Wrong to Need You

by Alisha Rai

  She opened her mouth, but Livvy beat her to it. “I know about Paul, I found out today, I can’t believe it either except I totally can, and I’m so so sorry.”

  Sadia pressed her lips together. “You saw Jackson?”

  “Yes.” Livvy took hold of Sadia’s hands. “I know you probably feel betrayed.”

  “I do, yes.”

  “I’m sorry.” Livvy grimaced. “I know you don’t like getting involved in the Kane family drama.”

  Sadia laughed, but there was little humor in it. “Well, I suppose it’s my family no matter what, so it’s my drama.”

  “I can’t tell you how to feel about Paul. I’m pissed at him, and I wasn’t married to him. But, like, he wasn’t a bad man. He did something dumb.” Livvy raised a shoulder.

  “So dumb. And the worst part is, I can’t even talk to anyone about it.”

  “You can tell me. And my mom, I guess. And, well, Jackson?”

  She studied Livvy for a second. “He told you about us,” she guessed. She’d purposefully avoided Livvy lately, fearful her best friend would sense her deepening adoration of Jackson.

  “He did. I told him he screwed up, that he sprang a lot on you, and he should talk to you.” Livvy’s gaze drifted out, across the yard. “He agreed.”

  Sadia looked, then looked again. Jackson leaned against one of the pillars of the gazebo that had been in the backyard for ages. They’d played and read and talked in that gazebo as children.

  They weren’t children any longer.

  Someone had turned on the fairy lights that draped the structure, and his perfect, beautiful face and body were covered in a golden glow, caressing his brown skin, his sharp nose, his full lips. He was dressed casually, as usual, but his jeans and sweater looked new. “Do you want to talk to him?” Livvy asked quietly. “If not, I can—”

  “No,” she responded. “Can you keep an eye on Kareem?”

  “Consider it done.”

  A flash of gratefulness shot through her. She did have the best family.

  She lifted her dress and walked out to the gazebo, conscious of Jackson’s dark gaze on her. She climbed the steps, quiet and uncertain.

  His face softened. “You look beautiful.”

  She smoothed a hand over her dress. It was sequined and overly elaborate, but that was fine for these parties. “Thank you.”

  “I was going to crash the party and make a big gesture, like Nicholas did with Livvy, but—” He glanced at the house. “I wouldn’t have been good at it. It would have gotten weird, real quick.”

  She controlled her smile. It would have gotten weird. Jackson did not do his best work in front of crowds of strangers. “That’s okay. I don’t need or like big gestures either. You can say what you want to say out here.”

  He scuffed his booted foot against the wood. “Have you checked your email today?”

  She cocked her head. “No.”

  “Can you do it right now?”

  Unsure of what this was about, she pulled her phone out of her little sequined handbag and opened her email, refreshing the inbox. A second later, her eyebrows shot up as email after email tumbled into her hand. They were all from Jackson. “What’s this?”

  “Every email I ever wrote to you.”

  She scrolled through them, bewildered. “You never wrote to me.”

  “No. I never sent them. I wrote hundreds of responses to you. That’s my entire drafts folder.”

  She sank to the bench and clicked on one at random while her email continued to load. The message wasn’t chatty and long like hers had been, but short and to the point. Like him.

  Kareem is beautiful. I’m glad the birth wasn’t too difficult. Neither of us is religious, but know that I prayed for you and him.

  Another one. I know you say you miss me and want me to come back, but I can’t.

  Another. Please send more pictures of everyone.

  She blinked and raised her head when he came to sit next to her, and she realized she wasn’t sure how much time had passed. “I’m . . . I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure why you’re giving me these now.”

  “I laid a lot on you yesterday.”

  “You did.”

  “The thing with Paul—” He hunched his shoulders. “I don’t want you to feel guilty about it.”

  “I can’t wrap my mind around it. I’m so angry. And I feel . . . betrayed, like I didn’t even know him.”

