
“That’s not fair,” I said, and my jaw tightened because her words had hit the mark.
She shook her head. “I’m a parent. I don’t get to think about you or evenmefirst.”
I held it in, but the words pushed their way out like a dam breaking.
“You got everything. Don’t you see that?” My voice cracked, and I hated how vulnerable I sounded. She stared at me, tears streaming down her face, while I felt my own anger twist and churn inside me, reddening my face. “You got thegood part of the deal,” I continued. “The long marriage, the freedom to justbe. To have your partner, your friends. And you got the kids, for God’s sake!”
I could hear my own voice shaking as the weight of it hit me again. The twelve years I spent with nothing but glimpses of her in dreams, while she got to build a life that was supposed to beours.
“How is that fair?” My voice wavered as I said it. “You gotallof it, and now I get to see what I could have had, but I have to be…understanding.” Hell, I waited twelve goddamn years, watching the life I wanted playing out in my head every night. How could she blame me for wanting it all and wanting itnow?
Jules stood there, trembling.
“I get that’s hard for you. But do you really think I got it all?”
“Well, yes,” I shot back. “Because you did.”
Her body shook with the intensity of her words as she fired back, “And what is ‘all’ again, Chris? Living half awake and half asleep? Not feeling safe enough to be myself, to go after my dreams, to do the things that I love?” Her words cut through me. I hadn’t considered that. Hell, I hadn’t wanted to.
The sound of slow, cautious footsteps pulled my attention, and I looked up to see Carol coming down the stairs. She looked concerned, and she moved quietly as if she didn’t want to be noticed, but also couldn’t ignore the shouting anymore.
My chest felt tight, my heart pounding so hard it threatened to break free. What was it about this woman? Everything I felt for her was so damnintense. From the moment I met her, it was like I’d been hit by a freight train.
This was it. The main act, the showdown. Starring ChrisJones: egotistic, selfish, rude, and completely fucking clueless.
“Oh, please,” I snapped. “Don’t play the victim here. Nothing was stopping you from going after what you wanted. You love being the martyr. But not getting everything you wanted? That’s no one’s fault but your own!” The words burned as they came out, but I couldn’t stop them. I was completely gone. “If you had stuck around and fought for your project… You would have been mine!Theywould have been mine!” The second the words left my mouth, I wanted to grab them out of the air and shove them back in.
The room went completely silent. The kind of silence that suffocates you.
So much for keeping my asshole tendencies in check; this was a new personal record.
I knew it wasn’t that simple. I knew what had happened to her, how that producer hurt her. And yet, I said the worst possible thing. Jules stared at me, her eyes changed so fast—anger giving way to heartbreak. Neither of us moved, surrounded by the echoes of the mess I made.
She was right. I didn’t belong in their lives. This pretentious fuck who says things to hurt and has the emotional self-control of a toddler? They didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve that.
And that’s when I knew—I loved her too much to keep hurting her.
“This is ridiculous,” I whispered, staring at the floor, because I had no strength to look in their eyes.
