“What?” I asked gently. “Just tell me what you need. Tell me what I have to do and I’ll do it.”
Tears filled her eyes when she looked up at me. “You don’t have to do anything, Jess. There’s nothing to fix.”
I shook my head, a deep ache starting to build in my chest. “That’s not true.”
“It is,” she said, confidently enough that it cut straight through me. “Being together was supposed to be fake. That’s how this started.”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“There’s nothing for us past this point,” she said quietly. “Deep down, you know that.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I think we both knew this wasn’t sustainable.”
I blew out a heavy breath.Sustainable. God, I hate that word right now.
It sounded so logical. Reasonable and safe. Not wrong, though.
I let out a dry laugh. “I wanted to do it right, you know?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I wanted to follow tradition for once,” I said, glancing back at her. “I wanted to prove I’m not the irresponsible jackass who skirts around responsibility every chance he gets anymore.”
Her expression softened, but she didn’t interrupt.
“But in the end, I let that box me into something. I let it turn me into someone I’m not and I roped you into it with me.” I scoffed, my head dropping as I rolled my lips into my mouth for a beat. “I like who I am with you, Jacque. That’s not something I’ve ever really said before, but in this case, with you, it’s true. You make it easy to just be me.”
Her lips parted slightly, like she was about to say something, but I knew before she even verbalized the thought that it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “I’m sorry, Jesse, but that’s not enough.”
And there it is, the final thought. The only thing that matters.
Even though it felt like my chest cracked open, I nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
Nothing I said would change where she stood or what she believed, so I let out a long, slow breath and forced myself tosound less like I felt that the world was ending. “For the record, I still think you’re wrong.”
The smallest hint of a smile ghosted across her lips. “I know, but I just don’t think I am and I just got out of an eight-year relationship. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let the same things happen again. I can’t be with someone I’m not a hundred and ten percent sure is as committed to me as I am to them, and I can’t allow myself to disappear into someone else’s life again.”
I sighed but nodded and pushed to my feet, shoving my hands into my pockets as I met her eyes. “I’m always going to be here for you, Jacque. I mean that. Whatever you need, whenever you need it, I’m here.”
She swallowed hard. “Thanks, Jesse.”
“We started as friends, right? It would be a shame to lose that too.”
It sounded easier than it felt, but I’d rather have her in my life in a different capacity than not have her there at all.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “It would.”
Fuck, she looks sad.
If she’d been angry, I could’ve worked with it. If she’d been cold, I could’ve pushed, but I didn’t know how to fight this quiet, resigned, profound sadness.
I held her gaze for a second longer, every instinct in me screaming to say it. To just tell her that I was in love with her, but if everything she’d said was true and she already believed there was nothing for us, then telling her the truth would only make it harder to walk away.
For both of us.
“Take care of him,” I said instead, nodding toward Hubert, who was still lying on her feet.
