The Pain in Loving You

by Steiner, Kandi

  Then, after almost two years without calling, Jamie just showed up.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Wilson’s Weakness

  TAYLOR SWIFT BLASTED THROUGH my apartment as I pranced around, hair tied up in a messy bun and half a bottle of wine already consumed. I sang the lyrics at the top of my lungs, sliding into the kitchen in my tube socks with packing tape in hand. The box I’d just packed full with dishes was padded and ready, so I closed the flaps and taped them shut, biting the cap of my Sharpie between my teeth as I scrawled kitchen across the cardboard. I smiled then, belting out a high note with the Sharpie as my microphone before dropping it back to the counter and tackling the next empty box.

  There are rare, shining bright periods of our lives where everything seems almost too good to be true. All the pieces fall into place, effortlessly and beautifully, and we get to enjoy the final masterpiece with not one single worry. They’re the kind of moments where we realize we’re lucky to be alive, to be who we are, to be breathing the air around us. They’re the kind of days that remind us why we had to suffer through the dark ones, why it’s all worth it in the end.

  That was the kind of day I was having.

  It was pouring buckets outside, fall greeting the city with a cold, gray day, and yet I was emitting sunshine. I was drunk, a little sweaty, and a lot excited. Right on the heels of one of the worst years of my life, I’d happened to have had the best. Jenna had moved to Pittsburgh, I’d been promoted at work, and perhaps the most shocking of all? I’d found Mr. Right.

  No, I’d found the Mr. Right.

  Bradley Neil checked all my boxes. He was intelligent, witty, and sexy as hell. He’d built all his success on his own, chasing his dream of being his own boss and making it come true with his entrepreneurship. Brad was the founder and owner of an up-and-coming graphic design company, one he’d imagined into reality with hard work and creativity unlike anything I’d ever witnessed before. We met when Rye Publishing hired his company to completely remaster our logo and website. He’d caught my attention in the first meeting, reeled me in throughout the few weeks we worked together, and pulled me in hook, line, and sinker after the first date I agreed to.

  From that moment on, it’d been like the sweetest fairytale.

  Brad was a philanthropist, and I loved to give back with him. We’d volunteer in the community together, and in those times we learned more and more about each other. He told me he loved me after three months together. I said it back after four. After seven months, I met his family and he met Mom and Wayne. And then after just eight months, he asked me to marry him, and I said yes without a single hesitation. I didn’t think about how our relationship had been shorter than the one I had with my hair brush, or how it was probably absurd that we decided to only have a five-month engagement, or that I was practically insane for agreeing to move in with him even before we said “I do.” And as much as you may hate me for it, I didn’t think about Jamie — not one single time since the words “I love you” left my lips and met Brad’s ears.

  Oh, don’t get me wrong. Jamie was there — he was always there. He still owned that monumental piece of my heart, of my soul, of my body. I felt him like a hummingbird right in the center of my chest, wings fluttering, blood buzzing. He was always there, but now, instead of focusing on that buzz, I’d dulled it with other, louder, more demanding sounds.

  Because you see, it’d taken months of agony, of withdrawal, of anger and pain and depression and losing more of myself than I care to admit to finally emerge on the other side of my life with Jamie Shaw. Every minute hurt, until one day it was sort of a dull ache, and then with more passing time it weakened to only a pressure — that pressure in my chest. I’d completed my twelve-step program. I was clean. I wanted to stay clean.

  So, no. As much as you may hate me for it, I wasn’t thinking about Jamie. Not even a little bit.

  In fact, I was so confident in my ability to not think about Jamie that I’d decided to drink for the first time in over a year. Part of my twelve-step program was giving up literal drinking, too. Every time I drank, I thought of Jamie. I wanted to call him or dwell on his memory. So, I gave up alcohol altogether — the literal and figurative versions, both.

  But tonight I was celebrating, and so I’d popped a bottle of wine and though the old me could have pounded a bottle before feeling tipsy, the new me was drunk after half. But I was happy drunk — dancing, singing, packing. I felt it, a new chapter starting, a new day dawning.

