CHAPTER TWELVE
HAYLEY WAS SHAKING. She had been shaking from the moment she had walked into The Grind and seen Jonathan there, with her father in the background.
Somehow, she had known—just known—that everyone in the room was putting two and two together and coming up with sex.
And she also knew she had definitely made it worse by running away. If she had sauntered in and acted surprised to see Jonathan there, she might have made people think it really was coincidental that the two of them were both in the coffeehouse early in the morning, coming through the same private door. For reasons that had nothing to do with him spending the night upstairs with her.
But she had spent the past five minutes pacing around upstairs, waiting for her breath to normalize, waiting for her heart to stop beating so hard. Neither thing had happened.
Then she had cautiously crept back downstairs and come in to see her father sitting at the table with Jonathan. Fortunately, Jonathan hadn’t looked like he’d been punched in the face. But the conversation had definitely seemed tense.
And standing there, looking at what had been her worst nightmare not so long ago, she realized that it just...wasn’t. She’d never been ashamed of Jonathan. He was...the most determined, hardworking, wonderful man she had ever known. He had spent his life raising his sister. He had experienced a childhood where he had known nothing but abandonment and abuse, and he had turned around and given love to his sister, unconditionally and tirelessly.
And, yeah, maybe it wasn’t ideal to announce her physical affair with him at the coffee shop, all things considered, but...whatever she had expected to feel... She didn’t.
So, it had been the easiest thing in the world to walk over to their table and say that she really didn’t need to keep their relationship a secret. Of course, now both Jonathan and her father were looking at her like she had grown a second head.
When she didn’t get a response from either of them, she repeated, “That’s not what I want.”
“Hayley,” Jonathan said, his tone firm. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Oh, please,” she returned. “Jonathan, that tone wouldn’t work on me in private, and it’s not going to work on me here, either.”
She took a deep breath, shifting her weight from foot to foot, gazing at her father, waiting for him to say something. He looked... Well, it was very difficult to say if John Thompson could ever really be surprised. In his line of work, he had seen it all, heard it all. While Protestants weren’t much for confession, people often used him as a confessional, she knew.
Still, he looked a little surprised to be in this situation.
She searched his face for signs of disappointment. That was her deepest fear. That he would be disappointed in her. Because she had tried, she really had, to be the child Ace wasn’t.
Except, as she stood there, she realized that was a steaming pile of bull-pucky. Her behavior wasn’t about being what Ace hadn’t been. It was all about desperately wanting to please people while at the same time wishing there was a way to please herself. And the fact of the matter was, she couldn’t have both those things. Not always.
That contradiction was why she had been hell-bent on running away, less because she wanted to experience the wonders of the world and more because she wanted to go off and do what she wanted without disappointing anyone.
“Jonathan isn’t just my boss,” she said to her dad. “He’s my... Well, I don’t really know. But...you know.” Her throat tightened, tears burning behind her eyes.
Yes, she wanted to admit to the relationship, and she wanted to live out in the open, but that didn’t make the transition from good girl to her own woman any easier.
She wanted to beg her dad for his approval. He wasn’t a judgmental man, her father, but he had certainly raised her in a specific fashion, and this was not it. So while he might not condemn her, she knew she wasn’t going to get his wholesale approval.
And she would have to live with that.
Living without his approval was hard. Much harder than she had thought it might be. Especially given the fact that she thought she’d accepted it just a few moments ago. But being willing to experience disapproval and truly accepting it were apparently two different things.
“Why don’t you have a seat, Hayley,” her father said slowly.
“No, thank you,” she replied. “I’m going to stand, because if I sit down... Well, I don’t know. I have too much energy to sit down. But I—I care about him.” She turned to Jonathan. “I care about you. I really do. I’m so sorry I made you feel like you were a dirty secret. Like I was ashamed of you. Because any woman would be proud to be involved with you.” She took a deep breath and looked around the coffee shop. “I’m dating him,” she said, pointing at Jonathan. “Just so you all know.”
“Hayley,” her father said, standing up, “come to dinner this week.”
“With him?”
“If you want to. But please know that we want to know about your life. Even if it isn’t what we would choose for you, we want to know.” He didn’t mean Jonathan specifically. He meant being in a physical relationship without the benefit of any kind of commitment, much less marriage.
But the way he looked at her, with nothing but love, made her ache all over. Made her throat feel so tight she could scarcely breathe.
She felt miserable. And she felt strong. She wasn’t sure which emotion was more prominent. She had seen her father look at Ace like this countless times, had seen him talk about her brother with a similar expression on his face. Her father was loving, and he was as supportive as he could be, but he also had hard lines.
“I guess we’ll see,” she said.
“I suppose. I also imagine you need to have a talk with him,” he said, tilting his head toward Jonathan, who was looking uncertain. She’d never seen Jonathan look uncertain before.
