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“What?” I laughed. My heart made a valorous attempt at climbing out of my throat. “No! Why would you suggest such a thing?”
She leveled her eyes at me. “Jessamine Marjorie Hastings, tell me the truth.”
“Seriously, Cass. Whatever would I do with someone like Remy?”
“You didn’t answer me.”
So I leveled my eyes back at her, making sure I was facing her as fully as possible. I even leaned in so she could get a good, strong look at my pupils while I lied, the guilt sour in my stomach. “This has nothing to do with your cousin.”
It wasn’t a total lie. Remy was merely a catalyst for something I should have realized long ago—I didn’t want Henry, and he didn’t want me.
“I’ve seen you French,” she reminded me.
I blushed, laughing, and lied, lied, lied. “I like Remy. He’s a decent man after all. And clearly he’s an exceptional kisser, but there’s nothing to it.”
Her eyes narrowed a tick, but she relaxed. “Good. I know I joke about him, but I really wouldn’t forgive you. Not ever.”
The words were a physical blow. I tried to laugh them off. “That’s...really, that seems a bit far, don’t you think? We’ve been friends for ten years. We’ve been through everything that’s mattered together. You’d really never forgive me?”
“I’d really never forgive you.”
“Am I so fragile that you should be this worried about Remy breaking my heart?”
“Yes, and you should be too. But...well, that’s not the whole truth about why I don’t want you seeing him.”
“Well, say it then!”
The look on her face was a little bit hurt, a little bit angry, and whole lot of sad. “You’d survive Remy. Remy wouldn’t survive you.”
The vise around my heart tightened.
“He’s been through too much, lost too much. Had his heart broken so bad, he never put it all the way back together. And if he fell for you—which he inevitably would, how could he not?—only for you to ditch him here and go back to England, I don’t know if he’d ever recover.”
I didn’t know what to say, my mind a whirl. I hadn’t considered I’d hurt him. I hadn’t considered he could be hurt, not by me, at least.
“Warning you off him was easy—he proved my point the second he opened his mouth. But what Remy went through with Chelsea was...” She shook her head, looking down at her hands as she picked at her nails. “We thought she was it, Jess. He was all in, proposed in the gazebo in town and everything, had started fixing up the old cottage for them to stay in when they visited. But when Linda got cancer and Remy came home for good, he came home alone. He wouldn’t tell us much, only that they broke up, and she didn’t want to move to Roseville. So I called her myself.”
I listened, stunned silent.
“We got in a huge fight after she told me that she didn’t sign up to take care of his sick mom or live in a shitty old house in the middle of nowhere. She said she was too young to be stuck, and she said she was sorry. I think she meant it. But fuck her. Fuck her all the way to hell for being so selfish and leaving him like she did.” She sighed. “At least she was honest, and at least he found out before marrying her and having kids and all. But...it did something to him, Jess. He threw himself into taking care of Linda alone—Mama and I were trying to get over Daddy dying and didn’t have any space left for anything, not even each other. Remy lost everything with the snap of God’s fingers, and it was too much to handle. So he didn’t. He packed it up and resigned himself to stay here because everything else was too hard.” She shook her head. “That summer changed him irrevocably. For all the girls and for all his talk, he’s the loneliest guy I know. So, no. If you fucked around with my cousin and left him here alone, I’d never forgive you.”
I nodded. Swallowed the stone in my throat. Put on the façade with my stomach hollowed out. Worried I’d inadvertently ruin Remy, if I hadn’t already.
“You have nothing to worry about.”
She relaxed, smiling as she said “Good,” and jumped into ticking off a list of things she had to do tomorrow before the bachelor/bachelorette party. And while she talked, I packed her suitcase with militant exactitude.
She might not have had anything to worry about.
But I did.
36
would've, could've, should've
REMY
It’d been more than twenty-four hours since I’d seen Jessa, and I was crawling out of my skin from all the waiting I’d done.
