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She chased after him, following him through the living room and out onto the porch. She pounded small fists on his back before he stalked off the steps and whipped around to face her. He stood in the dry grass in front of the porch watching her with stormy eyes.
“Do you even feel anything, Chad? Will you for once stop walking around, all in control and fucking calm? Do you have any idea what you all have done? I lost everything, Chad.Everything, when Kyle died. I lost myself.”
She couldn’t stop. Something in her broke and she couldn’t stop. “I had finally begun to build a new life with new friends, with people I thought cared about me. I started to let myself be just a little bit happy again. Was it too much to ask? Did I ask for too much by just wanting to have a little bit of a life again?” She scarcely took a breath, pouring all her anger into her words. “Now, it’s all screwed up again and you walk around here like you don’t feel anything about what’s happened.”
For only the second time since she’d known him, she saw the flash of anger on his face, so fierce her breath caught in her throat and she took an involuntary step back, away from him. She knew he would never hurt her on purpose, but the anger rolling off him was palpable. It seemed to force her backwards as if it had a life of its own, a power of its own.
“Not feel anything, Jennie? Are you fucking kidding me? I walk around here every day and I ache every fucking minute I’m with you. I’m so twisted up with loving you and hating you, I can’t breathe. I can’t keep my hands off you, but I can’t let myself kiss you because I might lose myself in you. I can’t make love to you because I’m afraid you’ll pretend I’m him. That you’ll close your eyes and pretend it’s Kyle inside you. I know you want his arms around you, not mine. I know you want it to be his baby inside you, not mine. And I know you can’t love me back, no matter what I do, because you’re still so in love with your husband, you can’t even begin to see me.”
He didn’t stop and she didn’t try to stop him. She was frozen in place as she watched Chad come undone. As she watched and realized his heartache was as big as hers.
“And every day, I have to sit here and wonder how I’ll be a part of my baby’s life. I wonder if you’ll let me be in the delivery room, if you’ll let me help you name the baby. I wonder how much money I’d have to offer the people who live across the street from you to buy their house, just so I can see my child grow up. If you’ll let me—” Chad stopped as if he’d run out of steam.
They stood in uneasy silence for a long time before he spoke again. He sounded worn out and bitter and angry, mirroring Jennie’s chaos of emotions.
“Am I feeling anything? Yeah. I’m feeling some fucking shit, Jen.” He turned and walked through the trees, leaving her on the porch of the cabin, ripped open. Feeling everything in her life was broken.
And, worse than the fact that she had no idea how to fix things, was the fact that she had no idea if she even wanted to.
Chapter 31
Chad slowed to a walk. He didn't know how many miles he’d run. Longer than his typical morning run. He shouldn’t have left Jennie alone at the cabin so long, but he knew he couldn’t go back there right now. He felt more mixed up than ever.
It was time to take Jennie home. He needed to get her back to New Haven. Get her testimony on record before they both got arrested for impeding a federal investigation. Then he’d figure out a way to keep her safe without the sheer and utter torture of living in a small, isolated cabin with her.
He didn’t know if his mom had been right about him wanting to be unhappy or not. Maybe he had done this to himself subconsciously. And if he had, he was sorry he'd dragged Jennie into it. She didn’t deserve to be paying the price for his fucked-up head.
Chad knew it was time to move on. He’d love his baby and he’d find a way to raise it with Jennie, as friends, but he needed to find a way to stop loving her.
Being here with her, and yet not with her, made him realize how important it was that he move on and build a life, create a family with someone who could love him back and make him happy.
He knew deep down his mother was right about one thing. He did feel guilty for coming home from the war. He’d left so many friends behind. Good people who already had families of their own waiting for them to come back.
And for reasons Chad couldn’t understand, he got to come home and many of them didn’t. And, yeah, he’d always hated that. Always wished he could have brought all of them back with him. So, yeah, maybe on some level, he’d though he shouldn’t get to have what they could never come back to: love, a family.
But he couldn’t go on like this. And he couldn’t wish to trade places with them because he wouldn’t wish that pain on his mom or Jack or his friends. Taking a deep breath, Chad bent and put his hands on his knees and closed his eyes.
It’s time.
And as he took cleansing breath after cleansing breath, he let it all go. All the guilt and anger and feeling that maybe he was somehow undeserving of the life he had. The life that had been spared. And, he let his guilt over Jennie go as well.
He wouldn’t regret loving her even though he had to face the fact that she might never love him back. Her heart had been buried with her husband. But, maybe their baby would bring her some happiness, and for that, Chad would be grateful.
Taking one last deep breath, he turned back toward the cabin. It was time to take Jennie home.
They left the cabin three days later. Chad didn’t tell anyone they were coming. The less anyone knew about their whereabouts, the better. He still had plenty of cash stashed away so there was no need to use credit cards or anything that could be traced.
They planned to go to Jennie’s parents’ house first to see them, then spend no more than a day or two getting Jennie’s testimony taken care of before heading back to the cabin. From there, he’d figure out their next step.
He wasn’t thrilled with this plan, but Jennie was adamant about going to her parents’ house. And, she’d made a few good points in her argument. No one was expecting them. They wouldn’t call Burke until they arrived. They wouldn’t let anyone else know their location.
Even Chad had to admit, it was highly unlikely that Rick Bandon would be sitting on her parents’ house an hour away from where she lived. If anything, Bandon would be watching Jennie’s house or maybe Chad’s condo in New Haven.
So, in the end, she won. Meanwhile, Chad was brainstorming a longer-term way to keep her safe, one that didn’t require them to live in such close confines. He needed to find a way to step back and let the feelings he had for her fade away.
They’d fallen back into an uneasy truce, of sorts, but they didn’t talk much and things were strained. He could see dark circles forming under Jennie’s eyes again and knew she wasn’t sleeping well.
He pulled off the highway a half hour from Jennie’s parents’ house. He dug out a burner phone they hadn’t used yet and pulled a sheet of phone numbers from his wallet. He punched in one of the phone numbers and handed the phone to Jennie after placing it on speaker.
