I didn’t want him to have to deal with it.
This was so messed up.
“Jake?” Claudia suddenly asked and I whirled around to see Jake coming down the concrete porch steps toward us. “I thought you weren’t coming with us.”
His dark eyes were hard and brittle as he stuck his hands into his coat pockets and came to a standstill beside her and Beck. “Decided fresh air might do me good.”
No one else seemed to notice that anything was wrong with him, perhaps putting his obvious bad mood down to being hungover, and Claudia continued on trying to explain to Matt why a bunch of novices couldn’t, and definitely shouldn’t, try to take on Ben Nevis.
“I’m just saying it’s the kind of experience you want to tell your grandkids about,” Matt said, his eyes wide with hope.
Lowe snorted. “And what grandkids will that be, Matt, considering you’re probably going to die at the bottom of the highest mountain in Britain?”
He grimaced. “The highest?”
“I just told you that,” Claudia frowned at him. “Don’t you listen to me?”
“Honestly, when you talk I’m pretty much just staring at your mouth. Or your boobs.”
Beck slapped him across the head.
“Dude,” Matt rubbed the back of his skull. “I’m going to have brain damage before I have kids with the way you keep fucking smacking me around. Just have sex with her already and be done with it.”
Claudia blushed while Beck took a menacing step toward Matt.
Lowe stepped in front of Matt protectively. “He’s just messing with you,” he grinned. “Give him a break. The guy is seriously hungover. He was wasted last night when we put him to bed.”
“We?” Jake suddenly asked, his tone demanding.
Lowe stiffened, his hands curling into fists as he nodded. “Denver, Rowena, Char, and me.”
Jake took a step toward him. “And then what happened?”
Oh fucking oh! My feet started walking toward them both with a mind of their own.
Lowe’s eyes sharpened and he murmured silkily, tauntingly, “And then we went to bed.”
Without another word Jake launched himself at Lowe with fierce aggression and punched him so hard in the face, Lowe stumbled back and lost his footing.
As a group we shouted a multitude of curses and cries of shock, and I propelled forward, putting myself between Jake and Lowe.
Shaking, I flinched when Lowe glanced up at me, his lips bloody and swelling, and gave me a sardonic shrug.
“Don’t fucking look at her,” Jake growled, trying to push past Beck. “Get up.”
Lowe eyed him with arrogant insouciance but slowly stood.
“Whit is goin’ on?” Rowena asked softly, worry dripping from the words as Denver now helped hold Jake back.
Lowe wiped his lip. “He thinks I fucked Charley.”
Everyone hushed at that announcement. Even Jake grew still.
All eyes but Lowe’s and Jake’s turned to me.
I blanched. “He didn’t!” I denied vehemently.
Jake jerked at the denial and whipped his head around to me. “He didn’t?”
“No, I didn’t,” Lowe answered for me, his eyes fixed on Jake. “I kissed her. One kiss. We stopped. Decided it was a bad idea. But since you dumped Charley years ago and flaunted a new relationship in front of her for months, I’d like to know what business it is of yours who Charley fucks and why just the thought of some lucky guy going there stirs you into a blind rage?” His eyes narrowed now and suddenly it occurred to me that Lowe wasn’t as unaffected or nonchalant as he let on. He was pissed at Jake. Big time. His voice was rough as he continued, “Sort your fucking head out, man, before you lose friends and worse … hurt someone who definitely does not deserve to be hurt by you again.”
After a few seconds of hard-faced death stares, Jake’s shoulders slumped wearily and he scrubbed his hands over his face.
I felt sick.
Never did I want to be the girl who caused a fight between anyone, let alone friends, and I definitely didn’t want to be the girl to put blood on Lowe’s face and that look in Jake’s eyes.
“Talk to him,” Claudia whispered, coming to a stop beside me, her fingers squeezing mine. “We’ll get Lowe cleaned up and head into town. You take Jake for a walk. You need to work this out before it implodes. No more avoiding.”