  I wasn’t thinking about Jamie.

  Not until the exact moment he showed up.

  It was a soft knock at first, barely heard over the rain and music, and I was right in the middle of wrapping a wine glass in newspaper.

  “Just a sec!” I called. I’d just tucked the glass into a box when a second, louder knock came. I huffed, wondering why they didn’t just walk in anyway. I only ever had two visitors — Brad and Jenna — and both had keys. Clicking the pause button on my Taylor Swift jam sesh, I yelled louder. “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

  I was still humming to the tune of I Wish You Would, hips swinging in my pale blue sleep shorts as I readjusted the bun on my head and pulled the door open without even checking the peephole. The air of it hit me with a whoosh, my smile bright and unsuspecting, and then I saw him.

  Whiskey and water. A ghostly memory, a wound ripped fresh.

  Did you know adding water to whiskey can actually enhance the flavor? It’s true. Turns out, a little dilution can be good, but in this case, it was my worst enemy. Because there was Whiskey, and there was water, but there was no dilution — no, his flavors had only grown stronger, they’d only aged better, and I knew with a head full of wine that I was in deep trouble.

  Jamie was completely soaked, long hair dripping into his eyes and rolling down the bridge of his nose, the angle of his jaw, landing on the flat of his heaving chest. His eyes hit mine like a blast of fire, hidden beneath furrowed brows, and the muscle over his jaw ticked twice as he clenched his jaw. I felt the anger rolling mercilessly off his hot skin and into my apartment. His right hand lifted, fingers closed tight over an off-white sheet of card stock with mine and Brad’s names written in neat, gold cursive.

  My eyes flicked to the wedding invitation and I swallowed, slowly finding him again. “Jamie,” I breathed.

  “No.”

  One word had never solicited such a guttural emotion from me before. I shuddered, tensing and waiting as Jamie clenched his fist around the invitation.

  “Fuck no.”

  He pushed through the door then, moving past me quickly, leaving my arm slick with the water still falling off him. I stood in the doorway for a moment longer, closing my eyes and forcing three full breaths. You can do this. You’re clean. You are in control. I set my shoulders and turned, closing the door behind me.

  “By all means, let yourself in.”

  His back was to me, the ridges of it defined in the sticky, wet t-shirt he wore. He was shivering, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the cold rain or his anger.

  The longer I stared at him, the more I felt. Pain. Anger. Fear.

  That last one was a new emotion, but it was the strongest. The truth was that even then, I knew what was coming. I could sense it. I was clean, but I hadn’t been tested yet — and Jamie had picked the worst possible night to give me my final exam. I was drunk, I was high off emotions, I was not ready. And I was deathly afraid of the mistake I knew I’d make if he only pushed me hard enough.

  Jamie faced my large window, looking out at the slanted rain as it drenched the city. He held up his hand once more, invitation thoroughly crinkled now in his clutches. “What the hell is this.”

  It was a question, but it wasn’t asked like one — it was posed as an accusation, one I felt all the way to my core.

  “I tried calling you…” My voice was quiet, weak, and I hated that because it wasn’t a lie. I had called him — even after swearing I never would again. When Brad proposed, I knew I had
to be the one to tell Jamie, even if he’d changed his mind about us. Even if he’d never called like he said he would. So, I tried getting in touch with him once more, but again, I failed.

  Mom sent out the invitations last week.

  Apparently his mailbox worked fine.

  “Oh you did?” he asked then, spinning to face me. “And what exactly were you going to tell me? That you’re getting married? Please tell me you’re kidding, because I know that’s not what you were going to call me to tell me. I know this invitation can’t be real. This is all some big joke, right?”

  Fear and sadness drained away and my defenses went up. Who the hell did he think he was? After two years of silence, he’d showed up demanding answers I wasn’t sure he had a right to know. I crossed my arms, resting heavy on one hip. “Excuse me?” I scoffed. “No, Jamie, my fucking wedding is not a joke.”

  “So you’re getting married?”

  “Yes!”

