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“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you. In this very bar. In this very booth.” I didn’t know if it was this booth or not, but as I continued my speech, my voice began to shake, and I was sure he could hear the tears forming behind my eyes.
He swore quietly, rubbing his hand over his face and through his thick hair. “God. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about that. It was nothing. How did you even hear about it?”
“I didn’t hear about it at all. I saw it. With my own eyes, when I was out for a walk.”
“Then you saw that I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“What I saw was you sitting in a booth in a bar with your ex-girlfriend just hours after you had sex with me and then immediately left, claiming you had more important things to do than stay and talk.”
“Greer, I’m—”
“I don’t care anymore, Jace. Really, I don’t. It’s not important.” I blew out a frustrated breath. “I just don’t understand how last week I felt closer to you than anyone alive, and since the séance…”
“It’s just…hard for me to know that you were scared, that you were losing your shit. You have some sort of diagnosed mental illness—which I still don’t know about—and you didn’t say a word to me, even when we were supposedly telling each other everything. You hid things from me. Important things. It makes me feel like I don’t even know who you really are.”
I silently absorbed what he’d said. The tears that had threatened minutes before now spilled down my cheeks. So much for the calming effects of the Xanax. I hated myself for crying, but I couldn’t help it. There was nothing I could do to save us, no words I could say because Jace was right. I wasn’t taking illegal drugs, and I didn’t have a drinking problem, but there were parts of myself I was always going to hide away. Protect. I had to—I’d come too far. If what Jace wanted was a life without any secrets, a life of not holding anything back, I wasn’t sure I could give it to him. Mind made up, I raised my chin and let his dark eyes draw me in one last time.
“I don’t know who I really am, either. At least not yet. I’ve wanted you for a long time, Jace Blackwell. Even when I pretended I didn’t. All those years…I want to thank you for the time you invested in me these past weeks and for helping me beat that murder charge. You reignited something in me, and I’ll always be grateful for that.”
His face froze as he processed what I said—the subtext of what I said.
“No,” he said harshly. “No fucking way, sweetheart. You aren’t doing this.”
“But I feel like it shouldn’t be this difficult,” I continued as if he hadn’t interjected. “If we were meant to be, it would feel natural.”
“Loving you is as natural to me as breathing.”
“Really?” I said, with as much sarcasm as I could muster. “That must be why you’ve stuck by me these past days. That must be why I feel so loved. Or maybe—maybe what comes more naturally to you than loving me is running away whenever you feel wronged.”
“I wasn’t running from you. I just have a lot of things to…process…at the moment.”
“Well, you go ahead and take your time processing them. But I won’t walk on eggshells for anyone. I’ve spent most of my life tiptoeing around, watching and waiting, hoping that someone would think I was good enough for them. Hoping that even with everything wrong with me, they’d see me as worthy. I’m done with that. I can’t live in limbo anymore.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, sitting back, gripping his beer bottle so hard I feared it would break in his hand. “So, I’m the bad guy, the guy who doesn’t automatically kiss the very ground you walk on. The guy who calls you on your bullshit—and that makes you uncomfortable. Is that what you tell the guy you’re living with now? Does he feel so sorry for you?”
He leaned forward, his nose practically touching mine, but I refused to retreat.
“Poor little Greer. I guess when you’re ‘damaged,’ you don’t have to take any accountability for your actions. Isn’t that right, sweethea—”
I slapped him, his head turning with the attack, and he kept his face turned away from me, his eyes out the window. Strangely, I had no urge to flee. I was completely calm.
When he turned his head back, he, too, was calm. Deathly so.
“Do you remember what happened the last time you slapped me?” he asked in a deceptively silky voice. “If we were anywhere else, I’d fuck you in the ass for that. And I’d make you like it.”
“We’re over,” I answered simply. “This time for good.”
“The hell we are.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You know what? Fine. I was perfectly happy until you came back here, anyway. I’m sick and tired of trying to convince you we should be together. I’m sick and tired of wondering what’s going on in your fucked-up head. If you can’t be an adult, if you can’t be honest, if you’re always looking for reasons to push me away instead of doing the hard work of being in a relationship, then fuck it.”
I didn’t even bother to let the hypocrisy of his words sink in, instead letting them wash over me. I slid out of the booth and walked swiftly out of the bar. I knew that if I continued to sit there, I might be tempted to cry, say it was all a mistake, refute everything he’d just said. Take him up on what I was generously deeming an offer for kinky sex.
It was unfair, but the result was the same in the end. I couldn’t be with him. We were all wrong for each other. I knew what I’d done was for the best, no matter how much it hurt and how much of my dignity I seemed to have lost in the process. Eventually, Jace would realize it was for the best too.