“Oh,” she said, “I imagine I do.”
“Come home if you need anything.”
For some reason, she suddenly became aware of the tension in her father’s expression. He was the pastor of Copper Ridge. And the entire town was watching him. So whether he wanted to or not, he couldn’t haul off and punch Jonathan. He couldn’t yell at her—though he never had yelled in all her life. And he was leaving her to sort out her own circumstances, when she could feel that he very much wanted to stay and sort them out for her.
Maybe Jonathan was right. Maybe she had never put a foot out of line because the rules were easier. There were no rules to what she was doing now, and no one was going to step in and tell her what to do. No one was going to pull her back if she went too far. Not even her father. Maybe that had been her real issue with taking this relationship public. Not so much the disappointment as the loss of a safety net.
Right now, Hayley felt like she was standing on the edge of an abyss. She had no idea how far she might fall, how bad it might hurt when she landed. If she would even survive it.
She was out here, living her potential mistakes, standing on the edge of a lot of potential pain.
Because with the barrier of following the rules removed, with no need to leave to experience things... Well, it was just her. Her heart and what she felt for Jonathan.
There was nothing in the way. No excuses. No false idea that this could never be anything, because she was leaving in the end.
As her father walked out of the coffeehouse, taking with him an entire truckload of her excuses, she realized exactly what she had been protecting herself from.
Falling in love. With Jonathan. With a man who might never love her back. Wanting more, wanting everything, with the man least likely to give it to her.
She had been hiding behind the secretary desk at the church, listening to everybody else’s problems, without ever incurring any of her own. She had witnessed a whole lot of heartbreak, a whole lot of struggle, but she had always been removed from it.
She didn’t want to protect herself from this. She didn’t want to hide.
“Why did you do that?” Jonathan asked.
“Because you were mad at me yesterday. I hurt your feelings.”
He laughed, a dark, humorless sound. “Hayley,” he said, “I don’t exactly have feelings to hurt.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “I know you do.”
“Honey, that stuff was beaten out of me by my father before I was five years old. And whatever was left... It pretty much dissolved when my mother walked away and left me with a wounded sister to care for. That stuff just kind of leaves you numb. All you can do is survive. Work on through life as hard as you can, worry about putting food on the table. Worry about trying to do right by a kid who’s had every unfair thing come down on her. You think you being embarrassed to hold my hand in public is going to hurt my feelings after that?”
She hated when he did this. When he drew lines between their levels of experience and made her feel silly.
She closed the distance between them and put her fingertips on his shoulder. Then she leaned in and kissed him, in full view of everybody in the coffeehouse. He put his hand on her hip, and even though he didn’t enthusiastically kiss her back, he made no move to end it, either.
“Why do I get the feeling you are a little embarrassed to be with me?” she asked, when she pulled away from him.
He arched his brow. “I’m not embarrassed to be with you.”
Maybe he wasn’t. But there was something bothering him. “You’re upset because everyone knows. And now there will be consequences if you do something to hurt me.”
“When,” he said, his tone uncompromising. “When I do something. That’s what everyone is thinking. Trust me, Hayley, they don’t think for one second that this might end in some fairy-tale wedding bullshit.”
Hayley jerked back, trying to fight the feeling that she had just been slapped in the face. For whatever reason, he was trying to elicit exactly that response, and she really didn’t want to give it to him. “Fine. Maybe that is what they think. But why does it matter? That’s the question, isn’t it? Why does what other people think matter more than what you or I might want?
“You were right about me. My choices were less about what other people might think, and more about what might happen to me if I found out I had never actually been reined in.” She shook her head. “If I discovered that all along I could have done exactly what I wanted to, with no limit on it. Before now, I never took the chance to find out who I was. I was happy to be told. And I think I’ve been a little afraid of who I might be beneath all of these expectations.”
“Why? Because you might harbor secret fantasies of shoplifting doilies out of the Trading Post?”
“No,” Hayley said, “because I might go and get myself hurt. If I had continued working at the church, if I’d kept on gazing at the kind of men I met there from across the room, never making a move because waiting for them to do it was right, pushing down all of my desires because it was lust I shouldn’t feel... I would have been safe. I wouldn’t be sitting here in this coffee shop with you, shaking because I’m scared, because I’m a little bit turned on thinking about what we did last night.”
“I understand the turned on part,” he said, his voice rough like gravel. He lifted his hand, dragging his thumb over her lower lip. “Why are you afraid?”
“I’m afraid because just like you said... There’s a very low chance of this ending in some fairy-tale wedding...nonsense. And I want all of that.” Her chest seized tight, her throat closing up to a painful degree. “With you. If you were wondering. And that is... That’s so scary. Because I knew you would look at me like that if I told you.”
His face was flat, his dark eyes blazing. He was...well, he was angry, rather than indifferent. Somehow, she had known he would be.
