“No, Logan, we aren’t. Because I'm not strong enough.”
“You don’t mean that, baby. Of course you are. We can fix this.” He said the last of his statement with such determination; she almost wanted to believe him.
“There is nothing to fix anymore, Logan. You made your choice, and clearly, I’m not it. There is nothing to fix because you threw it away.”
“No, Gillian! That’s not true. I love you! It’s not too late …” he declared, and she saw a tear roll down his cheek as he continued to hold on to her.
“Do you love her?” she whispered to him. It broke her heart further to ask it, but she had to know.
“What?” He looked shocked by her question. But didn’t they say that when you answer a question with a question it was the person’s way of avoiding the answer? Maybe he really didn’t hear her? Well, fuck! Let’s ask again, shall we?
“Do. You. Love. Her.” she said with a level tone, emphasizing each word with a pause for good measure. She had to make sure he wasn’t gonna play coy with her.
“I love you Gillian.” Once again Logan managed to avoid answering her question. That can’t be a coincidence.
“It’s not enough anymore, Logan. I needed you to stand by your word—I needed to know that I was the only woman in your world just as you were the only man in mine.”
Logan took in a shocked breath before whispering to her, “Were?”
“Yes, Logan … were.” She paused, delaying the end of this because as much as she loved her husband, she knew she had to walk away. Laying her hands over Allie’s, which were still firmly around her mid-section, she looked over Logan’s shoulder and saw Jake, Jason, Morgan and Sean. Well, crap! Her brother looked none too happy at the moment. His wife had her arms wrapped around his body and looked like she was hugging him, when in fact, Gillian knew that Morgan was holding Sean back. Her gaze made its way back to Jake, and he gave her a weak smile, which warmed her a bit.
Her tears continued to stream down her face when she brought her gaze back to Logan, who stood there looking expectant. He was waiting for something from her, but he wasn’t going to get it. She knew she was a glutton for punishment because she needed to know one more thing, and honestly she needed another burst of anger to get her through this. One more thing was needed to prove she was strong enough to walk away. Unfortunately, he had yet to answer any of her questions so she was going to have to do this one with the help of the onlookers. This was where being a smartass came in handy.
“I’ll tell you what, Logan, even though I said there were no more chances left, and that our marriage was over if you cheated on me again, I will talk with you and see if we can save our marriage—try to fix it for us—if you can tell me one thing.” Now she was looking at him expectantly, waiting for his answer. She could tell that what she offered gave him some hope that she would actually do just that. She almost felt guilty about that because she was pretty sure she already knew the answer to her final question. But she just had to ask it. “Were you with her this week? When I was waiting for you at the store to get Dylan’s birthday presents, and you didn’t show up or call me—were you with her?”
That spark of hope she had seen in his eyes dimmed as he processed what she had asked. He knew there was nothing he could do or say to cover his tracks because she had figured it out. “I do believe you told me that you and Jason were in a meeting over some botched blueprints. Should I ask Jason about that?” she said with full confidence, because she knew Jason would tell her if she asked. But she wanted to actually hear something from his mouth that was the truth about what he had done. She heard Jason, behind Logan, grumble a few choice four-letter words confirming that there was no meeting. With Gillian’s final statement, the glimmer of hope in Logan’s eyes vanished completely as he realized that he had no choice but to answer truthfully.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Jake couldn’t believe his own ears. This was crazy. Logan and Gillian appeared to have the perfect relationship, or was he so blinded by his own envy that it was an illusion? Okay, he wasn’t seething with envy, but it did rest comfortably below the surface. He had always possessed deeper-than-friendship type feelings for Gillian, but felt that he had them completely under control. Or at least he did.
The anger coursing through Jake’s system was at peak levels as he watched this horrible scene unfold in front of all of them. It truly broke his heart to think that Gillian had gone through all this with Logan already, and he had no idea. She was such a strong person, but everyone deserved a friend to help them through a shit-storm like that. His desire to protect her from any more harm was almost unbearable.
