“Commiserations,” I said. “I hope the guy comes to his senses.”
Ethan shoved a hand into his auburn hair, clearly frustrated but unwilling to talk about it any longer. “What about you? You coming to your senses?”
“It’s not like that with us. I fucked up and I let the only girl that I’ve loved slip between my fingers. Sad but fucking true.”
He gritted his teeth and slammed back against the low backrest of his chair. “Who are you to say she’s slipped between your fingers? Has she said it’s over in so many words?”
“Pretty much, yeah.” I fucking hated to think about the finality in her tone when she’d told me we were better off not seeing each other again, but I’d heard it. Anyone would’ve heard it.
Ethan let out a bitter laugh. He downed half his refill before he shook his head. “You should fight for her, Scotty. Fight until your fingers are stumps and you can’t fight anymore. You know what that’s like. You’ve done it for your country. Now do it for your girl.”
“And if she doesn’t want me to?”
He snarled. “If she doesn’t want you to, she’ll tell you. She deserves to know you’re willing to. Hell, I wish this dickhead my sister was into would fight for her.”
I didn’t know who Ethan’s sister was, but I knew he was right. Letting go without a fight was not only not in my nature, but it wasn’t fair.
Over and over again, I’d been told that I’d made a mistake with Lindsay. I’d come to terms with the fact that I had, but she didn’t know that. She didn’t know how desperately I wished I could turn back time and find a way to make her mine for real.
She didn’t know that I’d hardly slept since I’d last slept beside her. She couldn’t know that she was in just about every one of my thoughts or that I’d told my mother about her.
All of these things were my daily reality, but Lindsay didn’t know a thing. She thought I didn’t care. She thought she was the only one thinking back to Fiji as being the best and the worst time of her life.
I’d listened to her, but Ethan was right. “I should fight. Thanks, man. I owe you one.”
Slapping a hand down on his shoulder, I gave him a grateful squeeze before turning to leaving the venue. Ethan clasped his hand around my wrist, stopping me from moving before he held his phone out to me.
“I’ll be back in some or other dust bucket before it plays out, but shoot me a text on the other side of it, okay? I need to be able to tell my sister there are happy endings, and I’d like to use yours as an example.”
It was a weird request, but I understood where he was coming from. His sister had been hurt and he was leaving again soon. The only way he’d have to comfort her was vicariously through others’ stories.
I didn’t know if mine would have a happy ending, but updating a guy I liked and got along with wouldn’t be a chore. Either his sister would learn something from my story or she wouldn’t, but I didn’t mind keeping him up to date.
Hell, at least it would mean that there’s someone else out there rooting for us. Even if it is just that he’s silently rooting for the dickhead dating his sister to pull his head out of his ass.
Hell, if I could come around, couldn’t anyone?
Chapter 37
LINDSAY
“I’m heading out, Ms. Flinn.” Anna popped her head into my office, her eyes red rimmed and glazed from having stared at her screen for so many hours today.
I instantly felt terrible about keeping her so late. Just because I was restless and unable to sleep didn’t mean she had to suffer for it. I smiled and waved her away. “Go. I’m sorry we went so late.”
She stifled a yawn, blinking the resultant moisture out of her eyes. “That’s okay. I know we’re still trying to catch up.”
“Even so, I should’ve been keeping an eye on the time.” I waved again. “Go, and don’t come back until tomorrow afternoon. Take the morning off.”
“Are you sure?” She frowned. “Won’t that only make us fall further behind?”
“Nope. I’ve got it. You spent weeks here without me. I’ll be fine for just one morning.” She gave me a grateful smile, yawned, and nodded. “You shouldn’t stay too much longer either. It’s getting really late. Tomorrow is another day.”
“I’m just finishing up some paperwork. It won’t take too long. I promise I’m not too far behind you.”
“Good. See you tomorrow.” She closed my door with a soft click behind her.
I sagged into my chair and rubbed my eyelids, careful not to smear what little was left of my makeup too much. My lenses stung, but I just had a few last things I needed to get through.
One last push for the day.
I’d been texted a few pictures of an incident that had occurred this morning between some of the support staff, and I needed them to complete the report their superiors would be expecting in the morning. They needed it to conduct their own preliminary investigations before we could officially take control of the management and consequences of the scuffle.
As I scrolled through the gallery on my phone, my heart lurched in my chest when I was suddenly looking at Jaxon’s face. It was a picture of the picture he’d left on my suitcase. I’d taken it to keep a reminder on me about why I needed to steel my heart whenever I saw him.
Now that I knew he was close by, I also knew it would be more difficult to stick to my resolve. This picture would always remind me of that moment I’d found it, and of how I’d felt when I woke up that morning without him.
Seeing it now unexpectedly made a ripple of pain pass through me. I didn’t know how long it would be until I could look at him without feeling the after effects of him leaving, but I wasn’t there yet.
If only I was able to look into his heart, into his mind, to find the answers I knew I shouldn’t want but couldn’t help thinking about anyway. So many questions. So few answers.
