“It’s not just a house, Megan, it’s your life.” He shoved a hand through his hair, stepping back. “Without Bluff Drive, you’d either have to move into town or move right away. I’d never take that from you.”
Her throat went dry as it finally dawned on her. She’d missed the most important details when he’d told her about the plane crash and Frank raising him. That hard edge of bitterness she’d heard in his voice wasn’t aimed at his parents being so careless with his young life. It was aimed at himself.
Frank’s wife left him when the courts appointed him as my guardian. She didn’t fancy the idea of an instant family not of her making.
Frank’s wife had left and Jack had stayed. He blamed himself for taking her place.
Megan gave herself a mental kick. She’d made a silly suggestion and inadvertently regurgitated up his history. She’d offered him a chance to stay at the cost of her leaving. With Jack, it had never ever been about his need to always leave, but about his need to not stay.
“I’m not Frank’s wife,” she said softly. “You’re not forcing me out of my own life. You’re not forcing me into anything.”
“It doesn’t matter either way,” he told her. “21a is yours if you still want it.”
“I’d rather have you,” she exclaimed.
His eyes shuttered. His face blanked of any emotion.
Frustration, pain and anger broke within her like a damn flooding its walls. “I love you, Jack.” She had nothing more to lose. And she didn’t think she could ever forgive. “I love you and I was prepared to do anything to give that love a chance.”
Her hands shook so badly, she fisted them into a tight balls so he wouldn’t notice. Tears welled at her eyes and she blinked hard to crush them. “Moving out of my house means absolutely nothing because no-one, and certainly not you, can kick me out of my own life. Only I can do that, and that’s exactly what it felt as if I was doing when I was too afraid to risk everything for what we might have been.
“I don’t know if we could ever have worked.” She backed away from him and down the porch steps. “I never expected guarantees. I expected very little, Jack, but I did expect more than, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t have frozen me out between one heartbeat and the next. If it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t still be here. But you go right on telling yourself it doesn’t matter and turn that into your own little truth.”
He opened his mouth and she waited, her pulse hiccupping in hope. His mouth closed and he stood there, happy to watch her walk away. She’d poured her heart out and it hadn’t been enough. He couldn’t even talk to her, give her a decent explanation.
“You know what, Jack? Maybe you were right all along,” she blasted over her shoulder as she turned to barrel over the hedge. “Maybe I do deserve better than you.”
Jack knew he’d made many mistakes in his life, but he’d never once doubted the way he lived that life. Now he prowled the house with a restless energy that was powered on doubt.
Megan deserved much, much better than him.
He’d always said that.
Always believed that.
But to have her say it, to have her believe it, was a lightening bolt that pierced to his soul. It burnt raw, throbbed an ache across his chest, and illuminated too many of the shadowed corners he’d always taken refuge in.
He loved her. Where Megan was concerned, every little thing mattered a thousand times more. And that scared the shit out of him.
He wasn’t a seven-year-old boy anymore, frozen stiff beneath the covers, afraid to get out of a bed he’d never wanted to be in the first place. He wasn’t the boy who’d watched Aunt Mary storm out of the house, who’d watched his uncle disappear before his eyes until the man who finally emerged bore little resemblance to the man who’d swung him high and tickled him into a mass of screaming delight.
But the reaction was still instinctive, a reflex that was as much a part of him as his limbs. He didn’t belong in other people’s perfect lives. He was a visitor afraid to outstay his welcome.
He’d never given it much thought, never had a reason to until now. And now he couldn’t hide anymore.
Megan gave so fully of herself. She risked all in the most unselfish manner he’d ever come across. She loved him even as he said goodbye.
She’d spent the last two years teaching him how safe it was to stay, but he’d been too busy darting from shadow to shadow to learn. Somehow he’d convinced himself that he was the strong one, leaving so he wouldn’t hurt her, isolating his heart to protect hers, standing alone so she could find happiness. But it was her courage that had finally cast light on his stubborn hell.
It wasn’t the staying that ended up hurting people; it was the leaving. He’d never forgiven his parents for leaving him. And Frank, he’d lost his wife and a brother. Both had consumed the man.
If he left now, Jack knew with absolute certainty, the void in his heart would be permanent.
Megan refused to cry. Her feet pounded the forest floor as she pushed herself to the limit. The pain in her heart was staggering, but the breaths straining her lungs and the blood accelerating through her veins was the proof she needed to cling to.
Hearts didn’t physically break.
Her jogging speeded up into a sprint, all the way to the end of the bluff ridge and halfway back, until her muscles shook and threatened to collapse. Panting, clutching the stitch in her side, she limped the last stretch home.
Jack was sitting on the top step of her porch.
His head came up, watching her straggled approach.
She stopped dead, closed her eyes, and wondered if she had another lap in her. The gap between her and the porch, between her and Jack, seemed infinitely longer than the path through the forest.
“You do deserve better than me,” came his gruff voice. “But if you allow me, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to correct that.”
She blinked her eyes open to see him coming down the steps.
“I thought the best way to love you was to leave.” His gaze caressed her as his slow strides brought him closer and closer, until they were standing toe to toe. “I have no excuse. I was a stubborn idiot, hiding in the past and too afraid to offer a fraction of what you gave me. In my own screwed-up manner, Megan, I loved you. I do love you with all my heart.”
Megan’s pulse stuttered with each word he spoke. In that moment, she acknowledged the truth. She’d always known he loved her. She’d never needed the words, she’d never needed him to stay. It had been there in his every glance, in his touch, in his grin, in the confidences and laughter they’d shared, in every day they breathed the same air no matter how many continents separated them.
But she finally had the answer she’d been looking for. “Love isn’t enough, Jack.” She glanced up into his eyes. “I need more. I can’t love this way.”
“You once told me that I always come back.”
“You denied it.”
“I proved myself wrong.” His knuckles grazed beneath her chin. “You have my all. Every day, every minute, I will love you and I will always be here for you. If you’ll have me.”
She’d been willing to leap over the cliff when Jack had offered her nothing, and here he was, offering her everything. Her heart didn’t stand a chance. She went up onto her toes and brushed her lips over his. “I love you with all my heart.”
His mouth claimed hers in a possessive kiss that lasted until they were starved for air. When he came up, his gaze was filled with love and a grin scrambled the contours of his jaw. “Even after everything I’ve done?” he asked softly, gently teasing, but the sincerity of that question lurked in the depth of his eyes.
“Because of everything you’ve done,” she said. “People are flawed, but you’ve always turned my flaws on their head and made me feel better about them. Love is flawed, but I want to make all those mistakes with you. I want to thrill in the disappointments, because I know you’ll be there for the successes. It doe
sn’t have to make sense, Jack.” She wrapped her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his chest. She inhaled his scent and, as his arms came around her, she knew this was where she belonged and that she was here to stay. “That would be downright boring.”
“Like engineering the perfect shot?”
A smile formed low in her stomach and pushed through to her lips, warming a delicious path as it went. “Precisely, although I still think Bunny Island should have been the exception.”
“I love you,” he murmured. “This, right here, right now, is the perfect shot I’ve been waiting for my entire life.”
She strained back from his chest to look into his eyes and she knew her heart was safe. That he’d never leave her was a certainty grafted to her bones and anything else, everything else, they’d deal with together.
Falling for the Guy Next Door Page 15