Jake looked around him at everyone watching what was happening. Sean was barely restrained by his wife. Thank God for tiny pregnant women who can control their giant husbands with only a touch of their hand. Jason stood next to him and held a similar posture as Jake did—hands were fisted at his sides, jaw was clenched, a deep scowl across his face, and he was rocking from foot to foot like a caged lion ready to pounce. He wasn’t sure if his brother’s ready-to-pounce-stature was aimed at Logan for being a total douche bag, or if it was aimed at Sean in case he needed to restrain him when he finally went for Logan’s throat.
“… were you with her?” He heard Gillian ask Logan, and then he could hear Morgan trying to calm Sean some more.
“Relax tiger, she’s a big girl, and she’s doing just fine over there. Let her do this,” she was saying to her husband as she continued to gently rub his chest. Apparently a woman could sooth a beast by rubbing their chest. Interestingly, he recalled that that was exactly what Gillian did to his own chest in the backyard. He hadn’t realized that she had that kind of effect on him.
“Yes … I was with her,” Logan said in a shallow, emotionally spent voice of defeat, and hung his head forward. And then all hell broke loose.
Jake barely registered it when Gillian drew back her fisted arm and shot it forward into Logan’s face. Morgan released Sean and said, “Now you can help her.” He promptly lunged for Logan who was now trying to stand up straight from the hood of the car he fell back on when Gillian clocked him. Jason was following after Sean. Allie now had Gillian turned into her and was trying to console her loud sobs.
Jake turned to Morgan, “You doing okay with all this excitement?” he asked, while motioning toward her very pregnant belly with his hands.
“I'm great Jake; my husband didn’t just cheat on me,” she said with total sarcasm. “Help Allie get her out of here. She doesn’t need to see this, and I'm not about to jump in and stop my husband. Jason might be able to, but I'm not.”
Jake smiled at Morgan, then made his way around the three men who were arguing, not quite sure who was going after whom at the moment, but he could leave it up to them. He got to Allie and Gillian who were just off to the side and started to move them toward Gillian’s SUV where Allie had already stored her stuff. “Let’s get out of here girls,” he said, catching Gillian’s attention, causing her to turn around and throw her arms around his neck while she sobbed into his chest. Immediately wrapping his arms around her, he paused to try and soothe her. He felt about ten feet tall when she relaxed a bit. “Shh, I’ve got you Gillian. Shh,” he said to her while holding her with one arm and stroking down the length of her hair with the other, soothing her.
When she pulled back and looked up at him, his heart actually constricted in pain at the look on her face. “Why wasn’t I enough for him Jake? Why wasn’t I good enough?” she managed to choke out and then put her face back into his chest to sob some more.
He looked to Allie who stood there with tears rolling down her face, gritting her teeth. She was furious with her brother for sure. He motioned his head toward Gillian’s SUV and said, “You drive, Al. I’ll get her in the back.” With a nod of her head, she made her way to the driver’s side door. Jake bent forward and slipped his arm under Gillian’s knees and lifted, carrying her the rest of the way toward her car.
But when he tried to put her in the back of the car, she wouldn’t let go of him. Allie noticed and said, “Just get in with her, and put her on your lap.” So he did just that. He was slightly grateful that Allie suggested it because he didn’t want to let go of her just yet. Aside from all the shit that was going on at the moment, he couldn’t help but contain the feeling of rightness from having her in his arms.
He was struggling to put the seatbelt around the two of them as Allie put the vehicle in motion. As she backed it up and made the shift into drive, Jake looked out the window to the driveway and saw something that was one of the saddest things he had ever seen. There was Logan, on his knees in the middle of the driveway, with Sean and Jason standing just behind him, tears visible on his face as he watched the car drive away with his wife.
Jake looked down at Gillian in his arms and noticed that her sobbing had calmed down a bit. She may have actually passed out since her sobbing seemed awfully close to hyperventilating, but the noises she was making confirmed she was fine. He couldn’t believe that she thought she wasn’t enough. Logan was a moron, and a fool and any other stupid ass name he could come up with to describe a man who had something this perfect and didn’t cherish it. Stupid ass, that’s a perfect description!