  Jackson nodded, then reached into his pocket. “Here. Read this.”

  She took the badly creased note, but didn’t open it. “I already did.”

  “Keep it. Read it again. He felt awful. He signed a confession. And he did it because he loved you and Kareem so much he wanted to be the best man he could be for you.”

  She lifted the letter. “You should be angrier than me. You’ve forgiven him?”

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever totally forgive him. But . . . I can’t change what he did. I can have some peace in knowing that he was sorry and he loved me.” His throat worked and his brows knitted together, the visible effort he was making to communicate his thoughts making her sit up straighter. “You asked me when I first got here why I didn’t respond to your emails. I really was scared, terrified you would stop. But I guess, the truth is . . . I was scared of me. I didn’t want to take any action that might reveal something terrible about me. I didn’t want to hate Paul or Mom or, god forbid, Kareem. I didn’t want to be that man. I wanted to be a decent person.”

  “You are a decent person.” One of the most decent men she’d ever known.

  “Everything I am now is because of you. You and Paul and everyone else in this family. I shut myself off for years, but deep down, I didn’t change.” Jackson nodded at the paper. “And I have to believe, that despite one lie, one miscalculation, Paul was always the same decent guy too.”

  She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “That’s a really good rationale.” She looked at Jackson, who was so opposite from his brother, but shared so many of the same values. People. Quality. Fairness.

  Love.

  “I have to go to New York.”

  Her fingers clenched on the paper. “Tonight?”

  “Yes. Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a couple weeks. Lucy will handle the café.”

  She bit her lip. “What about us? What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t want anything from you. My dream is for you to let me love you.” He cocked his head. “And maybe, someday, you can love me back. You don’t have to love me a lot. A little love is enough.”

  “You want a relationship.”

  “I don’t care what you call it. I want to fall asleep with you. I want to have a family. I want to travel with you all over the world and then come back to our home.”

  Her heart somersaulted. “It’s not so easy.”

  “I know. Literally nothing in my adult life has been easy, Sadia. I used to walk away from the hard stuff, but I figured, maybe this one time, I could try fighting for it. And I would fight. But I know it’s a lot to ask, for you to trust me.”

  “It is a lot to ask.” But it was more to ask for her to trust herself.

  He nodded. “Like I said, take your time. I’ll be back.”

  “Will you?”

  “Yes.” He leaned down and pressed a kiss on her forehead, and then he started to walk away. He stopped, and turned, a frown creasing his brow. “Listen, so you know . . . I’ll be back no matter what. Whether you decide to give me a shot, or whether you want to be friends. Whether you hate me and whether you want me to only have a relationship with Kareem.”

  She swallowed. “Okay.”

  He studied her for a long moment, like he was committing her face to memory. And then he walked away.

  Chapter 23

  The crowd would have intimidated Sadia if she wasn’t so focused on her task. She wasn’t accustomed to New York City, and this place was busy even for Midtown. Her resolve had been firm all the way here, though, and she wasn’t about
to let something as silly as masses of people chase her away.

  She nudged her way past the line, into the restaurant. There was no sign or anything outside, but everyone seemed to know something special was in this building. She assumed social media and word of mouth had lured them to this pop-up. Social media, or the delicious scent of the food.

  Food that looked remarkably familiar to Sadia, as she walked past the few tables inside. She spotted mac and cheese. Hot chocolate and cookies and croque monsieurs. Comfort food.

  She took a deep breath and walked up to the counter. The cashier and the customer he was helping shot her annoyed looks. She cleared her throat. “I’d like to see the chef, please.”

  The customer snorted, and the cashier looked amused. “I’m sorry, ma’am. No one sees the chef.”

  Beneath the long sleeves of her coat, her hands curled. “He’ll see me. Can you please tell him Sadia is here?”

  “Sadia?”

  A woman appeared at her side. She was svelte and well dressed, red hair tied neatly in a braid. She was in her midfifties, maybe, and handsome.

