“I shouldn’t have listened. I could have carried you.”
“You wouldn’t have made it fifty yards if I’d been with you.”
“I don’t care. I shouldn’t have done it.”
He loved her. He loved her and she kept pushing him away. And nothing he’d done could justify the way she’d been treating him. Caroline swallowed the lump rising in her throat. “I don’t want to leave you,” she said. “But I don’t – I’m not sure I can give you what you want. I can’t be who you need me to be. That woman you described – she’s gone, Jack. She’s dead. Maybe she was never really real. Maybe she was all in your mind.”
“She was real,” Jack said. “You’re real. And you’re here and I’m not giving up.”
Caroline made eye contact with him briefly before shifting her gaze to the floor. Would she ever be able to look at him for any length of time before dissolving into tears?
“Sweetheart, look at me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Nope. Not today. “I can’t.”
“Please, Caroline.”
He was imploring her. One step away from begging. How fucked up were they? “I can’t.” She started crying. “It hurts too much.”
Jack wrapped his arm around her and took her hand in his. She squeezed it as hard as she could.
“I’m dragging you down,” she said softly. “I don’t want to keep hurting you the way I have. You have to find a way to move on without me before I hurt you even more.”
“I need you in my life. There has to be a way.”
Caroline choked back another sob. What kind of life would he have if she were with him? “I’m broken, Jack. I don’t think I can be fixed.”
He kissed the side of her head. “You’re not broken. You’ve had a lot of terrible things happen to you, but you’re far from gone.”
She resisted the urge to pull away from him. “You’re wrong. My brain is constantly jumbled. There are pieces of me scattered all over the place and I don’t know where they are.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you need time to process things.”
How much time had she already taken? How much more would she need? Caroline wiped her eyes. “I can’t lay this burden at your feet.”
“And why the hell not?” He threw his arms up in frustration. “That’s what marriage is for. You don’t run away when it gets tough, you battle through.”
She smiled ironically. “I’m not sure what we have is a marriage.”
“Then what is it?” Jack reached under his shirt and pulled out her wedding ring. “You think I’ve been wearing this as a joke? Every night I prayed for a miracle even though I believed you were dead. Every. Night. You have always been with me, Caroline. Always.”
He’d kept her ring around his neck for well over a year. Even after he’d taken off his own. Caroline wasn’t sure how to unpack that. She wrapped her arms around herself again. “That’s not enough, Jack. I’m not being fair to you. I haven’t been fair to you at all. You shouldn’t have to pick me up when I’m not salvageable.”
“What am I supposed to do?” he demanded. “Pretend you’re not here? Pretend my prayers weren’t answered? Forget everything we were to each other, everything we still are, everything we could be? Find someone else? Pay no attention to your pain? I want to help you. I love you. I need you. Please don’t give up like this.”
“I tried to move on,” she said. “You can too.”
“Bullshit. You never moved on and you know it.”
He could always see through her lame excuses. Maybe she could try another one. One that had teeth. “You deserve better than me.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because it’s true.”
“You were above my pay grade when I married you. It would take an awful lot for you to merit anything other than my total commitment.”
Treating him like shit for six months seemed like an awful lot to her. “I’m not the woman you fell in love with. I can’t be her ever again.”
“Do you think that means you don’t deserve to be happy anymore? That you should spend the rest of your life alone? Jesus Christ, Caroline. People make mistakes. They have bad things happen to them. They change. But they find a way to carry on. That’s part of life.”
She lifted her head to meet his gaze. “Maybe this is my way of carrying on. By letting you go.” Tears welled up in her eyes again. “You deserve love and happiness. You deserve better than me.”
“So you’re saying you deserve to be miserable forever? To bear this load alone?”
Caroline shifted away from him. After a few moments she got up. “I’m going back to my apartment.”
“No, you’re not,” he said. “We’re not finished.”
“We are.” She took the chain attached to his wedding band out of her box of belongings and put it on the couch next to him. “I’m sorry, Jack. I truly am. I regret all the terrible things I’ve said. I loved every minute we were together. I don’t want you to believe anything I’ve told you over the past few months about our relationship.”
She wiped her eyes. “You made me so happy, happier than I ever thought possible. I swore I’d never take my life for granted again and that’s exactly what I did. With you, and the girls, and my friends. You have no idea what I’d be willing to do to relive every precious moment I had with all of you. But that part of our life is over. A man of your position merits a partner who’s whole and vibrant, who isn’t slashing you apart with every breath she takes.”
She headed toward the door with the box in her hand and Jack quickly followed, wrapping his arms around her shoulders from behind. He nuzzled her ear, and when he spoke his voice was ragged. “Please, Caroline. If you walk out that door I’m afraid I’ll lose you forever.”
She swallowed a sob and let the box tumble to the carpet. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore.”
“You’ll rip me to shreds if you leave. You know you will.” He pressed his wedding band into her hand. “My soul belongs to my beloved, eternally to him,” he whispered. “Take it.”
“I can’t.”
