by Dena Blake
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rachel was working with a patient when Chloe entered the physical-therapy room. She should have phoned first, but she hadn’t wanted Rachel to tell Shay she was coming. The visit wasn’t so much to deliver a warning but to notify Rachel that she and Shay were together now, and she’d decided not to hold what Shay couldn’t remember against her. Even though Chloe hadn’t become involved with Erica until after she’d discovered Shay with Lila, she’d come to realize that she hadn’t been entirely innocent.
When Rachel glanced her way, she drew her brows together and held up a finger. Chloe nodded and continued into her office, where she’d waited on occasion during Shay’s therapy sessions before. As soon as she closed the door, her cell phone rang. She took it out of her purse and looked at the screen, intending not to answer if it was Shay. It was the art-supply store. She’d called earlier in the day and asked for pricing on some special-order items.
“Hi, Jan. I wasn’t expecting you to get back to me so soon.”
“I had some free time, so I went ahead and got all the prices you were needing. Do you have a pen and paper handy?”
“Hang on.” Chloe scanned Rachel’s desk and didn’t find any, so she rounded the desk and pulled open the top drawer. She froze and stopped listening, unable to comprehend what was staring back at her from the drawer. It wasn’t unfamiliar. She’d read quite a few of them over the past few months. Even though the woman was still chirping into her ear, Chloe hadn’t understood a word of what she’d said, and the room had become eerily silent. “I’ll have to call you back.” Not waiting for a response, she touched the red button and dropped her phone to the desk. She took the journal from the drawer and sank into the chair as she opened the cover, read the date inside, and thumbed quickly to the page she knew it contained.
The office door flew open and clanged against the doorstop. She looked up, blinked, and refocused on Rachel. “Why do you have this? Where did you get it?” So many questions flew through her mind.
Rachel’s face dropped like she was a fly caught in a spider’s web.
Still not quite understanding how the journal came to be in Rachel’s possession, she tilted her head. “Did Shay give this to you?” The realization hit her. “She knows what happened.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.” Rachel rolled her lips in. “She knows. She read the journal, but she still doesn’t remember it happening.”
She narrowed her eyes as she got up from the chair, then shoved it back into place under the desk. “How long?”
“Honestly. I swear, she doesn’t remember the event at all.” Rachel was pleading with her now.
“How. Long?” She tried to hold an even tone.
“A month, maybe more.” Rachel rounded the desk. “Listen, Chloe. I was with her when she read it. She was absolutely crushed.”
“She was crushed?” Her voice wavered as a tsunami of emotions stirred in the depths of her soul. She sank against the wall. “How the fuck do you think I felt?” When the whole mess had happened, she’d become physically ill. Each time she’d thought of it since had been no different. And now the gut-wrenching feeling hit her all over again. She became dizzy and sucked in a deep breath. She’d thought she was over it, but clearly, she wasn’t. The gashes had just begun to heal, her inner demons had moved on, and all the ugliness had disappeared. Now it had all come crashing back in one single moment. Rachel came closer and reached for her, but she pushed her away.
“Didn’t you think she would be curious? You didn’t want to touch her. It only makes sense that she’d go looking for her life in what she’d written.”
“This is what you wanted all along.”
“Honestly, I would’ve stepped up immediately if you hadn’t stayed.” She shook her head and leaned back against the desk. “But she doesn’t want anyone but you. I would never ruin her happiness.”
She held up the journal. “You just did.” It wasn’t Rachel’s fault, but she didn’t have anyone else to blame but herself right now. That self-destruction would come later.
* * *
By the time Chloe had made it back to her car, she had five missed calls from Shay and more than double the number of texts. The phone calls from Shay had begun within five minutes of her leaving Rachel’s office, and the texts had been commingled between them. It was clear that Rachel was no longer working against her. She glanced at the first few texts, all impassioned apologies along with pleas to talk to her, and then called Jackson.
Chloe hadn’t responded to Shay yet. She couldn’t. Her frame of mind was so unstable at this moment that every bit of anger she’d kept packed away inside was ready to spew out in a horrible backlash. She had too many things to say, to understand, to discover before she could respond. Anything she said right now would mushroom into a huge pile of regret. She needed the voice of reason. She needed Jackson.
When she’d called him, he’d immediately dropped what he was doing and agreed to meet her at her apartment. Now she glanced around the living room as she sat on the couch waiting for him. The furniture they’d left was still there, her paintings were on the wall, same as before, and not one picture of the two of them together was out of place. Shay hadn’t changed a thing since Chloe had moved all her things out. She remembered her earnest pleas before the move, her apologies, her promises to make everything right again. She’d done all that over the past few months after the accident, but under false pretenses.
The knock on the door brought her out of her thoughts. She pushed off the couch, crossed the room, and opened the door.
“What the hell happened?”
Not wanting to go into the whole ordeal on the phone, she’d kept the conversation short. She held up the journal. “I found this in Rachel’s office.”
“Rachel?”
“Shay’s physical therapist. You know, the flirty one?”