  “Yes,” Sadia said. She didn’t recognize the woman, but her eyes were smiling, if worried.

  The woman hesitated, then nodded at the cashier, and took her arm, drawing her away. “My name is Ariel. I’m the manager here. How can I help you?”

  “I know this is a bad time, but it’s very important I see J—the chef.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need him.”

  Ariel studied Sadia for a minute, then relaxed. She tilted her head. “Follow me.”

  She trailed behind Ariel as the woman led her through two doors that had been hastily rigged with locks—these people weren’t kidding about maintaining secrecy over Jackson’s identity.

  A young sous-chef with a heavily stained apron looked up with a frown that turned into astonishment when he caught sight of Sadia, but she didn’t care about him. All her attention was on Jackson, his face damp, hair curling, a fierce frown creasing his brow as he stirred something in a pot.

  Ariel cleared her throat, and he looked up, annoyed impatience in his face.

  But that disappeared the second his eyes rested on her. “Everyone out,” he barked.

  The sous-chef and Ariel scurried out so fast, Sadia felt the air whip around her. She couldn’t pay attention, though, because Jackson was doing something she’d terribly missed.

  Smiling.

  It wasn’t a big smile, but it reached his eyes, turning them a softer shade of brown. “Sadia?” he asked, so tentatively she wondered if he thought she would be frightened away.

  “Hey,” she said, and moved around the counter so they were closer. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

  “No, no. It’s fine.” His hands hovered, as if he wanted to touch her, but then they dropped away. “What brings you here? I told you I would be back.”

  “I believed you.” She glanced around. “This is quite the operation you’ve got here. You should be proud of what you’ve accomplished.”

  He dismissed her praise. “The only reason I’ve been able to accomplish anything was because I had you in my pocket.”

  Oh. “I read your emails.”

  His body tensed. “And?”

  “They weren’t fancy.”

  “I’m not fancy.”

  He definitely wasn’t. “I wish you’d sent them to me.”

  “I didn’t know how—”

  “No, I totally get that.” She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out Paul’s letter. It was crumpled and falling apart, but she didn’t care. It wouldn’t be around for long. “I also reread this. A million times.”

  “Yeah?”

  She contemplated the letter, tracing Paul’s signature through the paper. “I’m still disappointed in him, but you’re right. I loved Paul, and I will always mourn for him, and as angry as I am at him for what he did, he was a great man. He deserves to be mourned.” She took a deep breath. “Kareem can never know.”

  “I agree.”

  She swallowed, then reached over to the stove. She flicked on a burner and stuck the letter into the flame, letting it burn.

  Jackson said nothing, simply waited while she destroyed the letter and tossed its smoldering remains in the sink, letting a steady stream of water put out the fire. She’d throw away the remnants later.

  “I’ll make this quick, because you need to get back to your adoring customers. I’m scared, Jackson. I wasn’t looking for any kind of relationship when you came back into my life. The timing is all wrong.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re the wrong man.”

  He winced. “I know.”

  She pursed her lips. “And I can’t stop needing you.”

  His head jerked up.

  She raked her hand through her hair. “I kept going over everything in my mind. You know I like certainty. What if we couldn’t make it work?”

  “I’d be really upset,” he said frankly. “So would you.”

  She waited, and then she realized that was it. “Uh, that’s not any kind of certainty.”

  “There’s no certainty in the world, Sadia.” His smile was tiny. “I know. I’ve searched everywhere for it. All we can do is care for each other, I think.”

  She ran her hand over the back of her mouth. “I feel like Paul wouldn’t have died if I’d been a better wife.”

  Jackson took two steps toward her. “No—”

  “No, I know. I know that’s silly and irrational, trust me. But that’s the baggage I’m bringing with me to any relationship I have.”

  “My shoulders are strong. I’ll help you carry your baggage.”

  Her breath came out in a shuddery sigh. “My god. I do adore you, Jackson.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. I always have.”