Swallowing the nausea, I nodded at her and watched as she quietly and calmly herded everyone, except for Jake, back into the lodge.
Claudia gave me one last bolstering look and disappeared inside.
Jake looked over at me, a riot of emotions roiling in his dark eyes. I felt those emotions blast into me and take hold, pleading with me to go to him. Instead I turned in the opposite direction and began to stride away with the hope that he’d catch up to me.
He did.
Soon we were walking downhill, side by side, the atmosphere between us thick and exasperating and a little frightening. We’d always, always felt too much around each other. Jake punching Lowe was proof enough of that.
“The thought,” he suddenly said, his voice raspy, gruff, “the thought of you being with him, with anybody … I was sitting in there trying to get past it, trying to tell myself it wasn’t my business, but it just … it was eating at me and eating at me and I just had to get it out.”
“By punching Lowe?”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
Taking a deep breath of crisp, clean air, my voice shook a little as I replied, “We’re not together. Who I sleep with shouldn’t matter.”
“But it does.”
“Jake …”
“Did the thought of me being with Melissa bother you?”
The question hurt like a mother and I stopped so I could glare up at him in disgust. “You don’t deserve an answer to that question.”
Jake stared down at me sadly. “No, I don’t. But I need it.”
I didn’t say anything for a while but slowly his anguished expression loosened the words until they fell onto my tongue and right out of my mouth. “Why do you think I started avoiding you? I need to move on from us, Jake, and I couldn’t do that and be around you … and Melissa. When I heard you broke up with her … that didn’t really change how I felt.”
He hung his head, his fingers scrunching into his hair. “You put up a good front. I used to be able to read you but you seemed fine. I kept looking for some indication, something …” He shrugged unhappily. “Then your dad’s attitude at the airport … I couldn’t get the questions out of my head. What did it mean? Why was he still pissed on your behalf? Did you want me still?” He breathed softly. “It caused another huge argument between me and Melissa. We broke up in a fucking taxi,” he sighed sadly.
Every word he said repeated in time with the hard thud of my heart. “Is she okay?”
He shook his head. “She wasn’t at the time. But it’s been almost a month so … I don’t know. I never meant to hurt her. Never. But I started to think maybe you weren’t fine. That you were just lying to protect yourself. Then your question on the train …” He looked up from under his eyelashes, studying me. “It gave me hope. Until you went back to avoiding me again.”
My body jerked at the unexpected comment. “Hope?”
Jake nodded, shoving his nervous hands into his pockets. “I wasn’t looking for anything from you. I never imagined you’d ever want me back. Not after what I did, how I acted.” He turned now, starting to walk again and I found myself hurrying to catch up, my breathing shallow as Jake’s confession became my whole world. “A few months after we moved back to Chicago, I still wasn’t doing well. I wouldn’t talk to my parents, my grades were slipping, I spent most of my time holed up in my room listening to crap music, and I was … pretty good at pretending to be numb.”
“What happened to Brett wasn’t your fault, Jake,” I reminded him quietly.
“I know that,” he nodded, “I know that now. But back then, I couldn’t get the what-ifs out
of my head. For the most part, I did a good job of negatively associating you with it all.” Jake’s gaze was apologetic when he saw me flinch. “That didn’t last long. Three months after we left Lanton, I was up in my room and I still had a lot of moving boxes lying around. My parents paid for a company to pack most of our stuff and transport it back to Chicago, so when I opened one of my boxes, I wasn’t expecting to see you there. I’d forgotten about the tickets to Blind Side and that frame I had on my bedside table …”
I hugged my arms around myself, remembering the photograph that Lukas had taken of me and Jake leaning against Hendrix. He had his arms around me, I had my hand on his stomach, and I was smiling up into his face. Jake wasn’t smiling but the expression in his eyes told everyone who looked at that picture that he was in love with me.
I’d loved that photo. So had Jake.
