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The door to the gym closed behind him, and I decided I wasn’t quite finished.
I had an invisible hole in my chest, filled with the emptiness of longing. Jealousy of Noah, who was going home to a woman he loved—no matter if he didn’t want to admit it yet. Fear that I’d royally fucked everything up by not seeing what was actually happening in front of me.
I didn’t want to go home yet and face an entirely different kind of emptiness there. Instead, I pulled a pair of boxing gloves off a hook and tightened them, lining up with one of the bags. I imbued the bag in front of me with every unseen enemy, every flinch at an unexpected touch, every impulse that made me push Lena away out of fear and the need for her to be safe.
She didn’t push me away—she pulled me closer.
It all coalesced in my head at once, and I might have to take Noah’s advice and get out for a couple of days to think it all through.
The guilt of Isaac’s death still clung to me like a shirt I could never take off. It seemed as if I was never able to let it go. And deep down, I blamed myself for his suicide in spite of all the evidence that it wasn’t my fault. Because no matter rational thought, I couldn’t control how I felt.
Yet, at the same time, maybe I hadn’t tried as hard as I needed to in order to work through all of it.
Maybe I’d been lying to myself and everyone else about my progress, and I’d made a show of being better than I was because I felt like I deserved the punishment.
Fuck.
I deserved the punishment of keeping myself away from Lena, because I hadn’t been able to keep Isaac alive. And if I allowed myself to be with her, it would be the same. Only this time, I would be the one to hurt her. Kill her.
That was what my brain was telling me.
And because I was so wrapped up in my own version of the world, I’d ignored what was in front of me, just like Noah said. I was choosing for Lena, when I should have just fucking talked to her.
I stopped, heaving in breath and resting against the punching bag, allowing the horror of realization to overcome everything else. After all this time, I was still surprised at how things could come to light. I’d seen it more than once in the people who came to Resting Warrior to heal.
Things they already knew, phrased just right from a different person, and puzzle pieces clicked into place. I never imagined it would be me, and it was humbling. Fucking hell. I needed to go over all of it in my head again. And again. Because if I was this blind—this wrong—then I was on the edge of losing everything I wanted, if I hadn’t lost it already.
I tossed the gloves back onto their hook and pushed out of the gym, ready to figure out my life all over again.
Chapter 8
Lena
I groaned, letting my head flop back on the arm of the sofa. I was lying sprawled under a blanket with a fire crackling merrily, though I didn’t feel merry. What I wanted right now was to throw the book in my hands into those flames and watch it blacken to a crisp.
A bit dramatic, maybe, but I couldn’t get the discomfort out of my chest. The discomfort of knowing my world was wrong. Unsettled since that night with Jude.
Normally, romance books brought me joy. In the stead of my own happiness, I lost myself in the love stories of others, knowing and expecting that mine was on the way. Right now? With all my thoughts about Jude? It was more frustrating than anything else.
Where once I savored the little moments and gestures the heroes made, now all I saw were things that weren’t real and would never be real for me. I wasn’t like most of the women in these books. Ones who were wilting flowers. Lovely and thin and ready to let their hero sweep them off their feet and to the bedroom, where they had nothing to think about but their next orgasm.
Must be nice.
Every man in a romance stepped up and made himself better. And Jude was that man. I knew he was. I just didn’t know where we’d gone wrong.
I stared into the flickering fire, allowing myself to remember those too-brief moments when he kissed me back. I definitely wasn’t a wilting flower. If anything, I liked to have fun and have more control during sex than most of the women in the books I read. But there was something about the way he kissed me I couldn’t get out of my head.
He’d pulled me in and angled my face so he could kiss me deeper, like it was the most natural thing in the world—like he’d thought about it a hundred times before. But it wasn’t just that; it was the strength and sureness of his touch. He simply…knew what he wanted and made it happen.
My face flushed, and I covered it with my open book. Why did the thought make my body temperature rise and make me squirm with embarrassment at the same time? I could see the way it might have gone—as if Jude were just like one of those romance heroes, ready to sweep me off my feet and have his wicked way with me. With a touch like that, it was tempting to believe he’d know what I needed even before I did. It was tempting to give in to a fantasy I’d never indulged—letting go entirely.
Was that what I wanted? I’d never thought so. But even those brief seconds when he swiftly and easily took control had me desperately curious for more.
But there’s not going to be more, is there?
I sighed. It had been a full week since I’d seen Jude. For the first time in years, he hadn’t come to the bakery for the ranch’s weekly pickup. No one came. Evelyn just took it home with her at the end of the day and dropped it off. And it hit me harder than I expected it to.
Had he realized I’d decided to move on? Or try to? Had someone told him? I knew Evie hadn’t, but it still made me wonder. Jude was always able to read me better than anyone else. But he had to see me to read me.
