AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Good, that’s good. Hailee keeps us all updated.”
“Of course she does.” I gave him a wry smile.
“You never called.”
“I thought it was pretty obvious from our last conversation that you didn’t want to talk to me.”
“Shit, Xander. I was angry. I said a lot of things—”
“It doesn’t matter. It happened, and I didn’t ask you to come here to rehash the past.”
“You didn’t?” He eyed me warily.
“No. I need a favor.”
“And there it is.”
His assumption made me bristle, but it was nothing I didn’t deserve. I forced myself to take a deep breath. “I’ve been offered an internship at the youth center where I volunteer, but I need a personal recommendation.”
The surprise in his expression hurt almost as much as his earlier assumption.
“I’m sorry. I just assumed you wanted money or something.”
“Not this time,” I said grimly.
“Xander, I—”
“Let’s not, Jase. If you don’t want to write it, I understand. I fucked up. I broke your trust and put your integrity and job on the line. And there isn’t a day that goes by without me regretting how things went down, but I really want this. I think I could be… good at it.”
He regarded me for a second, his eyes searching my face. “You’re different.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect.”
Time seemed to stop, every beat of silence more painful than the last.
“For what it’s worth,” I finally spoke, “I am sorry. It was never supposed to go down like that.”
“But it did…”
“Yeah.”
“Did you love her?”
“Jase, I…” The words got stuck in my throat. It’s the question I’d asked myself every day since leaving Rixon.
Did I love her?
I’d told her I couldn’t. That I didn’t have it in me.
But there were moments, when I closed my eyes and saw Peyton’s face, that my heart swelled to the point where I thought it might explode.
I wasn’t incapable of loving her. I was terrified of what it would do to me when she realized I wasn’t worth it. That’s what it boiled down to—that I wouldn’t survive loving and losing her.
“Xander?”
I blinked, shaking the thoughts out of my head. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Her life was in Rixon, and my life was here. And maybe it was better this way. Maybe it was the only way to protect both of our hearts from the inevitable fallout of our relationship.
