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“Not always.”
“In this case, yeah.”
Her attention moves over my face, drops to my lips, then detours to my eyes. “I think about you too much. All the time, without fully understanding how we wound up here. I want to understand so I can move on.”
“Chihuahua with masochistic tendencies,” I say, pinching the meaty part of her palm. “Poking bruises doesn’t help them heal.”
She pinches me right back. “My particular breed of Chihuahua is protective and loyal, as long as I understand my environment.”
As long as she understands me.
I haven’t given Jo a hell of a lot to work with in the understanding department. I haven’t trusted her enough to share my hard truths. Maybe blunt honesty will show us a way out of this.
“Okay,” I say slowly, trying to sift through the threads of our friendship and recent heartache. My brother at the center of it all. But our story started well before she said yes to dating Jake. “You sure about this?” I ask. “Once things are said, they can’t be unsaid.”
“I’m sure.”
I’m not, but hell if I know a better solution to moving past this painful situation.
“Okay,” I say again, taking a fortifying breath. “If I was honest with you when I was a stupid seventeen-year-old boy, I’d have asked you out before Jake ever had the chance.”
She stills, doesn’t blink. Just holds my hands tighter.
“When I didn’t have the guts to tell you how I felt,” I go on, committed now, for better or for worse, “and he came and asked me if I’d mind if he asked you out, I should’ve said yes.Yes, I fucking minded. I should’ve admitted then and there that I was in love with you and wouldn’t be able to handle seeing you two together. But I didn’t. I was insecure and didn’t think you felt the same. So I fucked that up, and I didn’t learn from that mistake.
“The second we got out of WITSEC,” I continue, focusing on our linked hands, talking faster—a mudslide of unstable history crashing over me, “I should’ve called you and told you I missed you so badly my stomach ached for twelve years. That I have regrets about my youth and us, and life’s too short for regrets. If I was honest, I wouldn’t have tried to set you and Jake back up. I’d have shown up at your door and asked you on a date and tried to make up for being a stupid coward of a kid.”
I can’t meet her eyes, but I can’t stop talking.Truthing.Hanging every heart-wrenching piece of myself out in the wind. “I’d have told you I want to get to know you now—the smart, funny, gorgeous, ballbusting woman you’ve become. I’d have told you I’m falling for you all over again. That I’m not sure how I’ll ever meet a woman who makes me feel as whole and alive and happy as I do when I’m with you. And then, after baring my soul, I’d have remembered myself—who I am and what my family’s been through. I’d have told you my brother and family mean the world to me.”
My throat is a gravel road, every brutal truth driving over the roughness. I lift my focus from our linked hands, and my eyes clash with Jo’s. There’s no other way to describe the vibrations that reverberate through me, the shock in her tortured expression.
A one-way street I can’t reverse on.
“I’d have told you, Jo, that the thought of hurting Jake in a way that could cause a permanent rift between him and me is my own version of hell. Then I’d have admitted my one dying truth when it comes to you.” The hard fact I can’t ignore. “I’m in love with you, Jolene Cynthia Daniels, but sometimes love isn’t as important as duty.”
There’s no warning for her tears. No slow, glassy start and eventual spillover. Tears push from her dark eyes so forcefully, I drag her into my chest.
“You asked,” I say as I stroke her hair, unable to control the way either of us trembles.
“It’s not fair.”
“Agreed.”
We don’t speak again, just cling to each other as my eyes start to burn too. Threaten to leak onto her hair. One night of no-holds-barred honesty, that’s what she wanted. WhatIwanted. Then we can return to being friends. Best friends who might always wonderwhat if, but we won’t live with doubts and questions.
Gradually, her body softens, emotional exhaustion and muscle relaxants doing their work.
I’m wiped, too, but also stunned. Shocked I confessed all that heartache, overwhelmed that Jolene is in my arms, under the covers, our bodies tucked together for comfort. But comfort eludes me. She fidgets and settles, wraps her arm around my back. Her breaths even out, but my eyes burn hotter. A sea of regrets pushing to the surface.
“I love you too,” she mumbles into my shirt, surprising me by being awake. Gutting me a thousand times over. “The bar drains me. It’s all so hard on my own,” she says, her words running together in a kind of slur. “Wish it was out of my hands. Then you came back, and it didn’t matter as much.Nothing.Nothing matters as much as”—she fists her hands into my T-shirt—“you. Howyoumake me feel. Stupid fucking feelings. I’ve loved you most of my life, even when you were gone. More then, I think. Missing and missing. Now I have to let you go again.”
“No.” I lock her against me. Try to stem the pain pouring out of her. Too much damn pain. “We’re friends, Jo. Always. Best friends who will get through this together.”
“Life.” She shakes her head and blows out a long breath. “Life is a fucking asshole.”
E used to say the same thing. Blame the machinations of life for being torn away from Delilah and upending our worlds. Unfortunately, in that case, our degenerate father can take all the blame. In this case, there’s no one to blame but me. I should’ve pursued Jolene when I had the chance.
Her body goes slack, her breathing turning deeper. I stroke her hair, frustrated in a way I’ve never felt. Furious at our circumstances. But at least one good thing came out of Jo’s pain meds and loosening tongue.The bar drains me. It’s all so hard.Wish it was out of my hands.
