Perfect Storm (The Exes #1)

by Cheryl Douglas

  “How the hell can I forget? She reminds me every day.”

  “Good,” she said, looking smug. “I’m glad.”

  “Get out of here, Tracey. I have work to do.”

  Instead of obeying, she sank down in the chair across from me, staring. “I’ve got all night. I’m not leaving ‘til you tell me what happened.”

  I sighed before turning to face her. “Why are you here harassing me? You know Cory will tell you everything. Just go find her.”

  “I hear there are two sides to every story,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “Maybe I want to hear yours.”

  “Since when?”

  She’d never given me the benefit of the doubt. The hate-fest started the first night we met, when I told her I didn’t do the whole ‘commitment’ thing, that marriage and kids were for other dudes. I liked to play the field. She immediately decided I wasn’t good enough for her girl and hadn’t changed her opinion since. Not even when I asked Cory to move in with me.

  “Just humor me,” she said, crossing her arms. “What happened?”

  I bit the inside of my lip as I stared at the screen. Meaningless numbers merged together. I didn’t care how much profit we made this month. It could be a million dollars or ten. Money didn’t mean shit to me without Cory in my life.

  “I watched her niece for a bit today.”

  “And?”

  I cleared my throat and swiped a hand over my mouth. “Let’s just say it brought up some old feelings when she saw me with the baby.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” she asked, her voice dangerously low.

  This chick was tiny, but like Cory, she could go off like a banshee when provoked.

  “I swear to God Jace, if you took advantage of her-”

  “I didn’t take advantage of her. It was mutual, believe me.” I thought of the way she’d sucked me off. Man, was it mutual.

  “You slept with her again?” She leaned forward and slammed her hand down on the desk. “I don’t believe you! You son of a-!”

  “Hey, sex is a two way street. I didn’t do anything with her that she wasn’t begging for!” Okay, that made me feel like an asshole. Because I’d known why she was begging for it. She was caught up in a fantasy, role-playing, imagining me as the doting daddy who was desperate to get her knocked up again. I must be a sick son of a bitch, because I was actually getting hard again just thinking about it. What was wrong with me?

  “This will never end, will it? Why won’t you just let her go?”

  “Because I can’t!” I took a deep breath, trying to rein in my temper. “I can’t, okay. I love her, Trace.”

  “She loves you too,” she said, softly. “But you guys aren’t good for each other. You know that. You’re destroying each other.”

  Cory had looked wrecked when she left me. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “Sell her your half of the bar. Start another business-”

  “No.”

  “Why? Because it’s your only connection to her and you can’t let go of that?”

  “If you know the reason, why are you asking?”

  “Because I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you admit, to me and yourself, that you actually are that selfish.”

  I swallowed the words. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. “You need to leave.”

  “Why? So you can dream up new ways to reel her back in?”

  I pointed to the door. “I’m in no mood for this shit today. Get. Out.”

  “Do you know how much I hate you right now?”

  “I have a pretty good idea.”

  “I love that girl like a sister.” Her eyes filled with tears. “She is the best person I have ever known, Jace. And for reasons I don’t understand she fell in love with a man who can’t love her the way she deserves.”

  “This has nothing to do with how much I love her.”

  “Doesn’t it?” She stared at me, waiting for a response. “Look, I get that you don’t want to get married or have kids. That’s not your deal. But how could you let her fall in love with you, knowing you weren’t going to change your mind about that?”

  “She knew that too,” I said, trying to make myself feel better. “It’s not like I ever lied to her.”

  “Maybe not, but Cory, like so many women before her thought she could change a guy. She thought, maybe, just maybe if she loved you enough you’d change your mind.” She threw her hands up in the air. “Believe me, I know how stupid that sounds. I kept telling her to cut and run before she got in too deep, but she couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Leave you.”

  I’d like to claim that I’d never begged her to stay, but that would be a lie.

  “Then you told her that you loved her. You told her she was yours. You were a jealous possessive jerk who wouldn’t let her out of your sight. You became this Alpha male asshole every time some dude looked at her sideways, so honestly, what was she supposed to think? Then just when she was about to give up on you, you panicked, and asked, no begged her to move in with you.”

  That pretty much summed up the love story of Jace and Cory. Pretty sad, really.

  “What do you want me to do, say I’m sorry? Because I’m not.” At her look of disgust I added, “I’m sorry Cory got hurt. But I’m not sorry for the four years we had together.” I sighed when she looked unmoved. “I know you may not understand what we have, but you don’t have to. As long as we get it.”

  “But Cory doesn’t get it! She doesn’t understand this hold you have over her. You think she wants to be drawn back in every other day? Just when she thinks she’s getting over you… you whip your dick out and reel her back in.”

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “Yeah, me and my magic dick. Works every time.”

  “You think this is funny?”

  “No, I think it’s kind of sad.” That was the truth. I was sad that Cory was hurting. Sad that I’d lost her. Sad that my life felt so damn empty without her.

  “Look, Jace,” she said, her tone softening. “I really don’t think you’re a bad guy. I know you love her. But you can’t keep this up. Neither one of you can. It’s not healthy. You have to let go.”

