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Wow, a recurring nightmare that he’d actually killed me. Awful. “So you couldn’t get it out of your head that you nearly crashed into me, and you kept dreaming about it?”
“Yeah.”
“So then you…?” I wanted to go back to that thought he hadn’t finished.
“Did what I had to do.”
Whatever the fuck did that mean? “I see.” I didn’t.
I looked away, down at the blanket, idly running the tip of my finger along the seam. “You know I sat by your bedside for days, right? Waited for you to wake up enough that I could say all the things I needed to say to you. I wanted to tell you how I’d decided to become a nurse, instead of doing that admin course I’d planned, because I’d felt so helpless, so useless, while you lay there bleeding out, and I couldn’t handle it.” I flicked him a glance, but his gaze was unreadable. “I wanted to tell you that I loved you. That I was so glad you’d made it through. That I just couldn’t wait to move in with you. To start our lives together.”
“Emma—”
“But you were too drugged up on the pain meds. Drifting in and out that whole time. And what was the first thing you did when you were conscious enough? You banned me from visiting you. Like, what the fuck, Jake?” I felt the lump form in my throat. “I couldn’t make sense of it. The fight hadn’t been that bad, surely.”
“What fight?” He frowned in bemusement.
“Exactly! I can’t even remember now. We’d had a dumb fight earlier in the day. I thought you were still mad at me and that’s why I wasn’t allowed in the room. I asked Gabe and he said he didn’t know anything about it. Dante didn’t know, either. I begged to see you, but the doctor said no, you were too agitated. So I wasn’t allowed.” I blinked back the tears that I refused to shed. “Finally, when you were home, Gabe let me see you. Lying in your bed, all beaten up. Then you said…you said…”
“Don’t, Emma.”
“Iwill, Jake. Because I have the right to fucking know. You looked at me with this hard, angry look on your face. ‘Get the fuck away from me,’you said. I think I asked why, what had I done? I thought it was still that stupid fight, because we hadn’t had the chance to make up yet. I told you I loved you, asked you if please could we fix it. You said no, because there was nothing to fix. You didn’t love me after all. You just wanted me to get the fuck out of your life.” I stopped, pulling in a deep breath, then another, until I thought I could continue without my voice breaking. “But I guess it wasn’t because of the fight, was it?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Wasit?” I pressed.
“No.”
“So why?” I thought I knew the answer, but I needed to hear him say it.
“I was freaking out, playing it over and over in my mind. You dying. Me crashing into you and killing you. The dreams that wouldn’t stop. It felt inevitable, somehow. I’d been such a fuckup since my mom died, I felt like I was getting more and more out of control. No one could stop me. I was gonna hurt you, badly, if I didn’t let you go.”
“Push me away, you mean. Force me to go.” I didn’t even try to hide the bitterness that laced my words.Fuck you, Jake.“Some sort of stupid code of honor?” If that wasn’t exactly like Jake Walker. If it hadn’t hurt me so much, I would have laughed.
Looking back, maybe I should have guessed. Should have realized that there had to be something more to our breakup. But I didn’t know about the dreams. I didn’t know how hard he’d taken it. Maybe I hadn’t realized how close he’d actually come to crashing into me, because the aftermath of that was him slamming into a tree and I’d barely remembered the moments before that.
I had been so shocked to hear him say those things to me. To see the ugliness in his eyes when he looked at me. The only way I could rationalize it was that fight. Even though it didn’t make sense, he was so forceful, so insistent, that there was nothing else for me to do. I somehow picked up the pieces of my shattered heart and left.
Christ, it had hurt. So much. And that made me mad even now. Sitting here rehashing it all, I still felt so angry. I opened my lips, ready to tell Jake exactly how angry, when he said, “I’m so sorry, Em.”
Oh.
“Maybe if I’d been older, more mature, less reckless, I could have handled it better. You deserved more than what I gave you. You always did. I’m sorry for that.”
I searched his eyes, looking for any trace of that ugliness that had sliced my heart open. I saw only sincerity, and I felt a little knot inside me start to undo. It had been tied so tight for so long that it wouldn’t just come undone right away, but it felt good to feel it loosen a little. “Okay.”
“Okay? Just like that?”
I shook my head. “No, not just like that, but… It’s a start.”
The question of what this all meant for us going forward flitted around the edges of my mind, but I wasn’t ready to go there yet. There was still so much to unpack and to be honest, it scared me. Everything felt so big and overwhelming that I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to reconcile it all.
“I’ll take it,” Jake said. He adjusted the pillow and lay back down, raising his arm in invitation. I scooted in next to him, resting my head on his shoulder. He fixed up the blanket around us, reached over me and switched off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness once more.
CHAPTER26
Jake