He might’ve given me those answers if I’d just asked, but I wouldn’t trust much that came out of his mouth anyway. Forcing my hovering thumb to move, I flicked past that picture and on to the next one before I realized I wasn’t even in the right folder of my gallery.
After eventually finding the pictures and compiling my report, my thoughts returned to Fiji. It was like simply seeing a photograph of Jaxon had shocked my heart back to life when I’d been trying to keep it as emotionless as possible recently.
I went through the motions of sending the report to all interested parties but my head wasn’t really in the game. It was firmly stuck on the island that had been my own personal paradise for all of one week.
When it felt like I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t talk about it, even just for two minutes, I pulled up Big Mac’s number from my contacts. We’d texted once or twice since I’d gotten back, but we hadn’t actually spoken yet.
I checked the time, did a quick mental calculation, and determined it was early afternoon there. My fingertips drummed on my desk while I waited for him to answer, and my stomach was suddenly riddled with nerves.
Why am I calling this poor man? My issues weren’t his responsibility.
Before I could hang up and tap out a text to let him know I’d dialed the wrong number, I heard his voice coming through the line as clearly as if he was standing right next to me.
“Lindsay!” he said in his booming voice. “This is a surprise. How are you?”
“I’m…”I trailed off before deciding that I’d already bothered him. I might as well be honest. “Not so good actually.”
I proceeded to tell him everything that had happened between me and Jaxon since he’d last seen us, but as always, I got the feeling he already knew about most of it. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. “Have you been speaking to Jaxon?”
He chuckled. “The question isn’t if I’ve been speaking to Jaxon. It’s whether you’ve spoken to him.”
“Cryptic.” I shook my head at him even though he couldn’t see me, but by not answering my question, he’d told me what I needed to know. “
What did he say to you?”
“Let’s just say I have a feeling it’s not over for you two.”
So he hasn’t spoken to him since the last conversation we had.
I ran my hand through my hair, loosening it from its tie and letting it hang in a sheet over one shoulder. With my eyes pinned to my desk, I let out a soft, shuddering sigh. “It’s over between us, Mac. I made sure of it.”
“We’ll see,” he replied cheerfully before I heard his name being called in the background. “I’m sorry, Lindsay. I have to go. We have a wedding on tonight, and I think someone just burned a sauce I’ve been perfecting for the last seven hours.”
He was gone before I could do much more than say goodbye, and a pang of longing speared me in the gut. I hoped those people who were there right now knew how lucky they were and how much they should cherish each moment they had there. Not only because of the place but also because of the people.
Unlike them, however, I wasn’t on vacation. I had to work again tomorrow, which meant it was probably about time to get my butt home and to bed. Maybe tonight I’ll finally get some sleep.
A yawn overtook me. I covered my mouth with one hand while checking that I had everything I needed out of my desk with the other. As I stood up, I thought I heard someone in the waiting area outside of my office.
A frown flickered across my forehead. I knew Anna had gone home, and there weren’t usually many other people here this late, but it had happened from time to time.
Relaxing when I remembered the last time I’d gone stiff as a board after hearing something, I smiled at the look of terror that had been on the intern’s face when I’d emerged while he was sifting through Anna’s stuff looking for spare staples.
Shame. Poor guy.
It was best I didn’t scare the living beeswax out of an intern again. Making sure my heels clicked against the floor as I crossed my office, I opened my door with a little more force than was necessary.
Whoever was out there had to have heard me by now, but I still closed the door loudly as well. I was prepared for an intern this time, so hopefully I wouldn’t jump a foot into the air again when I saw the intruder.
What I wasn’t prepared for was an even more intense physical reaction when I saw who was waiting for me out there. Jaxon stopped at the end of the hall after turning the corner. He looked at me like he couldn’t really believe I was there, and yet he had to have come here looking for me.
My heart sped up so much I was afraid it might explode in my chest. My hands got all sweaty and shaky again, which was something they really needed to stop doing. Jaxon just seemed to have that effect on me, though.
I was unable to move when he zeroed in on my eyes with his. There was nothing but single-minded purpose in them. I just wish I knew what that purpose was.
He didn’t make me wait long to find out. Raising his hands as if in surrender, he stayed rooted to his spot. “I won’t come any closer. All I’m asking is for you to hear me out.”
“I already told you that I don’t want your excuses or justifications, Jaxon. I’m not interested in those, so why are you here?”
Resolve was written all over him. It was there in the set of his shoulders and the tilt of his jaw, the way his nostrils flared and how his muscles were bunched, straining against the confines of his shirt.
“I’m not here to give you excuses or justifications.” He lifted his chin, his eyes never leaving mine. “I’m here to fight.”
“Fight? About what?” I frowned and drew my hands up slowly to my hips. “Are you drunk or something?”
He shrugged. “I’ve had a few drinks, but I’m not drunk. I didn’t come here to fight with you. I came to fight for you.”
My brows swept up and my fingers gripped my hips tighter. “Oh, yeah? How are you planning on doing that exactly?”