  Jamie’s other hand flew to the invitation, ready to rip it to shreds, but he stopped himself, gritting his teeth before throwing the paper to the floor and running his hands through his soaked hair. He shook his head, and then one hand jutted out toward me. “How? How, B? After everything that… after we…”

  “You never called!” I yelled, throwing my hands up in exhaustion. My apartment suddenly felt too quiet, only the pelting rain and our harsh words breaking the silence. “What was I supposed to do, Jamie?”

  “Wait!” He cried the word out on a breath of desperation, face twisting with the emotion that had forced it out. “You were supposed to wait.”

  “For two years?”

  “Yes!” Jamie stepped closer then and I flinched back. That reaction seemed to stun him, and he paused. “For as long as I needed.”

  “That’s not fair,” I cried. “I tried calling you, I tried calling everyone around you. You never called, you never wrote — you completely ghosted me.”

  “Oh, feels kind of shitty when you’re on the other side of that, doesn’t it?”

  His words pummeled me, head snapping back with the figurative slap of them. It was the first time I thought of it that way. Jamie had waited for me — for three years, after I left Alder — and I’d never called him. I’d never given him any reason to wait. And yet still he had.

  But I hadn’t.

  “That was different, that… I didn’t promise you anything.”

  “Not then you didn’t,” he corrected me, just as a flash of lightning lit up the darkening sky behind him. “But just less than two years ago, you did. You promised me you’d wait.”

  “I love him!”

  My voice broke with the admission, Brad’s image assaulting me out of nowhere and reminding me why I couldn’t have this conversation with Jamie. I’d promised myself to another man, one I loved madly, one who treated me right. One who was available — who always had been when it came to me.

  “You do, huh?” he mused, nodding. He nodded over and over, small movements, teeth working the inside of his lower lip and nostrils flaring. Jamie looked around then, and it was as if he’d just realized he was in my apartment — for the first time. There were half-packed boxes littered everywhere. It was all there, proof I’d moved on without him, and I watched every second as it settled in. He turned back to me slowly after a moment, and his hazel eyes questioned me before his mouth did. “And do you love me?”

  “No,” I answered automatically. I’d trained myself for that one, all part of the twelve-step program. I’d repeated it, over and over. I didn’t love him, I was only infatuated. I only wanted what I’d never had. I loved the high, the burn — that was all. That’s what I told myself.

  “No?” he asked. Jamie crossed the room then, and I circled the sofa, trading places with him. I felt like a cornered animal, except I wasn’t scared — not even a little bit. The truth was I was excited. I was a fiend, right on the edge of a high I’d missed, a high I craved — and every nerve in my body was buzzing to life at the possibility. “You don’t love me.”

  That time he said it as an incredulous statement, not a question.

  “No.”

  My back hit the window he’d just been standing in front of and I had nowhere left to go. My hands pressed into the cold glass behind my thighs and Jamie moved slowly, closing in.

  “You don’t love me,” he asked again when his breath was close enough for me to feel it on my lips. Rain tinged on the glass behind me, my heart pounded in my chest, and Jamie moved slow and easy, confident and possessive. He was there to take what was always his. “You don’t want me, right now, right here?”

  He whispered the last words, still damp hand running up my arm to cradle my neck, thumb lining my jaw.

  I took a shaky breath, eyes fluttering closed, and said no again. At least, I thought I did, but I couldn’t be sure. Every sound was morphed, every sense focused on the point of contact where Jamie’s skin touched mine. My only goal in that moment was breathing, and it was damn hard to accomplish.

  “Say it,” he croaked, stepping even closer. The wet fabric of his shirt brushed my tank top, coating the lower part of my midriff just above my shorts hem. “Say you don’t love me. Say you don’t want me, and I’ll go.”

  I cracked my eyes open then, and the vulnerability in Jamie’s sliced me open. He was being honest. If I told him, right then and there, that I didn’t want him — he would leave. I knew he would. It would have killed him, but he would have walked away. All I had to do was speak those four words and this could all be over.

  I don’t want you.