Tears formed in the back of my eyes and I fought hard to restrain them.
“I pulled out that photograph and as I stared at it, it was just a floodtide. I remembered. I remembered how much I loved you. How happy you made me. How much you could surprise me. How hard you made me laugh. And what it felt like to feel you laughing against me. To hold you. To kiss you. To be inside you.” He shot me a dark look and my breath caught. “I remembered what I said to you. I remembered every tear on your face when I broke up with you, and I couldn’t believe I was the one who put them there. That’s when it hit me: there was no going back. When I threw you away, somewhere deep down I think I believed it would be okay because we were us. We were solid. But reality set in after the fact. After what I did? There was no way I could win you back.” He glanced warily at me. “I lost it. The blame, the guilt, the anger, the loss, it all just swallowed me whole. My parents heard me yelling and breaking things and by the time they got to my room, I’d trashed the place and I’d cut my hands on the picture frame glass.” He shrugged sadly. “That makes me sound psycho, I know … but think of it from my perspective. To me, in that moment, it was like you’d died too.
“My parents made me talk to someone and it helped with all the other stuff—Brett’s death, his dad’s campaign of hate, and my responsibility in it all, or lack thereof. I’ve accepted what happened wasn’t my fault. I won’t forget it, but I’ve gotten through it. You,” Jake’s smile was crooked, halfhearted, and rueful, “were harder to deal with. So I went back to my old ways instead.”
Meaning he slept around a lot. I ignored the unpleasant clench in my stomach at that thought. “Then you met Melissa.”
“You should know I applied to Edinburgh on the off chance you’d be here and I’d get to apologize, find some closure. Never, not once, did I ever believe I could get you back.”
“So you’d given up and you moved on.”
Jake stopped us again, his hand touching my elbow gently. “Baby, I don’t think I ever moved on.” He ducked his head, stepping forward into my space, his dark eyes mesmerizing as always. “And for the first time I’m allowing myself to hope that you haven’t moved on, either.”
My breath caught and I honestly felt my body teeter at his words. “Jake, I can’t.” I backed away from him.
Ignoring my silent plea for space, Jake moved so near, I had to tilt my head back. The smell of his cologne hit me and I had to rein myself in against the temptation to press my mouth to his strong throat. “These last few months have been torture, Charley. Getting to be close to you but not close enough. I will do anything to make this work.”
“You broke up with Melissa for me?”
Guilt sharpened his expression as he replied, “For you. For me. For her.”
My body remembered how beautiful it felt to be wrapped around Jake Caplin and it was pleading with me to throw caution to the wind.
“You want this as much as I do,” Jake said gruffly.
I saw no point in denying what was so obvious between us, but just because I remembered how beautiful it was to be in love with Jake and have him love me back didn’t mean I hadn’t forgotten how ugly it was to have him tell me he didn’t care anymore.
“I do,” I admitted softly, “but that doesn’t mean I want a relationship with you. I don’t trust you, Jake, and I don’t know if I’ll ever trust you again. You shouldn’t have thrown away a girl who trusted you implicitly for me.”
“I care about Melissa, I do—”
“Last year you loved her. Now it’s only care?”
“Yeah, I thought I loved her, but that’s because for a while I let myself forget.”
“Forget what?”
“What’s it’s like to love you.” Jake reached for me, his fingers brushing my cheek tenderly.
I curled my hand around his wrist and closed my eyes, not sure if I was blocking out his confession or soaking it in.
“I’ve never stopped loving you. If I stayed with Melissa, it would’ve been a lie and she deserves better than that. And I know you deserve better too, but I’m just too selfish when it comes to you. I want you even though I don’t deserve you.”
“Jake …”
“You save people. You save me. It’s what you do. You even tried to save Brett and I’m so proud of you and of how you coped with that night. I missed out on getting to tell you that and I missed out on helping you deal with that too. Because it didn’t just happen to me. It happened to us all.