As he stared down at her, he knew she was asleep because of her breathing pattern. He gently wiped the tears from her cheeks and then wiped them on his shirt, which was plenty wet with her tears, and he was pretty sure there was definitely snot this time. He smiled thinking of her comment about that earlier. The fact that she could make someone smile when she was experiencing such turmoil showed you what a great person she was to be around. She was a necessity in Jake’s life, and he didn’t know what he would do without her. He decided, then and there, that he was going to make sure that she never thought she wasn’t enough ever again.
He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, whispering, “You would be much more than ‘just enough’ for me Gillian.” When he pulled back to look down at her some more, he didn’t notice Allie watching him in the rearview mirror.
CHAPTER SEVEN
She felt like she was floating. The music was playing as she felt herself gently swaying to it. His arms were resting comfortably around her waist while she had one of hers on his shoulder, and the other was playing with the hair at the base of his head. She knew he loved it when she played with his hair. She, too, loved playing with it—it was so soft and thick, and she was so glad when she convinced him that he didn’t need to get it cut short just for the wedding. To her it was perfect. The day was fantastic, and their first dance was turning out to be perfect as they swayed to their song in the middle of the empty dance floor, while he softly sang it to her. He didn’t sing it loud enough for everyone to hear, it was just for her. Suddenly the music stopped, and he stopped singing, too. She looked into his eyes, and he smiled. Then someone nudged her shoulder. “Mom … Mom … Mommy.”
She turned her head to see who was interrupting her dance with her new husband and looked straight into the eyes of her youngest son, Dylan. “Your alarm was going off Mom, it’s time to get up, and I have to be at school early today so I got dressed already,” he said with a satisfied smile and way too much energy for this early in the day.
She looked him over and smiled back at him. “And what a fine job you did, buddy. Good thing you wear uniforms to school still, it kind of makes things easy, doesn’t it?”
He gave her a little laugh then asked, “Can I have cereal for breakfast today, please?”
“Of course, you go feed yourself, and I'm going to jump in the shower. Are your brother and sister up yet?”
“Yes, I heard Jonathan yelling at Maddie, and that’s why I woke up,” he said as he left her bedroom.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed to sit up and glared at her alarm clock. It was a damn dream … A wonderful memory. Stupid music playing alarm clock. She was going to have to pick another radio station, or better yet, take a hammer to it. Hearing that song playing definitely threw her into that dream. She sighed. It felt sooo damn real. She really felt like she was back on her wedding day, in her dress, dancing with Logan to their song. Their life was still new and fresh and nothing like it was now. Oh sure, things were complicated for them considering they were already the proud parents of a bouncing baby boy by the time that day rolled around. ‘Just Married’ wasn’t the only banner they flew. The judgmental attitudes of the adults around them were always fun and barely tolerated, but hey, they were kids and didn’t know anything. Sometimes it bothered her that the focus was always on her getting pregnant, instead of focusing on the way they handled it and they were doing just fine.
The most commonly offered title for her and Logan was ‘teenage parents.’ ‘Unwed parents was the one most often heard around the religious folks. And her personal favorite to hate was the ‘Got-Married-Because-They-Had-a-Child’ title, which was the one whispered behind their backs, so fortunately she didn’t have to hear it that often, but she knew it was there. They were all wonderful titles to be listed under, and she battled to make sure that she didn’t fall into any of those stupid stereotyped categories again. That was, until two months ago, when her world fell apart. Welcome to a new statistic, Gillian Baxter. Sometimes she felt like she should wear a silk sash across her chest like beauty pageant contestants wore, only hers would say something like, ‘Divorced Previous Teenage Mother … duh.’ Because, of course, that was what everyone expected from girls who got pregnant in high school.
