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“Everything you feared is what I can offer you right now. One day, you’re going to find yourself alone again. I can’t control this. You deserve better.”
“I don’t want better. I’m not going to let you throw what we have away. I love you—don’t you at least care about that?”
“I care.” His voice rose. “I care so much it’s fucking killing me.” He caught hold of himself and sighed. “I’m in no place to keep any of my promises to you, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can forget about me.”
He took my elbow and led me outside. I followed him mutely and let him help me into the car. I felt numb and frozen inside.
The door shut with him on the other side, and when Leonard started to drive, I watched as Jason stood alone on the sidewalk. I watched as he receded out of sight, and I felt like I was drowning.
Chapter Nine
“He’s not talking to anyone,” Amy told me a couple of nights later. I’d told her everything, and between her concern for me and her worry over Jason, I feared we were putting a real shadow on her happiness. “Mom and Dad have been trying to have a conversation with him about everything…about maybe getting tested, but he doesn’t even want to discuss it at all.”
I understood Jason’s hesitation to get tested. A positive result could have profound emotional consequences. For someone like him, with the world at his fingertips, it could be devastating.
I wanted to be there for him, whether he chose to get tested or not.
I wanted to share everything he was going through.
Yet he’d shut me out, and I had no way of getting through to him.
“I had no idea.” Her eyes watered. “I wish you’d given me a hint. I might have come back sooner.”
“It’s not like there’s anything you could have done.”
“I could’ve been here.” She sighed. “You were all alone.”
“It was hell when I thought…when I didn’t know what to think. Now that I know why he’s pushing me away, at least I know he loves me, that he hasn’t stopped loving me.”
Amy put her arm around me. “I really hate this.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” I suggested. “Tell me about Colin’s family.”
“I can’t remember.” She scowled, and I chuckled. “His parents want to come to visit. Dad and Mom have been planning an engagement party, something big, especially since we haven’t picked a date for the wedding…which will be in England.”
“In a castle?”
“Maybe.” She smiled. “I don’t feel much like partying, though, not with…everything.”
“Where’s your optimism?” I smiled. “You’re the one who always says everything will work out.”
“Do you think it will…this time?”
I sighed. “It has to.” My life, my happiness, my future with Jason all depended on it.
Though my job title at work had changed, I still had the same office. My revised workload included more meetings, a closer working relationship with our authors, and fewer raw manuscripts from the slush pile. I rarely had visitors at work, so when I got a call from the receptionist one afternoon saying I had a visitor, my first reaction was puzzlement.
“Who is it?”
“Helen Wild?”
I found Amy’s mom waiting for me in the small reception area. She got up when she saw me and gave me one of her softly scented hugs.
“You look good,” she told me.
“Considering…” I said wryly.
She sighed. “I was hoping we could talk. Will you join me for lunch?’