  I said it in my mind first, testing the truthfulness of it, but when Jamie pushed farther into my space I knew I didn’t have the time to think it over.

  So the words flew from my lips.

  “I don’t want you.”

  Jamie stopped, his wet shirt still brushing against me as he breathed through the reality of what I’d said. His eyes flicked back and forth between mine, brows bent, heart unbelieving. He wasn’t expecting that. Hell, I wasn’t expecting that. It took him a moment to register. Then, slowly, he stepped back.

  Chills broke along my skin where his body had been, the cool air of my apartment stinging like an ice cube. Jamie opened his mouth to speak but paused, clamping it shut again with a flex in his jaw. And then, just as he promised, he turned and walked away.

  What happened in the next few moments was something unexplainable, something tangible and wrapped up in chemistry, because as soon as he took the first step away from me, my heart kicked into overdrive. It literally hit with a force that propelled me forward off the glass, and I opened my mouth with a ragged breath. He took another step and a white light invaded my vision. Another step, and my chest squeezed, ribs threatening to strangle my lungs.

  My mind raced as I watched Jamie fulfill his promise. Panic ripped through me like a merciless rip tide, a thousand what ifs assaulting me like brutal waves. I tried to make sense of it all, but the wine clouded what grip on reality I still had, and when his hand landed on the doorknob, I kicked hard, emerging from the wave.

  “Wait!”

  Jamie’s hand gripped the knob and his neck tilted, head down, like he was unsure if the word he’d heard was in his head or real. He turned slowly, and it was the last thing he took his time with, because as soon as he saw the tortured look on my face, he knew. He knew I wanted him. I always had.

  I always would.

  He crossed the room in five long strides. One, I took a breath. Two, I nearly cried. Three, I almost told him to stop. Four, I realized I never could. And five, lightning crashed behind me as Jamie’s lips claimed mine.

  My back hit the glass and my conscience hit the road, leaving me behind with a shake of its head. But Jamie’s thumb grazed my bottom lip, and my tongue caught the saltiness of his skin.

  That’s all it took.

  One taste, and every voice of reason was killed mid-sentence.

  We both exhaled the moment our mouths met, hard and pleading, two years of
pain and hurt and still-unresolved distance stoking the fire that had laid dormant for so long. Flames caught, and I gasped with the new oxygen, Jamie’s wet body pushing into mine and pinning me against the window.

  His hands ran down my arms, clasping hard around my wrists and pushing them over my head as his hips tilted forward. He kissed me like he’d never kissed me before, like he’d kissed me every day of his life, and like he’d never get the chance to kiss me again. Barrel-aged Whiskey and water mixed together, flavors exploding on my tongue with every sip. It was heaven. It was hell. It was wrong and right and I wished I’d never started yet I never wanted to stop. Loving Jamie was the sickest and sweetest oxymoron.

  “You’re not marrying him,” Jamie growled against my lips, and though that sentence should have pained me with guilt, it only fueled my desire. I kept my wrists high as Jamie dropped his grasp, reaching for the hem of my tank top and ripping it up and over. My simple sports bra came off next, and then his hands found my wrists once more, tightening their grip. The cold, wet fabric of his shirt brushed my nipples and I moaned, arching off the glass and into him.

  He dropped his mouth to my peak then, sucking the already tight skin, my hips bucking with the suction, wrists still pinned. Jamie’s lips caught mine again, teeth nipping at the wine stains as he flipped my hands, forcing my palms against the glass over my head.

  “Hold,” he murmured against my mouth, and then he dropped to his knees.

  Breaths expelled from my throat in bursts, chest heaving as I watched him hook his fingers beneath the band of my shorts. He slid them down to my ankles, fingertips searing my skin every inch of the way, and then he dipped one finger under the lace of my panties. We moaned together as he easily slid inside, and when Jamie’s eyes caught mine, the stare was too intense. I dropped my head back against the window, fingers desperate for a grip the glass couldn’t provide.

  Jamie slid my panties down next, hands wrapping around the backs of my thighs as he planted one soft kiss against my center. I was completely exposed for him, save for the tube socks still on my feet.