  “That’s . . . good. Great.”

  She swallowed, feeling like she was teetering on the edge of a precipice. “What if you were to come back to Rockville, once this is done? You can stay in the apartment above the garage, and we can, like . . . date?”

  “Date?” He said the word like he’d never heard the concept before.

  “Yeah. We could go to movies and restaurants. Fool around in cars.”

  He frowned. “We already had sex in a car.”

  She exhaled. “I’m saying I want to take things slow, Jackson. But I’m . . . I’m willing to try.” She’d signed up for grief counseling, and she had plans for the café and lessening her work load. It wasn’t the ideal time to start a new relationship. But was there ever a perfect time? All she could do was work on herself while she worked on them.

  She wanted him. She missed him. She loved him.

  If she wasn’t in love with him yet, she would be, very soon.

  He straightened. “Yes. Fine. Slow would work.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. He’d agreed far too easily. “I mean it, Jackson. I need time to come to grips with all of this.”

  “I’ve waited my whole life for you, Sadia. I can wait for however long it takes you.”

  Her eyes widened. “Like, literally?”

  Jackson’s brow furrowed. “What do you—oh!” His alarm was comical. “No, no. Not like that. Uh, though if I’d thought there was a chance in hell of us ever getting together, I might have abstained.”

  Her smile was shaky, but genuine. “If we do this, you have to let me love you a lot. Because that’s what you deserve. All of the love.”

  He pulled her close, tucking her under his chin. “Then I suppose we just have to work on all of that love.”

  Epilogue

  Sadia followed the sound of a child’s chattering down the hallway to the kitchen of the café. They were running a little behind schedule, but that couldn’t be helped. She and Jackson had spent a good chunk of the afternoon checking over the new stove that had been delivered to the café.

  She didn’t care at all about kitchen equipment, but he’d been so excited about the new ap
pliance, his enthusiasm had been infectious. Even Kareem had been psyched, and he really didn’t care about kitchen equipment, either.

  She smiled when she walked in. Over the past six months, she’d been smiling more and more. So had Jackson.

  Kareem was hanging off his uncle like a monkey on his back, his arms linked around the man’s neck, peering over his shoulder with great interest. Her son had had a growth spurt and was too big for her to carry comfortably now, but not too big for his uncle Jackson.

  “Look at that,” Jackson said, as proud as a father showing off his baby. “Do you see how well that egg cooks? Have you ever seen—” He cut himself off as he caught sight of Sadia in the entrance. “Uh, hi.”

  “Please, continue.”

  His cheeks flushed a charming red. “No, it’s fine. Kareem wanted a sunny-side up.”

  “We’re going to dinner,” she reminded them both.

  Both her men looked less than enthused about that, Jackson visibly gritting his teeth and Kareem grimacing. “Mom, I’m gonna be the only kid there. What if they don’t have anything I like?”

  Sadia tugged on her ear. “I’m sure there will be something there for you. But now that Uncle Jackson made you eggs, go on and eat them.”

  Jackson bent his knees and Kareem slid off. Jackson grabbed a plate from above and put the egg and toast on it and handed it to Kareem, who carefully balanced it in his hands and headed to the front to eat. “Make sure you cover your shirt with napkins. I don’t have an extra outfit for you,” she called after him.

  “Okay, Mom.”

  Jackson shrugged. “Sorry. He said he was hungry.”

  “He’s been to a couple of dinners where there were no kids. This is precautionary hunger. But it’s fine. The stove works then?”

  His excitement returned and he tapped the new range. “Perfect.”

  The stove was one of about a million upgrades Jackson had made since he’d bought the place from Sadia a month ago. He’d kept the nostalgic old-fashioned charm everyone adored, but methodically replaced every dated and worn appliance and fixture.

  She walked over and slipped her arm around him. It took him a second longer to release the range to hug her back, but he did it easily. He still wasn’t a hugger, but he’d gotten really good at embracing her and Kareem.