“You shouldn’t be afraid of not getting your fairy tale with me. If anything, you should be relieved. Nobody wants to stay with me for the rest of their life, Hayley, trust me. You’re supposed to go to Paris. And you’re going to Paris.”
“I don’t want to go,” she said, because she wanted to stay here, with him. Or take him with her. But she didn’t want to be without him.
“Dammit,” he said, his voice like ground-up glass. “Hayley, you’re not going to change your plans because of me. That would last how long? Maybe a year? Maybe two if you’re really dedicated. But I know exactly how that ends—with you deciding you would rather be anywhere but stuck in my house, stuck in this town.”
“But I don’t feel stuck. I never did. It was all...me being afraid. But the thing is, Jonathan, I never wanted anything more than I wanted my safety. Thinking I needed to escape was just a response to this missing piece inside of me that I couldn’t put a name to. But I know what it is now.”
“Don’t,” he bit out.
“It was you,” she said. “All of this time it was you. Don’t you see? I never wanted anyone or anything badly enough to take the chance. To take the risk. To expose myself, to step out of line. But you... I do want you that badly.”
“Because you were forced to take the risk. You had to own it. Yesterday, you didn’t have to, and so you didn’t. You pulled away from me when we walked down the street, didn’t want anyone to see.”
“That wasn’t about you. It was about me. It was about the fact that...basically, everybody in town knows I’ve never dated anybody. So in my case it’s a little bit like announcing that I lost my virginity, and it’s embarrassing.”
Except now she was having this conversation with him in a coffeehouse, where people she knew were sitting only a few feet away, undoubtedly straining to hear her over the sound of the espresso machine. But whatever. She didn’t care. For the first time in her life, she really, really didn’t care. She cared about him. She cared about this relationship. About doing whatever she needed to do to make him see that everything she was saying was true.
“I’m over it,” she added. “I just had to decide that I was. Well, now I have. Because it doesn’t get any more horrifying than having to admit that you were having your first affair to your father.”
“You see,” he said. “I wouldn’t know. Nobody was all that invested in me when I lost my virginity, or why. I was fifteen, if you were curious. So forgive me if your concerns seem foreign to me. It’s just that I know how this all plays out. People say they love you, then they punch you in the face. You take care of somebody all of their damn life, and then they take off with the one person you spent all that time protecting them from. Yeah, they say they love you, and then they leave. That’s life.”
Hayley’s chest tightened, her heart squeezing painfully. “I didn’t say I loved you.”
He looked stricken by that. “Well, good. At least you didn’t lie to me.”
She did love him, though. But he had introduced the word. Love and its effects were clearly the things that scared him most about what was happening between them.
Love loomed large between them. Love was clearly on the table here. Even if he didn’t want it to be, there it was. Even if he was going to deny it, there it was.
Already in his mind, in his heart, whether she said it or not.
She opened her mouth to say it, but it stuck in her throat.
Because he had already decided it would be a lie if she spoke the words. He was so dedicated to that idea. To his story about who Jonathan Bear was, and who he had to be, and how people treated him. His behavior was so very close to what she had been doing for so long.
“Jonathan—”
He cut her off. “I don’t love people,” he said. “You know what I love? I love things. I love my house. I love my money. I love that company that I’ve spent so many hours investing in. I love the fact that I own a mountain, and can ride a horse from one end of my land to the other, and get a sense of everything that can never be taken from me. But I’ll never love another person, not again.” He stood up, gripping her chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Not even you. Because I will never love anything I can’t buy right back, do you understand?”
She nodded, swallowing hard. “Yes,” she said.
His pain was hemorrhaging from him, bleeding out of every pore, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. He was made of fury, of rage, and he was made of hurt, whether he would admit it or not.
“I think we’re done then, Hayley.”
He moved away from her, crossing the coffeehouse and walking out the door. Every eye in the room was on her, everybody watching to see what she would do next. So she did the only thing she could.
She stood up and she ran after Jonathan Bear for the entire town to see.
* * *
JONATHAN STRODE DOWN the street. The heavy gray sky was starting to crack, raindrops falling onto his head. His shoulders. Good. That was just about perfect.
It took him a few more strides to realize he was headed away from his car, but he couldn’t think clearly enough to really grasp where he was going. His head was pounding like horse hooves over the grass, and he couldn’t grab hold of a thought to save his life.
“Jonathan!”
He turned, looking down the mostly empty street, to see Hayley running after him, her dark hair flying behind her, rain flying into her face. She was making a spectacle of herself, right here on Main, and she didn’t seem to care at all. Something about that made him feel like he’d been turned to stone, rooted to the spot, his heart thundering heavily in his chest.
“Don’t run from me,” she said, coming to a stop in front of him, breathing hard. “Don’t run from us.”
“You’re the one who’s running, honey,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately flat.
