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I want to touch him. Hold him. Take it all away. I don’t. I cry instead.
“I wanted to come home,” I say. “Lots of times. I was just… I was afraid
“Oh, please!” he says. “Afraid of what? I never gave you any reason to be afraid of me.”
“I’ve already told you everything!” I shout, frustrated. “Is that not good enough?”
“No.”
I breathe in calmly, trying to keep my composure. What J.R. doesn’t know is what I went through personally after I left.
“Apart from that one night, we never even talked about marriage,” he adds.
“That’s not true. Right after we started dating, there was a conversation. You made it clear that you weren’t a fan of the concept of marriage.”
“Why didn’t you freaking leave me then? When I wasn’t that invested?” he shouts.
“I thought you would get over it!” I yell back.
“Well, I did, but you weren’t around, were you?” he snaps back. He cuts his blue eyes at me.
I stare at him for a moment, and I’m not sure we’re going to get anywhere by yelling at each other. To be honest, we’ve never really had a fight. Especially like this one. I can’t even think of a single time I might have raised my voice at J.R. out of anger. I sigh and move my hand through my hair.
“Was there another man, Rachel?” he asks me.
“Are you freaking kidding me right now?” I yell. I’m officially angry now, and I feel myself growing hot. He’s asked me this question twice now, and both times my answer has been the same. Why won’t he believe me?
“Why do you keep asking me that question?”
“It’s a legit question, Rach.”
“No, it’s not,” I snap back. “I never… I’ve never even thought about another man. I’ve never loved anyone the way that I love you!” I’m still shouting. My heart is racing. I know that if I allow myself to get any angrier, I’ll push myself into a full-blown panic attack. I can already feel my chest getting tighter and my breath getting harder to catch.
“Why didn’t you come home then?”
“I did. I’m here, J.R.!” I yell.
“I'm not talking about now! I'm talking about then,” J.R. yells back. “Why didn't you come home then?!”
“Well, I can’t change a damn thing, J.R. I don’t have a time machine. I can’t go back. I would. I would if I could, but I can’t. I had my reasons for leaving, and I had my reasons for not coming home sooner. The point is, I’m here now. Knox is here. We are here.”
“And what about all of the time we lost?”
“You can’t get it back, so why waste time thinking about it?” I say simply and almost a bit too coldly.
J.R. continues to glare at me. His face is full of rage. He’ll never forgive me. We’ll never get past this. He’ll always be angry, and I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting my decisions. I think that moving here was a mistake, and I think that I can’t stay here any longer.
But then, J.R. does something I don’t expect. He steps close to me, grabs my face in his hands, and covers my lips with his. I indulge for a moment, until reality sets in and I want to pull away, but I want to stay right here, too. In the embrace of his angry passion, he kisses me hard, but it’s gentle, too. I can’t seem to talk myself into stopping him.
I finally find the strength to push him away. “What are you doing?” My voice still sounds angry. I’m still angry. But now, I’m also in shock.
“I’ve been wanting to do that since you showed up on the dock weeks ago.” He doesn’t apologize for it, and his tone still denotes anger. It was almost as if he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to kiss me, even though he is still absolutely angry with me.
I roughly push him back. “You can’t go around doing that. Not if we don’t know what is going to happen with us,” I snap.
This is all I’ve wanted since the day I left him, but I’m not about to hope for something that will never come to fruition. I’m not putting myself in a place of hope if there is no hope.
J.R. doesn’t push himself forward. He stays where he is, watching me hesitantly, trying to decide what he should say next. Now I’m thinking that even though he was the one who initiated the kiss, the act itself surprised even him. I watch his face fall from the angry ridges that had been lining his expression. He gently tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m sorry for yelling,” he finally says.
