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He was quiet in the car, preferring to wait until they got inside to press her for answers. Jill was sad. And he wasn’t convinced it was only because she had been reminded of the baby she’d lost.
The minute he closed the front door, he opened his mouth to talk to her but she wrapped her arms around him and pressed her lips to his in a kiss of such deep longing, such sweet perfection, it almost knocked him to his knees.
“Make love to me, Andrew,” she whispered against his lips, before taking his hand in hers and pulling him toward the bedroom.
Their lovemaking was sultry and sweet and seemed endless to him. But there was an emotion playing just underneath the surface that he didn’t like. There was a sadness to it and as he lay in the aftermath with Jill in his arms, he suddenly knew.
She was leaving him.
“Why did that feel like goodbye, Jill?”
He felt her tears on his chest and he lifted her chin so he could see her eyes.
He knew he was right. The pain that gutted his chest and made him feel empty and broken told him he was right.
“Tell me what’s going on. Tell me why you’re leaving me,” Andrew whispered. He was surprised how calm he sounded, when inside, he felt anything but.
He ached for Jill, ached to absorb her pain and her fear – to find a way to soothe her. But when she spoke and confirmed his fears he was desperate to make her stay.
“I can’t, Andrew. I thought I could but I just can’t,” Jill began.
He felt so many emotions when his worst fear was confirmed. Anguish, sorrow, anger. He was ashamed to say, there was a lot of anger.
She slipped from the bed and pulled her robe on but he stayed where he was, trying to take measured breaths, to will away the urge to lash out at her for causing him this pain.
“Why, Jill? Why can’t you?” His voice sounded so calm, but on the inside he was anything but.
Suddenly, despite the fact that he’d never thought of Jill as being like Blair, that was all he could think. She was leaving him just like Blair had.
He tried to remember that Jill was hurting and sad and he wanted to reach out and comfort her. But she was also the one causing him so much pain, tearing his future apart the same way Blair had. Taking away the happiness that had been in his grasp only hours before.
She shook her head as tears began to flow and she pressed her hand over her mouth. “I just can’t go through that again,” she said, her voice small and quiet.
His anger flared. He rose from the bed. “How could you think I would be anything like him? That I would leave you? I’ve done everything,everything, Jill, to show you I won’t leave. What more can I do?”
He was yelling at her now as he pulled on his clothes in jerky, quick motions.
Fuck! How had this happened?
“I’m sorry, Andrew. There isn’t anything you can do. It isn’t you. I just can’t do this.”
He needed to get away from her before he lashed out and said something he couldn’t take back. As he turned to leave, she called out his name and he turned to see her holding his ring out to him.
In a moment that would bring him unending shame later, he growled at Jill and swatted her hand away, sending the ring flying across the room. He stalked out of her house and away from the second woman to take his love and shred his heart with it.
Jill managed to hold herself up until she heard the door slam and Andrew’s car pull down the driveway. Then she let the flood of tears, anguish and heartache come as she sank to the floor.
The pain she felt was so much greater than the pain she’d felt when Jake left her. How was that possible?
Rev came and crawled into her lap – all eighty pounds of him – and she fisted her hands into his soft curls, buried her face in his neck and cried.
Chapter Thirty-Five
By the following week, Jill was fully wallowing in her misery. She’d been in the same sweats and t-shirt for days, not something she usually did.
When the doorbell rang, she glanced down at her sloppy clothes and her unshowered state but answered the door anyway.
Kelly didn’t wait for an invitation. She walked inside, said ‘hi’ to Rev and then turned to look Jill up and down. “You’re a mess, honey. A hot mess.”