“We’re not done,” she said. “We’re not going to be done just because you say so. You might be the boss at your house, but you’re not the boss here.” Her words were jumbled up, fierce and ferocious. “What about what I want?”
He gritted his teeth. “Well, the problem is you made the mistake of assuming I might care what you want.”
She sprang forward, pounding a closed fist on his shoulder. The gesture was so aggressive, so very unlike Hayley that it immobilized him. “You do care. You’re not a mountain, you’re just a man, and you do care. But you’re awfully desperate to prove that you don’t. You’re awfully desperate to prove you have no worth. And I have to wonder why that is.”
“I don’t have to prove it. Everyone who’s ever wandered through my life has proved it, Hayley. You’re a little bit late to this party. You’re hardly going to take thirty-five years of neglect and make me feel differently about it. Make me come to different conclusions than I’ve spent the past three decades drawing.”
“Why not?” she asked. “That’s kind of the point of knowing someone. Of being with them. They change you. You’ve certainly changed me. You made me...well, more me than I’ve ever been.”
“I never said I needed to change.”
“That’s ridiculous. Of course you need to change. You live in that big house all by yourself, you’re angry at your sister because she figured out how to let something go when you can’t. And you’re about ready to blow this up—to blow us up—to keep yourself safe.” She shivered, the rain making dark spots on her top, drops rolling down her face.
“There’s no reason any of this has to end, Hayley.” He gritted his teeth, fighting against the slow, expanding feeling growing in his chest, fighting against the pain starting to push against the back of his eyes. “But you have to accept what I’m willing to give. And it may not be what you want, what you’re looking for. If it’s not, if that makes you leave, then you’re no different from anyone else who’s ever come through my life, and you won’t be any surprise to me.”
Hayley looked stricken by that, pale. And he could see her carefully considering her words. “Wow. That’s a very smart way to build yourself an impenetrable fort there, Jonathan. How can anyone demand something of you, if you’re determined to equate high expectations with the people who abandoned you? If you’re determined to believe that someone asking anything of you is the same as not loving you at all?”
“You haven’t said you loved me.” His voice was deliberately hard. He didn’t know why he was bringing that up again. Didn’t know why he was suspended between the desire for her to tell him she didn’t, and the need—the intense, soul-shattering need—to hear her say it, even if he could never accept it. Even if he could never return it.
“My mistake,” she said, her voice thin. “What will you do if I tell you, Jonathan? Will you say it doesn’t matter, that it isn’t real? Because you know everything, don’t you? Even my heart.”
“I know more about the world than you do, little girl,” he said, his throat feeling tight for some reason. “Whatever your intentions, I have a better idea of what the actual outcome might be.”
She shocked him by taking two steps forward, eliminating the air between them, pressing her hand against his chest. His heart raged beneath her touch, and he had a feeling she could tell.
“I love you.” She stared at him for a moment, then she stretched up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips. Her lips were slick and cold from the rain, and he wanted to consume her. Wanted to pretend that words didn’t matter. That there was nothing but this kiss.
For a moment, a heartbeat, he pretended that was true.
“I love you,” she said again, when they parted. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t expect something from you. In fact, that would be pretty sorry love if I expected to come into your life and change nothing, mean nothing. I want you to love me back, Jonathan. I want you to open yourself up. I want you to let me in. I want you to be brave.”
He grabbed hold of her arms, held her against his chest. He didn’t give a damn who might see them. “You’re telling me to be brave? What have you ever faced down that scared you? Tell me, Hayley.”
“You,” she said breathlessly.
He released his hold on her and took a step back, swearing violently. “All the more reason you should walk away, I expect.”
“Do you know why you scare me, Jonathan? You make me want something I can’t control. You make me want something I can’t predict. There are no rules for this. There is no safety. Loving you... I have no guarantees. There is no neat map for how this might work out. It’s not a math equation, where I can add doing the right things with saying the right things and make you change. You have to decide. You have to choose this. You have to choose us. The rewards for being afraid, or being good, aren’t worth as much as the reward for being brave. So I’m going to be brave.
“I love you. And I want you to love me back. I want you to take a chance—on me.”
She was gazing at him, her eyes blazing with light and intensity. How long would it take for that light to dim? How long would it take for him to kill it? How long would it take for her to decide—like everyone else in his life—that he wasn’t worth the effort?
It was inevitable. That was how it always ended.
“No,” he said, the word scraping his throat raw as it escaped.
“No?” The devastation in her voice cut him like a knife.
“No. But hey, one more for your list,” he said, hating himself with every syllable.
“What?”
“You got your kiss in the rain. I did a lot for you, checked off a lot of your boxes. Go find some other man to fill in the rest.”
Then he turned and left her standing in the street.
And in front of God and everybody, Jonathan Bear walked away from Hayley Thompson, and left whatever remained of his heart behind with her.