“I wish I could go back to that scared-shitless kid and tell him to be brave like his girl. I can’t take that back, though. All I can do is attempt to make up for it. I want you to give me that chance, but if you don’t, I need you to know I never lied when I told you that you’re extraordinary, Charley. Whatever your answer is, just know that I will always believe that, and I will always believe in you.”
“Jake.” I was panicking, panicking because I wanted to give in. The brave girl everyone thought me to be had fled down the cold Scottish hill. “No.” Stupid, stupid tears slipped down my cheeks as I said it, my stomach flipping in protestation at the word.
“Charley,” he whispered hoarsely, pleading, as he reached up to brush away my tears with his thumb. “Please. Please try because every time I look into your face, all I feel is … so in love with you. Then two seconds later, every time without fail, it hits me like a sledgehammer in my gut that you’re not mine. That I’m not allowed to reach out to you … I thought I could accept that, I thought I’d come to terms with it, but I can’t. We’re not over.” Tears shimmered in his beautiful eyes. “We can’t be over.”
The knowledge that he felt the same pain I felt every day, and the sight of his overwrought expression, beat away at my panic until all that was left was fear and stupid, stupid hope.
Hearing his breathing grow heavy with anticipation—and if the trembling in his hand was any indication, also fear—my eyes slowly opened. I stared up into his burning expression and leaned my cheek into his hand, my fingers flexing around his wrist. “I can’t guarantee you anything. I know I haven’t moved on from you, and I know I still care about you, but Jake, you have to know that I might never trust you again and if I don’t trust you … we’re never going to work.” I squeezed his wrist. “I might not be able to give you what you want.”
Eyes blazing with relief and determination, Jake dipped his head close to mine so his words whispered across my lips. “I’m willing to risk it.”
We stared at each other in silence until the tension between us became almost unbearable. My eyes dropped to his mouth and I had to physically restrain myself from reaching up and taking what I’d been dreaming about for months. When I raised my gaze back to his, Jake’s eyes were heated and the muscle in his jaw flexed as if he was also struggling to hold himself back.
My chest rose and fell in rapid breaths as I fought to come to the right decision.
In the end I went with my gut and sighed into him. “Okay,” I breathed.
Jake’s grip on me tightened as his eyes widened. “Okay, okay?”
I nodded, shivering now with the decision. This could go horribly wrong after all.
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But suddenly Jake was grinning, his eyes shining as he pulled me close and leaned his forehead against mine.
The shivering stopped. His warm breath fanned my face. “Thank you, baby.”
My hands reached for him, gripping his coat at the waist. “Where do we go from here?”
“I need to get the next train back to Edinburgh.”
A strange and unpleasant mix of guilt and jealousy washed over me. “To Melissa?”
“Not to Melissa but,” he groaned, rubbing a hand through his hair, “if I stay here, I’m not going to be able to control myself and I think maybe we should take things slow. For us. And also out of respect. It’s only been a few weeks …” He quieted, seeming anxious about my reaction to his concern for Melissa.
In actuality, his concern convinced me that I should at least try to give this guy I once loved completely another shot. It would somehow feel callous to start a physical relationship only a month after their breakup.
And then remembering Melissa’s words at Frankenstein, her description of her relationship with Jake, I suddenly felt a cold rush of uncertainty. “Jake … she said she’s one of your best friends. That she brings you peace. I don’t know if I’ve ever given you peace … Are you sure you’re—”
“Stop,” he whispered roughly. “Mel is one of my best friends and hurting her was awful. But as for peace … I don’t know what she said but I know what I know. Mel and me … our relationship was comfortable, quiet. We rarely argued and she was supportive and kind.” His expression grew more intense as he studied my features, as if they were the most important things he’d ever lay eyes on. “But peace … that comes with feeling complete, and I haven’t felt that way since I was seventeen and I walked away from a girl who could make me laugh harder, feel harder, and burn harder than any other person in my world. You gave me peace, Charley. You did. You do.”
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