Present Day
Jace Bennett
PARTIES WERE ALWAYS a downer.
Birthday parties. Graduation parties. New Year’s Eve celebrations. They all sucked. All they ever did was make me unhappy. And the trend just kept going.
I was sitting on the old couch in Ethan’s basement when he walked in the back door. I’d sent him after Hannah to get Jonah and drive them home.
“She get home okay?” I asked him.
He flopped on the chair beside me. “Yeah, she was pretty upset.”
“She wouldn’t listen to me,” I said.
His sigh was harsh. “Look man, I’m going to give it to you straight.”
I shook my head. “Save the spiel. Your wife already gave it to me. About how Tricia would want me to move on. To have someone in Scarlett’s life who loves her. To love someone else.” I shot my gaze at him. “It doesn’t make my feelings for Hannah any easier, or any more right.”
Ethan was shaking his head now. “No, man, I’m not going to feed you what you already know. I’m going to tell you what I should have told you ten years ago.”
I narrowed my eyes on him. “Come again?”
He stood and pointed his finger at me. “You heard me. I should have told you to grow the fuck up ten years ago, but I didn’t. So now I’m going to tell you to wake the fuck up.”
“Fuck you,” I spit out, and got to my feet.
“No, Jace, fuck you. Fuck you and all the shit you keep bottled inside. Fuck you and your poor Jace routine. Let me tell you something, brother, you aren’t the only one who had a tough childhood.”
“Fuck. You!” I roared again.
He lunged for me and his fist connected with my jaw.
I hit the floor and glared up, stunned. Ethan was standing over me, rubbing his fist. He’d never done anything remotely close to that before. So much for the more lover than fighter he had once been. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Fury blazed in his eyes. “Wake the fuck up, Jace. Either you love her and you tell her so, or you’re just using her. If that is the case then you have to let her go.”
It wasn’t like I was going to go after him and hit him back, but fuck, I was thinking about it. I also knew I’d crush him and then feel like shit.
He took a cautious step back as if he knew what I was thinking. “Is that what you’re doing, Jace? What you’ve always done with her? Are you using her?”
Crawling backward on my elbows to keep from pounding him, I found the couch and hoisted myself onto it. “I love her,” I shouted.
The fighter was rubbing his fist with his other palm. “Then why haven’t you told her that?”
Falling back on the cushion, I rubbed my jaw. “I don’t know.”
With a glare that looked almost lethal, he started toward me. “You don’t know, or you don’t want to admit why?”
Feeling so tired of fighting it, I found it a welcome relief to put all my shit out there. “Because I loved Hannah before and I love her after. Fuck, I don’t think I ever stopped loving her. And what does that say about Tricia?”
Flopping onto the couch beside me, he looked over at me. “First, man, I have to admit that I should have walked away.”
I gave him a curious look.
“In college. I knew you and Hannah were in love and that I was just in the way. I wanted to back down, but I was waiting for you to stand up and realize she was what you wanted. What you needed. Shit, I couldn’t have been any more direct, leaving you two alone together so much.”
“You did that on purpose?”
He just shook his head. “Yeah, I did. In fact, I was going to talk to you about it, but then your grandmother showed up, and everything went to hell.”
That he had right. “It sure did.”
“You should have fought harder to for her back then, Jace. Don’t make that same mistake again. And man, I have to tell you, you’re wrong about your feelings.”
Still reeling from his admission, I gave him another curious look. “In what way?”
“You might not want to hear this, but you’re a man with a big heart.”
I rolled my eyes. “Are you even being serious right now?”
“Shit, Jace, loving Hannah doesn’t have to mean you loved your wife any less. You know you loved her. She knows you did. We all know you did. But, she’s gone, and by some miracle the girl you let get away wants you back. I don’t know, but I think that’s fate.”
I eyed him. “Who the hell are you?”
He shrugged. “Hey, I’ve grown up a lot, too.”
Was it any wonder he wasn’t that far off the mark. “So what do I do about Hannah? She says she doesn’t trust me with my own feelings and she sure as shit can’t trust me with hers.”
“Whoa, she said that?”
I nodded. “Not the shit part, but the rest.”
“Figured that,” he grinned. “I’ll tell you what I’d do.”
Here it comes. “What is that?”
“I’d put on your big boy pants and prove her wrong. Prove. Her. Wrong.”
I wanted to shake my head at him, but he had a point. “How the fuck am I going to do that?”
His grin grew wider. “Grand gestures, man, they work every time.”
He was an idiot.
Grand gestures, I thought.
Maybe he wasn’t an idiot.
Grand gestures.
Hmmm . . .
A grand gesture.
Just one.
And I knew just the thing. But right now I had a score to settle. I reached my hand out. “Thanks, man.”
Ethan took it. “Anytime, you know I think of you like a brother.”
That’s when I twisted his arm and wrestled him to the floor. He fought as best he could. Rolling and kicking, but in the end he never was a fighter. I pinned him.
“You’re a mother fucker,” he said with a grin.
Yeah, that seemed to be the general consensus lately . . . but there was only one person I really cared about turning that opinion around.
And she was the very first girl I ever loved.
Too bad I’d never told her.
It might have made wooing her back a little less impossible.