CHAPTER EIGHT
Skye
Present Day…
“What are you thinking about?”
Jake blinked and turned his eyes back to me. “Hm?”
“You just had this really faraway look in your eyes, like you were somewhere else.”
He licked his bottom lip and my insides did a funny little dance. “I was thinking about the time you jumped into the quarry.”
My heart twisted. “Oh.”
“You remember that?”
The dare. The leap. The fall that seemed like minutes into the darkness. The icy water closing over my head, stealing my breath. “Yeah, of course.”
Jake gulped. “I dared you to do it, but I didn’t think you actually would.”
“I was a dumbass.”
“Hey, that’s supposed to be my job.”
I laughed, but the sound was brittle. “Sorry. There was an opening.”
Jake folded his arms and frowned. He was gone again, lost to another time.
“What now?”
“That was the first night that I… never mind.”
He scooted forward in his seat, like he was about to stand up and go. I scooted closer and touched his shoulder, stopping him. “Wait. Tell me… please.”
Jake let out a painful sigh, making it sound like the slightest exhale hurt him. “It was the night I knew I had to have you.”
It should have been a romantic thing to hear, but Jake delivered it in grim tones. I leaned back in my seat and absorbed his news. “Ah. Okay.”
Our eyes caught again, two lost searchlights always looking for each other. It should have been easier. We shared the same pain, carried the same burdens. But Jake assumed so much more responsibility and took on so much more weight than I did. It just wasn’t fair.
“Jake,” I whispered, reaching over and lightly cupping his jaw. His face automatically turned into the palm of my hand. I wanted to comfort him, to tell him everything was all right, but I’d done that many times before. It never worked. Not with this guy.
Jake’s warm breath washed across my hand and pulled me under. I closed my eyes and released myself to the moment. It was all I had of him — all I could allow myself to have.
As I felt him shift closer to me, I went at him. Our lips crashed together just as my head screamed, No!
Somehow, I got ahold of myself and pulled away. Jake popped up to standing. “Jesus, Skye. I’m sorry.”
I pressed my fingers against my lips. They burned hot, their temperature a sign of their guilt. “I am too. We just said we weren’t going to do this.”
“Yeah, I know.” He began to pace back and forth. “Is this about Brad?”
“What? No.”
He frantically shook his head. “That was stupid. I shouldn’t have said that.”
How many times did I need to say it? “Brad and I aren’t together. We’ve gone out, but we’re not… he’s not my boyfriend.”
Jake briefly glanced my way but didn’t stop pacing. I thought I could see a flash of pleasure on his face at my news, but maybe I imagined it.
We haven’t even slept together. I bit back the confession. My relationship with Brad was none of Jake’s business. Though Brad was a very nice man, I wasn’t sure if things would progress between us. There was a laundry list of reasons.
After getting pregnant so young, I’d been forced to grow up very quickly. I’d been forced to make better choices. To be an adult. To put Jagger’s needs in front of my own.
And I had, until last night.
After getting a taste of Jake, I knew it would be a long time before I could even think of being intimate with another man. The way Jake touched me, took care of me… he did something to me that no one else could. It had always been that way.
I could have told him as much, but anything I said seemed to only make things worse.
“It’s me,” I confessed, standing on shaking legs. “I shouldn’t have touched you.”
Jake abruptly stopped walking and spun on his heel. “We just have to be more careful. Maybe we shouldn’t be together unless Jagger is around.”
Jagger. I jumped at the change of subject.
“We need to talk about him. There’s a lot that you need to know.”
“Shit. That’s right.” Jake tugged at the roots of his hair. “I shouldn’t have mentioned that night.”
“Why did you?”
“Because I was looking at you, and...” He lifted his hands up in surrender and then dropped them at his side. “And all I could think was that you should have been mine.”
My throat tightened. “Jake.”
“It’s a bad thought, I know it. I don’t have a right to you. I never did. Trey and I, we said that neither one of us was going to go after you. It was a pact we made.”
I stared at him. “Really? You made a promise to each other?”
Jake gazed back, the muscle in his jaw ticking. “We knew that what the three of us had going was more important than anything else.”
“Wow,” I breathed. “I didn’t realize you guys talked about me. I mean, I knew that Trey had a crush on me…” I didn’t say what was in my mind…and you screwed every girl who looked your way.
Jake shrugged, but the nonchalant gesture was a facade. I could see the same pain he always hid resting behind his eyes. Most of it wasn’t his fault, but part of it was. Experiences had hurt him, but his own guilt had kept him in a deep well of suffering.
“You could have had me, Jake. All you had to do was say the right words.”
Jake bit down on his lower lip and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
I took a step closer to him. “Yes, I do. You could have had me, but you left. You told me to forget you ever existed.”
He looked down at me. “I know.”
“You broke my heart.” As I said the words, the flood gates opened. I was eighteen again, bleeding from the biggest loss I’d ever experienced. I’d worked hard to heal that pain, but it would never fully disappear. For the rest of my life, it would exist as a part of me. I would take it to my very grave.
Jake’s eyes turned bloodshot. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. He just stared back at me, like I was a ghost and he couldn’t believe I was really there in front of him.
Tears fell from my eyes and slid down my cheeks. I made no attempt to wipe them away. I wasn’t ashamed of my pain. It was a testament to who I loved and what I’d suffered through. “You could have fixed it. You could have healed me. You could have healed us both, but instead, you just walked away.”
Jake’s shoulders sagged. “If I could fix your heart today, I would. If I really thought I was capable of that, I’d do whatever it took.”
I couldn’t say much to that. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was being dumb. Jake was damaged, even more now than six years ago. If he couldn’t help himself, he didn’t have much of a chance at helping anyone else.
“I should go before Jagger comes back,” Jake whispered. “He’ll be able to tell something is up between the two of us.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, still sniffling. “He will.”
“When can I see him again?”
Despite the strife the two of us were going through, hearing that Jake was so eager to see Jagger made me smile. “How about tomorrow? We could take him to the playground after preschool. I’ll pick him up after work at four.”
“That sounds great.” Jake glanced at me and then quickly looked away. With his head hung low, he turned and went to the door.
“I’ll see you then,” I quietly said. I was trying to sound chipper, but the words came out monotonous and flat.
One curt nod, and he was gone. The second the door closed, my knees buckled. I collapsed against the wall and slid down to the floor. My insides were writhing in pain, but at least the tears had dried. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. It did no good, so I took another. Then another. For a long, long time, I just sat there, waiting for the pain to pass.
In a way, it never did.