“Take it,” he repeated. “It’s yours. You can’t go back on that vow. Not while I know you still love me. Even if you can’t say it, I know how you feel. I won’t let you run away. We went through too much to be together.”
“My soul is dead,” she said. “It’s been wiped out.”
“That’s impossible. Your soul is bound together with mine and I’m not letting it go.” Jack wrapped his hand around hers, clasping her fingers in his. “You owe me, Gerard. You pledged yourself to me for a lifetime and beyond and you’re not allowed to break that promise. Please let me help you. Please.”
How could he help? Didn’t he know he’d destroy himself in the process? She couldn’t let that happen. Not to him. “I can’t stay. I’m no good anymore. I don’t know what I am but I don’t think I’m worth saving.” Caroline started to cry. Her knees buckled and Jack guided her to the floor.
“Come here,” he said.
The selfless, proper thing to do was to let him go. To crawl out that door if she had to. It was for his own good. She didn’t deserve him. Maybe she never had.
“Please,” he whispered. “Let me help you.”
She turned around and buried her face in his shoulder. “I feel so empty,” she moaned. “I’m not even a real person anymore. I’m barely human. I’m just a shell.” She gripped his shirt so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “I made you leave. I brought this on myself.”
He wrapped his arms around her. “You did not. It’s not your fault. None of this was ever your fault.”
“I couldn’t leave things well enough alone. I had to push it.”
“Stop, Caroline. This isn’t on you.”
She clung to him and continued to weep. “I don’t know what to do.”
Jack held her close. “Just let me in. Please. Don’t keep drifting away. Come back to me. I miss you so much, sweetheart.”
> “I’m a millstone around your neck. I never should have come here. You would have been able to do so much more if you weren’t worrying about me.”
“Listen to me,” he said. “Everything good I have ever done with my life was because of you. I want you with me. I want to help you heal. I don’t care what I have to sacrifice in order to save you.”
Caroline sobbed against his chest until his shirt was soaked through. Jack continued to hold her, whispering words of comfort.
“I love you,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to leave you alone. I won’t.” She wrapped her arms around him, pressing her fingernails into his back. Jack stroked her hair. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Let it out.”
She clutched him as tightly as she could, sobbing and crying, beating at his chest and pulling at his shirt, until her sobs devolved into deep shaky breaths. She looked up at Jack. His eyes were red, probably as red as hers. He looked tired. Concerned. Worried.
He wiped away her remaining tears. “Feel better?”
“A little,” she said softly.
“Good. You can do that any time you want.”
She fingered his shirt. “You may want to change this.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
She yawned. “What time is it?”
“Late enough to get some sleep, apparently.”
Caroline loosened her grip around him and looked at the ring in her hand.
“It’s yours,” Jack said. “Fair is fair.”
She raised her head. “Can you help me put it on?”
“Of course.” He fastened the chain around her neck.
Caroline tucked it under her shirt and gazed up at him. “Will you stay with me tonight? In the bedroom? Please?”
He smiled. “Whatever you want.”
“Just until I fall asleep.”
“I’ll stay in there as long as you want.”
She closed her eyes. “I don’t want to be alone.”
Jack kissed her forehead. “If it was up to me I’d never let you out of my sight.” He pulled them to their feet. “Come here,” he said, leading her through the door to the bedroom. He laid down on the bed and she nestled next to him.
“I have a hard time sleeping sometimes,” she said. “But I guess you figured that out.”
“You fell asleep right away when I was with you last time.” He wrapped his arms around her. “No nightmares tonight. Okay?”
She tried not to shudder. Would saying it make it happen? If anyone could keep her bad dreams at bay, it would be Jack. “Okay,” she said, and closed her eyes.
Chapter Ten
Caroline told him she loved him as she drifted off to sleep. Jack hadn’t been able to sleep a wink, too concerned with whether she was comfortable. She rolled over and murmured those words of affection before curling into the pillow. Maybe soon she’d have the courage to tell him how she felt when she was awake.
The next few days were an awkward blur. It drove him nuts for her to be so emotionally distant, but he kept telling himself things would improve. The best times were at night, when she would crawl into bed and he would follow. She’d tumble into his arms wordlessly, clinging to him until she fell asleep. They didn’t discuss it; it just was. And she was decent enough not to comment on the erection she could undoubtedly feel pressing into her hip as he held her.
It was the only time she initiated any sort of physical contact, and he was reminded of how much he missed it. He didn’t call her out on it. Even if she wouldn’t verbalize it, she needed him. That was what he kept telling himself. It was an effective counterbalance to the crushing weight of his own desire.
Jack would watch her as she slept, waiting for her defensive posture to relax as she sank deeper into slumber. He’d stroke her hair, whispering quiet words into her ear. Telling her that she was safe, that she was strong, that she was loved. Sometimes he heard her crying softly but knew better than to start anything. He would hold her tighter, coo reassurances, and wait for it to pass.