“Ooh, that’s not good.”
“I couldn’t care less if she read it, Jackson. She got it from Shay.”
“Oh, no.” The words whooshed out of his mouth in a whisper as what she was saying dawned on him. “She knows what happened.”
The journal’s pages flapped in the air as she tossed it across the room, and it crashed to the floor like a warped Frisbee. “I’m just so mad at myself, Jackson. I did this once before, and now I’m right back where I started.”
“It doesn’t have to have the same resolution, you know.”
“She lied to me. Again.”
“Technically, she didn’t lie. She just didn’t disclose something.” He crossed the room and picked up the journal.
“Something pretty fucking important not to disclose, don’t you think?” She paced the living room. “It’s bookmarked. Go ahead. Read it.” She wanted him to know how it had happened, how she’d found out, how devastated she’d been.
“Hmm.” He turned the page, continued reading. “Looks to me like she regretted what she’d done.”
“That’s the only thing that helped me let it go in the first place.” She swiped a tear from her cheek. Being this weak made her hate herself so much more. “Now she’s lied to me again.”
He read a few more pages and then dropped the journal to the coffee table. “If the situation were reversed, wouldn’t you have lied to get her back?”
“Damn it, Jackson. Stop trying to make this better.” She flopped onto the couch. “I need to be pissed right now.”
“Okay.” He sat next to her. “Everything she did was wrong, from the very beginning. I get that.” He put his hand on her knee and squeezed. “And even after everything that’s happened, you still want her back, don’t you?”
She nodded. She did. She wanted her so much she couldn’t stand herself. “It’s ridiculous, but I do. I just can’t trust her after this.”
“Can’t you?” Jackson tilted his head. “Technically, she didn’t remember. She just found out by reading her journal. Considering her state of mind, I’m sure that was a huge shock to her, probab
ly the reason she’s done everything in her power to make you fall in love with her again.”
“Well, she succeeded.” She raked her teeth across her bottom lip.
“And you were blissfully happy again, weren’t you?”
She closed her eyes and let out a heavy sigh. “I was. Damn it, Jackson. Enough is enough.” She vaulted off the couch and threw up her hands. “How do I forget this?”
“The heart wants what it wants, and there’s no turning back,” he said as he stared up at her. “Why don’t you stay with us for a few days while you sort this out?” He stood up next to her. “We could use some help finishing the nursery. You know how horrible I am at decorating.”
She laughed at the blatant attempt to gain a compliment. Jackson could walk into a room and make it more pleasing in ten minutes by just rearranging the furniture. “I need you to run interference for me, okay?”
“On it.” He took his phone from his pocket and typed in a text to Shay. Chloe is staying with us for a few days.
The reply from Shay came immediately: Understood. Please tell her how sorry I am for everything.
He typed back, Will do.
He showed her the screen before he slid his phone back into his pocket and pulled her into a hug. “Now let’s work on getting you back to that blissfully happy spot you were in yesterday.”
She wasn’t sure if that was even possible, but what Jackson said had made sense. How could she punish Shay for doing something she clearly would’ve done herself?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Shay sat in Rachel’s office while she finished up her last patient for the day. She shouldn’t have left the journal here, but she never thought Chloe would have any reason to be here and discover it.
Rachel came into the office and snapped her out of her thoughts. She reached into the mini-fridge and took out a couple bottles of water, but Shay waved her off, and she put one back before she sat in the chair behind the desk. She took a big gulp of water before she leaned forward on her elbows.
“I really am sorry,” Rachel said. She’d told her how Chloe had found the journal when they’d spoken on the phone earlier. Shay didn’t fault her for that. “She still not responding?”
Shay shook her head. “She told me the product of the equation would never change, and it has.” That was something she and Chloe had always laughed about after they’d gotten together because Shay was so analytical. She had to work out everything logically.
“That’s not her fault.”
“I know whose fault it is, but it doesn’t change the outcome. Maybe I should just give up.”
“Oh my God, Shay. You have so many possibilities not to be alone here—take one.”
“I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to be who I was without her again. I like the person I am now. She’s made these permanent changes in me, and I can’t go back to who I was before—alone and closed off.” She shot up and paced the room. “If I’d known it was going to be our last time together, I would’ve paid more attention. I should’ve paid more attention all along.”
“What is wrong with you? Where’s that determined woman who sat in front of me just a few weeks ago telling me how in love she was with her wife?”
“I don’t know what to do. Everything I ever wanted was right in front of me, and now I might not have it anymore.”
“So, you’re just gonna walk away?” Rachel had a valid question. “I recall you saying that she’s the one who makes your heart feel one hundred times its size. The one who motivates you to be successful. Has that changed?”
Shay broke eye contact and looked out the window. “No. That hasn’t changed. But when is it too much?” She honestly didn’t know what would be best for both of them at this point.