“By telling you everything I should’ve told you that morning before I left.” The world around seemed to blur a little more with every word he said, until there were no conference rooms in the hallways or an office behind me. There was only him. “I’ve kept quiet so far because I was trying to respect your wishes. If you tell me to leave and never come back after you hear what I have to say, then so be it.”
My lids fluttered closed as I sucked in a deep breath. “Fine. You have five minutes, Jaxon. I’ll hear you out because you’ve done the same for me, but I’m not making any promises.”
“Five minutes is all I need.” He strode across the distance between us, cupped my face between his large hands, and allowed me to see the truth in every word he spoke when he finally gave me my answers.
Chapter 38
JAXON
This is it.
Everything was riding on my ability to get through the next five minutes without making an even bigger mess of things. I knew everything I wanted to say, but it was all a big jumble in my head.
“I know I fucked up,” I said. “I didn’t want to say goodbye to you either, but I still should have. Leaving was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. At the time, I thought it was because I was doing it for you, even when it wasn’t what I wanted.”
Arguments flashed in those blue eyes, but she didn’t interrupt me even though I saw how much she wanted to. “I’ve since realized that what I thought was wrong. It’s been made very clear to me by my mother and by my friend, Kavan, that I acted like a complete idiot. It just took me some time to sort through it all in my own head.”
“You told your mother about me?” she whisper-yelled. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I fell in love with you on that island, and the first time she saw me after, she knew something was different. That I was different.”
“You…” She stared up at me with disbelief etched into her expression. “You didn’t fall in love with me. You wouldn’t have left me if you had.”
“Oh, but I did.” I threaded my fingers into the soft locks at the nape of her neck. “That’s why I left, even if I didn’t necessarily realize it at the time. I left because I couldn’t stand to come home with you and not have you being mine. I left because I promised to protect you and I thought that was what I was doing. I left because I couldn’t stand the thought of not being with you, but I also thought it was too soon after your relationship fell apart to even broach the subject.”
My chest was heaving by this point, but at least the jumble was vanishing, and finding the words I needed was starting to come easier. “The thing is, Linds, I thought leaving you would protect you from me. From the feelings I had for you when I didn’t think you could possibly be in a place where you could reciprocate.”
Moisture clung to her lashes and her teeth sank into her lower lip. “That wasn’t for you to decide.”
A smirk crept onto my lips when I remembered Kavan saying those exact same words to me when we’d first gotten back. I shook my head and brought my forehead down to hers. “So I’ve been told. When I left that morning though, I wasn’t thinking about it like that. I never meant to hurt you. In fact, I was trying to save you from being hurt.”
“I don’t need you to save me, Jaxon.” Her voice was quiet and laced with pain, but she hadn’t pushed me away yet. “How could you not have realized how much it would hurt me to be walked out on for the second time in little over a week? Especially after the night we had together.”
Agony twisted my insides into knots. “I’m so sorry, baby. I don’t know how I didn’t realize it. I just didn’t. I was so caught up in what I thought was right that I never stopped to consider just how fucking wrong I might be.”
“You were, Jaxon. Wrong, I mean.”
“I know,” I whispered, winding one arm around her waist and holding her to me. “I wish there was a way to go back. I wish I could take away all the pain I caused you. I’d rather have been tortured for a week than to have had you feeling that way for even a minute.”
“I hope you’re ready to sign up for a couple of years of torture then,” she mumbled, “because if it’s
a week for every minute, it’s going to be a lot of weeks.”
“If it would take your pain away, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” I said firmly. “That being said, I’m also glad I left.”
She stiffened against me, and I rushed out my explanation for that statement. “If I hadn’t left the way I had, I never would have been forced to really face how I feel about you. After spending every minute together and then suddenly no longer having you in my life, it became glaringly obvious how much I care about you.”
“You needed to hurt me to realize how much you love me?” she asked, her voice strained. “I hope you know how fucked up that sounds.”
“I do, but I didn’t mean that I’m glad you got hurt. I will never, ever forgive myself for hurting you and I know you probably won’t forgive me either. What I meant was that I never even let myself consider that I’d fallen in love with you because I thought it was way too fast.”
Lindsay kept quiet, hearing me out while my heart thundered underneath her ear. “It took losing you for me to realize that just because it happened fast didn’t make it any less true. I fell head over fucking heels for you, so fast and so hard that I didn’t even realize it was happening until it was too late.”
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
“Why would I lie to you about this?” I pulled back to look into her eyes, stroking my thumb along her cheekbone. “Why would I leave an Air Force convention where the only thing I did was talk about you to a total stranger, only to come here to tell you everything? You’ve already told me my job is safe, and I trusted you when you said it. There’s no reason for me to be lying, and I’m not.”
“I don’t mean to sound like a broken record, but I just don’t know how to trust you about any of this. I trusted you so completely, and yet you took that trust and tossed it against the bungalow walls and left it shattered all over the floors. I can’t think of any ulterior motives for you to be here, but I also can’t just forget how I felt when I woke up without you.”
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