He tried to keep himself from imagining her as the innocent she never was, and hoped that perhaps his presence would make her feel less guarded, less angry, less tormented. That when she woke up she’d have transformed and would throw herself into his arms for more than platonic comfort. That there would be no more angst and no more tears, though such hopes were foolish. He wanted to ask her about it – about anything – but it was as if their previous conversation hadn’t occurred. One morning after he made her breakfast, Jack knew he had to say something.
“You’ve been sleeping better,” he told her.
Caroline looked up from her eggs. “I guess.”
“No nightmares,” Jack said.
“I wouldn’t – yeah, I guess.”
His wife wasn’t in any hurry to set records for loquaciousness. “I’d like to think it’s because of me.”
“I have no idea,” Caroline said.
He sighed. “Do you want to talk about anything?”
“No.”
Jack finished off his coffee. “How long are things going to be this way? I thought, after we talked the other night-”
“You thought what?”
“Maybe you’d loosen up a little.”
Her eyes flashed with anger. “Do you have a deadline to meet? It must be terribly inconvenient to be around me all the time.”
“I want to be around you,” he said. “I wish you’d talk to me. You have no problem letting me hold you at night.”
“If you don’t like it, you can stop.”
He told himself not to match her tone and failed in the effort. “I don’t want to stop. I want you to feel comfortable. To want to be close to me. Right now you barely speak to me.”
“Maybe I don’t feel like being a fucking chatterbox like I was before.”
“You were never that way. Don’t say that about yourself.” Jack stared into his empty cup. “Does it make you feel good, teasing me this way? Letting me hold you but never quite letting me in? Fooling me into thinking you could be mine again before turning around and ignoring me during the day, bottling your emotions up inside you?”
“This is who I am now,” Caroline said.
She was sullen, and bitter, and completely manufactured. He shoved the cup to the side. “No, it’s not!” he shouted. “This is who you’re pretending to be because you’re afraid to be anything else. And I hate seeing it.”
“Then go back to work. I can function alone.”
Another lie. So many lies. If he left her alone he had no idea what she would do. Jack slammed his hand down on the table, hearing the dishes rattle. “I don’t want to go back to work!” he boomed. “Work can take care of itself. My job is to take care of you. Nothing else.”
“You do have a revolution to run.”
She was doing it on purpose. Pushing his buttons in a cheap attempt to get him to respond in kind. Jack ran his fingers through his hair. “You are my priority. I have made that clear from the beginning. But you won’t let me help you. Please, sweetheart. Talk to me. We can talk about anything you want.”
“I don’t want to talk,” Caroline said. “Although you seem quite content to yell.”
He was. Especially when she made it so damn hard for him to hold his temper. “I thought we were making progress. That we could move forward.”
“Or go back? Right, Jack? You want to go back, pretend all of this never happened.”
Was that what this was about? “That is not what I want.” Jack took another deep breath. “I know we can never go back, much as I wish we could. Why are you so afraid to admit that you need this? That you need me?”
“I don’t need anything.”
Wasn’t that a load. “The hell you don’t. We all need something. Or someone. And you’re bound and determined not to break down and tell me that you need me around.”
“I can’t afford to need you,” Caroline said. “You start needing something, wanting something, depending on something, and it goes away. Doesn’t matter wh
o or what it is.”
Did she think he would abandon her after everything that had happened? “I’m not going anywhere,” Jack said, irritated. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“You can’t make those sorts of promises. You can’t control the outside world. None of us can.”
Maybe this was about more than the two of them. And maybe he was an idiot for not picking up on it earlier. “Then why not take comfort in each other to escape it?”
“Because it’s too hard,” she whispered.
“It doesn’t have to be.” Jack reached for her hand.
She pulled away before he could grab it. “It is.”
“I want you to feel safe, sweetheart. Help me understand how to make you feel safe.” He cleared his throat. “I know that’s why you want me in your bed. I’ve felt you relax in my arms. You can say it out loud.”
“Do you know what it’s like for me at night?” she asked. “Having you with me? Feeling like I can be normal again? Hoping that when I wake up this will all be over. That it’s all some terrible dream. Then I open my eyes in the morning and I remember-” Her voice broke, and she pressed her fist to her lips.
What could he possibly say to that? “I’m sorry,” Jack whispered.
“That’s why I cry sometimes,” she said softly. “Because it feels too good when you hold me.”
He stared at his plate, upset that she was even aware she was doing it, or that she’d picked up on the fact that he responded to it. But it wasn’t fair to discourage her from opening up. He couldn’t go on and on about honesty if it made him uncomfortable when she gave him what he wanted.
“It breaks my heart when you say things like that,” he said. “You can let yourself feel good.”
Caroline gripped her fork, twisting it across the table. “Do you know how much it hurts to be around you?”
If she pressed her silverware down any harder, she’d embed it in the wood. “I don’t want you to feel that way,” Jack said. “I want you to feel safe. And I don’t care whether you do or don’t speak to me at all. I want to be with you. Please, sweetheart. Stop shutting down like this.”
Rhapsody (The Bellator Saga Book 5) Page 8