  “You tell me how to do it.” I stared at her, waiting for the magic bullet. I spread my hands. “Come on, let’s hear it. This woman had been a part of my life for years. She’s my business partner. My best friend. The… love of my life.”

  “Jace-”

  “She has crawled inside me, under my skin.” I slapped my palm against the tattoo bearing her name. “I inked myself with her goddamn name. Every time I look at it, it’s a reminder. I go home at night and there are reminders everywhere there too.”

  “I know, but-”

  “No, you don’t know.” I held my hand up. “You may think you know, but you don’t know. She still has shoes in the closet. Perfume in the bathroom.” I hesitated, wondering if I should tell her, then decided, what the hell. “Sometimes when I get out of the shower in the morning, I spray it in the air just so I can pretend she’s still there with me.”

  Her look wreaked of sympathy, her soft brown eyes shining, and I hated it. I didn’t want her to pity me. I just wanted her to understand. I wanted someone to understand what I was going through. That I wasn’t some beast trying to keep my ex on the hook ‘cause I didn’t want to see her happy with someone else. I couldn’t, physically, couldn’t let her go.

  “I know how hard it is,” she whispered. “When Rich cheated on me I thought I’d never get over it.”

  “But that’s just it. That douchebag cheated on you. It should have been easy to get over him. He didn’t deserve you and he proved it. We’d known that all along. We were just waiting for you to wake up and figure it out.”

  She smiled. “Is it true you refused to serve him when he came in here with his buddies a few weeks ago?”

  I scowled. “Kicked him out on his sorry ass. Any man who’d cheat on a good woman-”

  “You think I’m a good woman? I assumed you thought of me
as a pain in the ass.”

  “You are a pain in the ass.” I chuckled when she kicked me under the desk. “But you’re also someone who deserves a better man than that asshat. And you’ll find him too. Just don’t settle.”

  She tipped her head back, throwing her hands up in the air. “Why? Why when I’m trying to hate you do you remind me why I like you?”

  I grinned. “Could be that I’m so charming.”

  “Yeaaahhhh, not so much.” She opened the door, but turned back to face me before leaving. “Please be careful with her heart, Jace. You, of all people, know how fragile it is.”

  Chapter Six

  Cory

  I should be at work, but since Jace was there I couldn’t be. I couldn’t stand to see him now. Not after I’d made a fool of myself, crying over… I closed my eyes. I couldn’t think about that again. I couldn’t think about the way he’d looked holding a baby or the way he’d played along with my fantasy, acting as if he really could see himself fathering my baby.

  I picked up my phone and ignored the messenger box. It had buzzed so many times I lost track, but I didn’t want to hear from anyone right now. I just wanted to wallow.

  I reached for my glass, swirling the Jack around in the bottom. I’d already had a couple of shots, but it had done nothing to dull the pain.

  Someone knocked at the door. Assuming it was the pizza I ordered, I jumped up, grabbing the twenty I’d left on the table to pay for my dinner.

  Jace stood on the other side of the door… holding my pizza.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, taking deep breaths to slow my heart.

  He passed me the box. “When I saw it was from our favorite place I guessed you’d been the one to order it. Asked the driver to let me bring it up.”

  “Then I guess this is yours,” I said, trying to hand him the bill clenched in my hand.

  “This one’s on me.” He stepped past me without waiting for an invitation. “As long as you promise to share.” He picked up my glass and poured a little more Jack into it before knocking it back.

  “Do you mind?” I asked, glaring at him. “I don’t recall inviting you in. Or offering you a drink.”

  He looked around my non-descript apartment. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  “Bite me, Jace.”

  He grinned, knocking me off balance.

  He knew I hated beige and this apartment had entirely too much of it. Beige walls, beige furniture, which came with the place. Even the carpet was beige. But it was clean and the neighbors were quiet so I stayed. It was temporary, I told myself. But temporary implied a plan for permanence and I certainly didn’t have any plans beyond figuring out how to get through the next day while sharing oxygen with the sexy bastard standing in front of me.

  “Tracey came by to give me shit,” he said, taking the pizza box from me and placing it on the pine coffee table.

  “I know she means well,” I said, sitting on the chair across from him. “But she needs to stay out of this. I can handle it. You.” When he raised an eyebrow, I took a slice from the box and brought it to my lips. “You know what I mean.”

  He refilled his glass. My glass. And knocked another one back with alarming ease.

  “You’ve been drinking too much.”

  I’d seen him at the bar, belting them back one after another and it was starting to worry me. He was still my business partner and I knew one sure way of watching everything you’d worked your ass off for slip away was to have an alcoholic steering the ship.

  “So I’ve been told.” He sank back against the cushions, lacing his hands behind his head. “But I came here to talk to you about some pretty messed up shit. So forgive me if I need a little liquid courage to get through it.”

  It wasn’t like him to be nervous or anxious about anything. Jace was the kind of guy who said whatever was on his mind, no matter the fallout. “So start talking.”

