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Chapter 9 - Jade: Consequences
I watched him walk into Ethan’s practice. My breaths were coming in hard and labored, like I had just run a marathon.
That could not have gone any worse than it had actually gone. I had wanted to respond to him and tell him. I wanted to tell him the truth and the real reason. I wanted to finally rid this heavy load I had been carrying on my chest for years. But I froze.
It had been the look of pure and utter hatred in his eyes that had cut me deeper than I could describe. It was so strange because the last time I had seen Ethan before my return was the day before I left.
His eyes had held so much love in them. He had caressed my flat belly and spoken to our unborn child with so much tenderness and love. In the time we had spent together, he had calmed my racing heart. He had eased my worries, but after he had left, that safe bubble he had created had popped.
Had I been selfish for leaving? Possibly. Should I have told him face to face instead of leaving a letter with no more than three sentences on it? Yes. But I knew that if I had stood in front of him, he would have tried to stop me and asked me to say. I knew I would have said yes because I could never deny Ethan anything.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I wiped away the tears that had fallen and pulled it out. Tash. She was checking in, but I didn’t want to talk to her. She knew me too well. She would be able to pick up that something was wrong right away, and I wouldn’t be able to lie to her.
I decided that it was better to just speak to her now rather than have her thinking I had died somewhere in a ditch.
“Hey, Tash,” I answered, trying to sound happy.
“What’s wrong?”
She always knew.
I breathed a shaky breath and tried to keep the tears from streaming down my face, but it was pointless. I was a mess right now. Too much was happening all at once, and my heart just couldn’t take it. This is why I had wanted to run.
“Say the word, and I’m out of here in the next hour and headed to you.”
I shook my head. “No. You can’t leave Riley and Nate. Besides, you are wedding planning. I can do this on my own. I just need to recenter myself.”
“What happened? Talk to me, Jade.”
“Grayson and I talked.” I let out a pitiful attempt at a laugh. “Some things were said. There was a lot of anger which is totally understandable and expected.”
“What did you guys talk about?”
“We talked about her.” I let out a small whimper. I never spoke about Mia. I could count the number of times within the last four years that I had spoken about her. She never got the chance to even open her eyes, but I had chosen to name her. She deserved a name.
I subconsciously clutched the necklace that hung around my neck with her initials. M.S. I never took it off. It stayed on me at all times serving as a constant reminder of all that had made me and broken me.
“What did he say?” Tash’s voice came out soft and gentle as if she was scared that raising it would set me off.
“What do you think? He thinks I killed her.”
“Did you tell him the truth?”
“I wanted to, but I just froze. I couldn’t force the words out of me. Tash, you should have seen the way he looked at me. He looked at me like I was the worst thing on this earth. The hatred in his eyes…” My voice trailed off. I was unable to speak past the lump in my throat.
“That’s just the hurt, Jade. Sometimes our pain comes out as hate because we don’t know how to properly process it.”
“All I know is that I can’t do it, Tash. I’ve been here less than a day and I already feel like my world is imploding. I had taken my bags and was ready to leave, but he stopped me.”
“You were coming back to New York? Without attending the funeral? Were you really going to leave Ethan to deal with it all by himself?”
“Yeah.” Now that I was saying it out loud, I felt ashamed. Grayson had been right. I was selfish in that moment. I had only been thinking about me at the time.
“But now you are obviously staying, right?”
“I need to. I had been wrong in the beginning for wanting to leave, but Grayson talked me off the ledge. Seeing him is killing me, Tash. My heart literally feels like it’s going to self-destruct every time I’m around him. Every time we are in the same room, my body goes into hyper driver. It’s like I feel him everywhere.”
“Do you want my counsel or comfort?”