She stood up, stretched, and tried to shake off the dream and her apparent bad mood. She was about to head to the shower when she heard her daughter and all her attitude yelling for her, “MOOOOM! Jonathan says if I'm not in the car in five minutes he’s leaving without me!”
Looking toward that damn traitorous alarm clock she saw that it was still plenty early enough and she wasn’t sure why he was placing that demand on her, but no big deal, she had to drive Dylan anyways. “I can drive you to school today if your brother needs to go. Just tell him I will.”
“Eww! No way, I can’t have my mom drop me off at school.” Madison was the epitome of female teenage drama and said that with complete and utter disgust in her voice. You love your daughter … You love her, it’s just a phase … You will be the best of friends someday. She chanted this to herself so not to snap at her daughter because that just brought on a whole other set of problems.
“Well then, it looks like you now only have four minutes ‘til you need to be in your brother’s car, or you will be walking to school.” Gillian’s reply to Madison’s complaint elicited a grunt and a foot stomp before she went back upstairs. Well, if she was here when she got out, then she would know what her wonderful, moody daughter’s decision was.
Stepping into the shower, she let the hot water pound down onto her strained muscles. She had just finished four twelve-hour shifts in a row, and her body was certainly feeling the effects of it. Thankful that today was her day off, she finished her shower and reluctantly got out so she could get the kids to school. She had just finished wrapping the towel around her body when she heard his voice calling her.
“Gillian?” Logan said in a questioning tone. “You in here?” Gillian looked up as he rounded the corner into what was their bedroom and saw her. His eyes widened momentarily in surprise before he spoke, “Oops, sorry, babe.” He didn’t make a move to leave or cover his eyes. She watched as a gentle smile graced his face, and his eyes showed emotion she didn’t want to have to handle today. So, since sarcasm was a good friend of hers, she would go with that instead.
“You know, this isn’t yours to look at anymore, so stop staring,” she said while gesturing to her towel-clad body, and then proceeded to bend forward and wrap her hair up in another towel.
He was still staring when she stood back up and shrugged one shoulder as he said, “Believe me when I say that I do know that, it’s just that old habits die hard, Gillian.” Didn’t she know it? Sometimes it was
a constant battle in her head that she and Logan weren’t a couple anymore. They were still married, of course, but legalities were being worked on. It was exhausting sometimes, trying to remember things were different, but she knew that it would get easier. Just seeing him in their room felt so normal, as did her initial reaction to seeing him. She had to resist the urge to walk up to him, wrap her arms around him and just hold him. She really missed his hugs. They say it takes twenty-one days to form a new habit, or get over an old one, but she was past that and still struggling. Maybe it was twenty-one days per year you were together? Who the hell knows.
She resisted the cloud of funk threatening to take over whenever she dwelled on the status of her marriage, and realized that there was no reason for him to be here at this time of day … in her room … while she was wearing only a towel. Making sure the towel was secure around her body, she cocked her head to the side as she asked him, “What are you doing here? It’s not your day to take them—I'm off today.”
“Maddie called me. She said you were making her walk to school, and she didn’t like walking to school in her cheer uniform,” he said and finished with another shrug like it made perfect sense to him.
Oh no, she did not! Gillian felt her anger hit like a punch to the gut as she sucked in a startled breath of air. “She told you that?” Her voice was high and full of disbelief. Logan, who has known her for at least half her life, picked up on her tone and realized that something was amiss.
“Uh-oh … I knew that didn’t sound like you, but hey, who am I to pass up a chance to see my girl?” Gillian wasn’t sure if he was talking about her or their daughter. The look on his face made it seem like it was Gillian, but she wasn’t going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole! Gillian grabbed her robe off the hook next to where she was standing and swung it over her shoulders, tying it tightly around her body, before she dropped the towel. Oh, she was fully aware of the fact that Logan most likely caught an eye full of something, or everything, but she couldn’t resist. Not only did it feel normal to do that in front of him, but also it was just too damn tempting to remind him of what he couldn’t have anymore. Plus, like he said, old habits die hard.
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