“It’s your choice, but I don’t recommend leaving it like this.” Rachel swiped the bottle of water from the desk and took a sip as she relaxed into her chair. “You’ll always love her, and you’ll be useless to anyone else because of that. I wouldn’t touch you right now, even if you upped your wooing game a thousandfold and threw yourself at me.”
“Jesus, Rach. Don’t hold back on account of my feelings.”
Rachel raised an eyebrow. “I won’t because you’re being stupid. You’re assuming she’s done with you.”
“What should I do?”
“Wait her out. Give her some time and space. Let her make up her mind about what she wants. Then crawl back if you have to.” Rachel stood and took her purse from the drawer. “Now let’s get out of here. We can pick up some dinner and go to my place. There’s another scary-movie marathon on TV tonight.”
Shay had thought she’d lost Chloe a few months ago before the accident happened, and now she was sure she had. She’d wanted so badly to tell Chloe the truth about what she’d read but hadn’t wanted to push her further away. When she’d gotten the second chance, she’d wanted it with all her heart. She’d needed it. She couldn’t ignore a miracle like that. Now it all seemed out of reach again.
It would be difficult to take Rachel’s advice. Shay wasn’t good at waiting. She liked to take action, which wasn’t always the best tactic. But she would wait, let Chloe have the time and space she needed. If they came out of this okay, if she remembered everything that had happened between them, including the bad things, Shay swore she would spend every day making it up to Chloe. If she would let her.
* * *
Shay walked through the door of their beach house and set her keys on the counter. She’d sat with Rachel while she ate but left soon after. Staying at her place would only make the situation worse. She scanned the room, looking at the decorations Chloe had so painstakingly picked out and placed perfectly. Her life was so pathetically bare before Chloe came into it. There had been days when she’d told herself that someone, somewhere was having a worse day than she was—but not today. She felt like she was stuck in a fucking permanent Monday. She lived her perfect life with Chloe at night when she slept, and then she’d wake up to this nightmare of a life without her.
She couldn’t deny that it was all her fault. She’d screwed everything up not once, but twice by not talking to Chloe. She’d been raised in a family good at concealing their true feelings until someone crossed the line. Living in that kind of environment, she’d never known what anyone was thinking or what might set them off. She’d thought she’d finally broken free of that pattern when she’d met Chloe. Apparently not completely.
When Chloe had come into her life she seemed like wildflowers in the field—a little patch of pretty surrounded by weeds. Now she’d mowed them under and didn’t know if they’d ever grow again. Shay went into the bedroom, took out her latest journal, and began to write.
Chloe is a woman with a soul so beautiful anyone would be blessed to capture her. I truly believe I was blessed. The thought that I could be so loved, cherished, desired by her was a miracle. We have a love so strong my body aches when she’s in anguish. How could I be so cruel? I’m crushed at this moment, not knowing what to do, how to fix this amazing phenomenon I have destroyed. Twice.
Chapter Thirty
Chloe had taken all that was remaining of Shay’s journals with her when she’d left the apartment. The stack seemed to be larger than it had been before, but after a couple of days, she finally found the courage to read them. She sat on the couch staring at the neatly stacked pile in front of her on the coffee table. She took the journal from the top, opened it, and read the final entry.
I fucked up in the most colossal way. All my assumptions were wrong about Chloe and Erica. What she has with Erica is innocent, purely business. I was the only one looking for comfort in the wrong place. I have no idea how to fix this, but I have to try again. I have to talk to her one more time, get down on my knees and beg her to forgive me if that’s what she needs. All I can do is hope she will…forgive me.
The words Shay had written hit her square in the chest. Shay knew she’d made a mistake. Now she understood why Shay had shown up at the beach
house the day of the accident. She replayed it all in her head—the apology, the pleas for forgiveness, and the hurt look in her eyes when Erica had entered the room, proving her right, even though she hadn’t been before. She searched the binding for an earlier date and yanked it out of the pile.
The beach house will be such a surprise—my biggest surprise for Chloe yet. It’s going to be a struggle but will be so worth it to see the joy in her eyes. I’ve told myself not to worry, that the extra money will come once I’m in the new job. I pray I get the promotion just in time for closing. I’ll be working a massive number of extra hours, but Chloe will be at the gallery in the evenings anyway and shouldn’t notice. I’m so excited she’ll have the house for summer. She’ll capture the beautiful sunrises and sunsets on canvas in ways I can only imagine, as well as the many nuances in the ocean, the breaking waves, the dolphins, the sea shells. I can’t wait for her to see it. I can’t wait to see her painting them, the way she glows when she’s in that zone of creative bliss. My purest enjoyment in life is pleasing Chloe. I don’t think that will ever change.
The heart drawn at the end of the sentence only made Chloe’s tears fall heavier. That’s when Shay had stopped going out of her comfort zone, stopped doing all the fun stuff Chloe wanted to do, that they used to do. They both had—working the long hours, never checking in. It all made sense now. Shay had thought Chloe had found someone else, and the frequent text messages she’d received from Erica had been just vague enough to fuel her suspicions. What a fucking idiot. A few words would have easily cleared up the whole mess.