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Now it’s my turn to look confused. “I never got any letters, and I definitely didn’t tell you to leave me alone.”
“I got them all back about two months after you left. When your cell phone was disconnected, I resorted to writing you letters. Your dad gave me your address,” he says, shocking me all over again.
“What? I never received anything!” I insist, trying to figure out how he would have gotten them back if I didn’t even see them.
And then, like a snake slithering up my spine, cold dread settles in.
“What did the note say that I supposedly wrote?” I ask, my eyes glued to his blue ones.
“That you were happy in New York and had already moved on.” His words cut like a knife, the wound left behind fresh and gaping.
I start to cry harder now, my shoulders shaking with realization. “I never wrote that.”
The warm touch of his hand against my cheek startles me. Jensen wipes away my tears with the pads of his thumbs and tilts my head up to look into my eyes. “And there were never any letters between my dad and me, Kate. I was barely speaking to him at that point in my life, let alone talking to him via mail about something as personal as my feelings for you.”
His words make me cry all over again. Years—more than a decade—I spent wondering what I had ever done wrong, why I never saw Jensen for who he was. He had told me he loved me every day, so why would he tell me that and then tell his dad he didn’t? I had been so confused and hurt.
Warmth and familiarity wrap around me as he pulls me into his chest. The worn cotton of his shirt becomes soaked as it mops up the tears I shed. “I can’t believe this,” I whisper, inhaling the scent that is uniquely Jensen.
He exhales, the steady beat of his heart grounding me. “Clearly, there’s a bit of a miscommunication. I didn’t write letters to my dad and you didn’t tell me to leave you alone. Honestly, that makes me feel a little better. Not that I’m glad you disappeared on me, but at least I know it wasn’t because you didn’t love me anymore.”
“And I’m glad to know you weren’t using me until something better came long,” I confess, speaking my biggest fear aloud for the first time.
His whole body tenses. “I loved you more than life itself.”
Loved.
Past tense.
Even though our relationship has been over for many years, it still hurts a little to hear him confirm what we had ended.
We’re both quiet for several minutes, but he doesn’t let me go. He lets me cry until the tears subside, pulling as much comfort from his embrace as I want. When I pull away, I quickly wipe under my eyes, no doubt swiping away a day’s worth of mascara and snot from my skin. Jensen grabs me a paper towel, and hovers in front of me as I clean myself up from my cryfest.
“You really got our address from my dad?”
The right side corner of his lips turn upward. He shoves his hands in his pockets, but stays close as he replies, “I did. It was after you’d been gone a few days. I was going crazy trying to track you down. I knew your dad had the big office in New York City, so I found the phone number and called him. Took him two days to call me back, but when he did, he explained the move was best for you. I didn’t understand, and he didn’t seem too keen on explaining it to me. He wouldn’t give me your new number, just told me it was safer to give me your address.”
“Clearly, it wasn’t,” I retort, tossing the used paper towel into the exposed garbage.
“Clearly,” he agrees with a smile.
I’m lost in his sapphire eyes for several long seconds and I start to wonder what this all means for us. Can we go back to what we had before? Probably not. Can we move forward? God, I hope so. But I don’t know where he stands on an us, and the prospect of asking him is enough to cause a small panic attack.
“Don’t,” he says with force, taking my face in his hands and turning me until we’re looking at each other. “Don’t go there. We can’t go back, only forward,” he adds, putting into words the questions running through my head.
“Forward.”
He nods. “Forward. We’ll start with dinner Saturday night.”
“Dinner? With you?”
He grins that lopsided boyish grin I fell in love with all those years ago. “Yeah, with me. I mean, we’ve already had pizza together last week, and we are having dinner together tonight, so this won’t be anything we haven’t already done twice in the last seven days.” Before I can open my mouth, he keeps going. “The Falls Festival is this weekend, and I’d like to take you.”
The Falls Festival? As in the biggest town gathering in the county? Where everyone, and I do mean everyone, will see us?
“The festival is this weekend?” I ask, recalling how much I used to love going to the festival. The games, the rides, the food. My dad used to take me when I was a child, but when I was in high school, it was always Jensen who was by my side. The thought of going again—and with him, no less—has me all sorts of excited.
“It is, and we’re going. I’ll buy you a corndog and lemon shake-up,” he tells me, grinning like a loon.