  “What happened in the office today-”

  “Never happened.” I ate my pizza, pretending it didn’t taste like cardboard. I loved pizza, but my appetite was shot to hell. “And we’re not going to talk about it. So if that’s why you’re here you can leave now.”

  I couldn’t rehash this. Not with my emotions still so close to the surface. Not with this man who could still make me cry on a dime. Like the kind of weak female I’d vowed I’d never be.

  “You don’t have to talk. Just listen.”

  “I mean it, Jace. You can get the hell out if-”

  “Your fantasy.” He stared at me, his dark eyes almost black. Soulless. “It made me feel things. Stirred up shit I thought was buried deep.”

  I could barely breathe as I suspected he was about to unlock one of those emotional boxes I thought he’d lost the key to. “How did it make you feel?”

  “Raw.” His voice was gruff as he rubbed the back of his neck and diverted his gaze. “Exposed. Reminded me of a time I hated myself.”

  I was afraid to say a word in case he withdrew again. When it came to talking about his past Jace was skittish, like a cornered animal trying to protect himself.

  “But it brought up other feelings too. Weird feelings.”

  “Like what?”

  “It turned me on, Cor.” His eyes trailed over my body, taking in my black yoga pants and tight white tank. “I never expected to get off thinking about shit like that.”

  Maybe I’d planted a seed. One that could take root and grow. Or was that too much to hope for? “But you did?”

  “You were there.” He picked up the glass and bottle before glancing at me and setting it down again. “You felt it. I was a maniac. I can’t remember the last time I was that turned on.”

  He’d been pretty turned on the night before too, but I liked where he was going with this so I didn’t interrupt.

  “Knowing how much you want this…” He covered his face with his hands. “I don’t know, maybe it makes me want it too.”

  My heart sped up as hope sprung to life, blooming through my chest. But I couldn’t go there. “Maybe doesn’t cut it when you’re talking about bringing a baby into the world, Jace. You have to be all in, one hundred percent.”

  “My high school girlfriend got pregnant.” He raised his head, looking at me for only a split second before he broke eye contact again. “With my kid.”

  I couldn’t believe after four years of loving this man I was hearing about this for the very first time. “Did she have the baby?” If he had a child in the world he’d already turned his back on it would explain so much. And it would make it easier for me to walk away.

  “No, she miscarried in her first trimester.”

  “Oh.” Relief flooded me and that made me feel ashamed because Jace and some nameless, faceless girl had lost a baby. A human life. “I’m sorry.”

  “I wasn’t.” His gaze was cold, harder than I’d ever seen it. He wanted me to see this side of him, the dark and lifeless man he’d only shown me glimpses of in the past. “I was relieved. She was crying her eyes out and I was ready to tie one on to celebrate.”

  If he was trying to shock and disgust me it was working. I knew he’d only been a kid then, but he was talking about his own baby. His own flesh and blood. Could he really care so little? And if he did was that really the kind of man I’d wanted to father my child?

  “Wow.” That was the only thing I could think to say. Just… wow.

  “Pretty sick, isn’t it?”

  At least he recognized that. “You were young-”

  “That’s no excuse.” He looked at me, daring me to contradict him, but I couldn’t. “Teenagers step up all the time. Learn how to be parents. Raise kids. But I wanted no part of it. I told her that.”

  “Even if she hadn’t miscarried, you would have walked away?” I tried to reconcile that with the man I knew. Jace was so loyal. To his brother. His friends. Me. How could he walk away from his own child?

  “Yeah, I would have.” He sat back, crossing his arms. “At least I tho
ught I would have. Who the hell knows what would have happened if the kid had survived.”

  The way he said it, so nonchalant, made me question whether I’d ever known him at all. Maybe he was right. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a dad. “So, you decided way back then you didn’t want kids? And you haven’t had second thoughts? Not even once?”

  “Not until today.”

  I searched his face for some sign that I could believe him, that something had shifted inside of him and he was suddenly morphing into someone else, someone who could possibly want the same things I did.

  “Spending that time with Ellie was…nice.”

  Babysitting and being a father were too very different things and he needed to understand that. “It’s a huge commitment,” I said. “Being a parent. You’re responsible for another person, Jace. Twenty-four-seven. Through the fevers and flus, temper tantrums and bad report cards.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  “It might be sexy to think about the fun part, getting pregnant, but that’s only the beginning.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  “Not everyone is cut out to be a parent,” I said, tossing my half-eaten slice down on the lid of the box. “And that’s okay. You’re a grown man. You can make any decision you want about that. But I am cut out to be a parent. I know it’s what I want.”

  He stared at me for a minute before he said, “I think you’d be an amazing mom, Cory. I’ve seen you with your niece and you’re a natural.”

  I loved that little girl so much. When she was born that’s when I knew I couldn’t go on pretending that I could live without a family of my own. That had been the beginning of the end of my relationship with Jace. We fought over it for four months before I finally realized the arguments weren’t getting us anywhere and the tension was becoming unbearable. I had to leave. Let him live his childless life. But for me that would feel like a death sentence.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  There were a million thoughts racing through my head, but I finally asked, “Why’d you wait so long to tell me what happened in high school? It helps me to understand why you don’t want…this.”