CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jasmeen
Looking at Gavin hurt.
So much more today than it had over the years. But mostly because looking at his pain somehow made my own seem obsolete. To think of the wall I put around me, and the way he’d tried to climb it the year after our divorce, and I wouldn’t let him, was hard to accept.
So much wrong and not an ounce of solution. I could hardly form a word, a thought, that didn’t leave me shattered. Shattered by my own hammer.
He wanted to be my husband again? My heart stirred for the first time in four years. It ached acutely, so abruptly, it left me off-balance. But that wasn’t possible. Was no longer an option. He was hurting, his entire world was falling apart—I probably looked like a safe place. I couldn’t let Gavin in again. If he ever left again, there would be no getting up.
I was there to help him. And maybe be his friend again. Not fall back in love. If I had ever stopped.
“Gavin,” I exhaled, sinking down in my chair. I grabbed for my wine and drank it down to the bottom.
“How many men?” he repeated.
I hadn’t wanted to answer him initially because it wasn’t any of his business. Now, I didn’t want to because I felt guilty. It stunned me how quickly blame could turn inward. How hard it was to point the finger at myself. “Three.”
“You’ve dated three men, or hooked up with three men?”
“Hooked up. Why does it matter so much?” My eyes burned.
“It matters to me. Three, huh?” He looked sick. His mouth opened, and his eyes fluttered a little, like he did before he got green. “Did you have feelings for any of them?”
Why did that matter so much to him? He couldn’t count the number of women he’d been with. “Tell me why that matters.”
“Because you’re mine,” he said simply. “They probably didn’t even know what they had.”
I wasn’t sure what they had either. I hugged myself. Now I knew what he’d apologized for. I wanted to apologize too. To bare my soul and rewind time. But time didn’t work that way. Mistakes didn’t magically disappear because you regretted your choices.
“I can’t even look at you.” I put my face in my hand.
“Give it up, Jas. Give up the wrong, give up the doubt, give it all up and let’s start over. See where this goes. If it ends in friendship, fine. You were my best friend, too, and I could use one. If it ends in us dating, I’ll take it. You were an incredible girlfriend. If it ends in us getting remarried, I’ll get on my hands and knees and thank God. I think we owe it to ourselves to start over.”
I peeked to find him so open, so laid out in front of me. He hid nothing. He wanted to try, and maybe focusing on me would take away some of the hopelessness bringing him down. And I wanted to try. I wanted to go back to a time when he was my whole world.
“Okay,” I heard myself saying, and my soul shook the slumber from its heart.
“Yeah?” He gave me a small, leery smile. “No more walls, no more blame? We’re going to see where we go?”
I felt my head nod before my brain could take over. I fought my lips, but in the end, they returned his small smile. “Yes.”
“Close your eyes. Count to five. When we open them, we’ll have a blank slate. Do it,” he urged quietly.
I closed my eyes.
“One,” he counted. “We’ll take it slow. Get to know each other as adults.”
“Two,” I counted. “My mom said I was addicted to you. I think she’s right.”
“Three,” he counted. “It’s not like we can have sex anyway, so we’ll put that on the back burner. Sex with you isn’t fair. Every woman I ever slept with, I pretended was you.”
I frowned. “Gavin, that’s not really romantic.”
“Four,” he warned, tone stern.
“Four,” I conceded. “I did that too,” I breathed, heat breaking across my mortified heart.
“You pretended the three pathetic lays you’ve had since me were me?”
“Yes,” I whispered miserably.
“You’ll have the real thing again. Five.”
We both opened our eyes at the same time, and every fear and hurt I had seemed to fade to background music.
He held out his hand. “I missed you.”
I took his hand, letting his fingers envelop mine. “I missed you too.”
The connection I fought so hard to kill came back with a vengeance. It burned, hot as fire and sweet as forever, in my chest.
“Thank you.” I held his gaze, letting him know how thankful I was. I wouldn’t have done this if it were the other way around.
“No. Thank you.” He nodded at what was left of our food, and I sat back down at the table to join him.
There was so much possibility between us, it spun in my head. I tried not to put pressure on myself. Either we worked, or we didn’t. But inside, the idea of not working out again hurt profusely. The same way it had all those years ago.