My chest feels tight, like I’m stuck in a vice, and I can’t breathe properly. The last breath I took is stuck somewhere in my lungs and can’t escape. I can’t move. I can’t see. My vision blurs as my eyes fill with tears and I’m afraid I might pass out.
“Jameson. You have to breathe.”
The comforting hand on my back brings me just barely back to myself, enough that the exhale shakes free and I’m able to suck fresh air into my lungs again.
“Fuck,” I say on the next exhale.
“Look at me, Jamie.” Grandad never calls me Jamie; it’s alwaysalwaysbeen Jameson, so this is enough to catch my attention and make me lift my head. “It’s going to be okay.”
“H-how can this possibly be okay? That’s my son out there? I have a—” I squeeze my eyes shut and will the queasy feeling to dissipate. Shaking my head, I don’t say another word. I stare straight ahead. I can’t look at my grandfather, but he doesn’t stop looking at me, though he stays silent. If only I could keep my thoughts quiet…
But they are riotous.
I saw her with that guy. I saw them together. It made sense. I hurt her and she moved on. I never thought of the possibility that the baby I saw in her arms could be mine…
I never would’ve believed she’d keep something like this from me.
Honesty. Truth. We promised each other that, hadn’t we?Always.
Round and round the questions—the implications—spin through my mind like a tornado, and it’s wreaking irreparable damage on everything it touches.
I thought we were friends? I thought we were rebuilding something here. I thought… Hell, I don’t know what I thought because clearly everything since the second she set foot in the inn a few weeks ago was a complete and total lie.
I clench my jaw and worry my teeth might crack with the strain. I need to get out of here. It feels like I’m suffocating. I need air. Though, I’m not sure there’s enough air in all of Scotland to help me catch my breath at this point.
I rip my messenger bag off the back of the chair and snatch the keys to the Land Rover, pushing past my grandfather—unable to look at him—but he grabs my arm. It’s gentle but firm and my eyes narrow in on it.
“Jameson,” he says with sorrow laced underneath.
“Don’t. Please. I need to… I need space.”
He nods and squeezes my arm firmly. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”
My laugh is humorless. “It’s too fucking late for that.”
“Jamie.”
“Just. Don’t,” I bite out. With a shake of my head, I walk away.
“I love you, son,” he says softly behind me, and it lands like a blow to my already crumbling emotional state.
Son.
He’s called me that for years, but the meaning is suddenly very different. It’s just a placeholder for grandson, a shorter endearment, but now with the possibility of my own son in my head, it grates against sore nerves. It’s salt in a fresh wound and it hurts.
It hurts so damn much.
I should go out the back door, to the cottage or the car, or make my way around the inn to the street to take a walk, anything to get away from everything… everyone.
Space is a good idea.
Not making assumptions is agood idea.
Not making a scene is a good idea.
Fuck. Good. Ideas.
I avoid the front desk, not wanting Nox—Lennox, myson—to see me like this, and head straight for the kitchen. I stand in front of the door, my hands shaking, before I clench them into fists at my sides and push it open.
