Chapter Twenty-Five
I didn’t fall immediately to sleep, and I couldn’t blame it on the sunlight filtering through my curtains. It was hard to sleep when your soul was being torn in half. The bitter part of me said I needed to walk away. He’d hurt me, he would hurt me again. It was spite and it made me feel small and petty.
That part of me wanted to hurt him, just as he’d hurt me. It was the same part of me that had pitted him against Aiden that morning at the shop. I loathed the vengeful part of myself more than any other.
The softer side of me loved him and wanted nothing more than to run into his arms, hold him and never let him go. Jordan was the only man I’d ever truly wanted, the only man I could imagine spending my entire life with. But, he’d hurt me badly. Could I manage to forgive him, well and truly?
When the front door closed almost too quietly, I sat up from bed and poked my head out of my bedroom door.
“Hey,” I called quietly to Breanna as she tiptoed down the other end of the hall.
She spun on her heels and whispered conspiratorially, her eyes more than a little wild. “When did you get home?”
“Earlier than you.” I didn’t bother whispering. “Where’d you go?”
“Ssh.” She tiptoed into my room and shut the door behind her. “Don’t wake Mom and Dad. Mom always asks a lot of questions when I stay out all night.”
“She never asks me questions.” I crawled back onto my bed.
“Yeah, but you’ve only done it a few times.” She tossed herself onto her back beside me. “And when you do, you’re always with Jordan.”
“True.” I picked at the comforter, but curiosity got the best of me, and I used Breanna’s life as a distraction from my own. “Where’d you go when I left?”
“Out,” was her noncommittal response. She wasn’t wearing the jeans and tee she’d been wearing when I left her at the race spot.
“Out where?” I tugged at the hem of her short black skirt.
“Out with friends, stop asking questions.” She rolled her eyes. When I gave her a pointed stare, she sighed. “I’m not like you and Aiden. I can’t sit around and do the same old things all the time. It gets boring. So, I go out. New people, different scene, different things. If I didn’t I’d probably suffocate or shrivel up like an old prune.” She was silent for so long after that I figured she was asleep. Until she spoke again. “Devin used to go with me sometimes.”
I wasn’t, Mom. I wasn’t going to push. It wasn’t my place to do so. We were different people, grieving in our own way. While Breanna was barely out of high school, she was as much an adult as I was. I reached out and squeezed her hand.
“Now, back to more important things.” Breanna yawned. “What happened with Jordan? We all sort of tripped out when y’all left like that. If it had been anyone else, I think Aiden might have driven all over the county to find you.”
“I don’t even think we were in the county for long.”
“Really?” Her interest piqued now, Breanna rolled to her side and propped up on her elbow.
It was my turn to fling myself back, I landed on my pillows with a poof. “We drove, for a long time. He let me make a quasi-pass in the truck.”
“Bad ass, but not as important as what happened before that.” She plucked a piece of lint from the covers.
“Bree…you don’t have to pretend you want to know.”
She looked genuinely hurt but soldiered on. “I deserved that. The truth is, I do care. I hate seeing you both like you’ve been.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, nothing really happened.” I stared at the ceiling, contemplated how much I should tell her. “He wants me back.”
“What do you want?” She didn’t voice an opinion on the matter. I was grateful for that.
“I don’t know.” This time when I laughed Breanna joined me. “I really don’t.”
“I’m not going to ask if you love him because you can’t say you don’t know. I’m not going to compare your relationship with Jordan with anyone else’s. I’m not going to tell you what I think you should do. What am I going to tell you is that—I wasn’t angry that you slept with Jordan. Or because of Devin.”
She was so sad and looked so lost, I reached out again and took her hand.
“It took me a long time to figure out what I was mad at. I was angry because I thought I was losing you. Because I knew that the moment the two of you hooked up…nobody else would matter as much.”
“Bree—”
“No, hear me out.” She cut me off with a palm in my face as she sat up on the bed. “I can see it in your eyes now. I see it in his eyes every time he looks at you. You two love each other so completely that the rest of us have to rush to keep up, to hold onto you both.”
I hadn’t seen my sister this sincere in my entire life.
“Love like that is rare, it won’t go away. You and Jordan need each other, you always have. Sure, he said and did some things that hurt you. Sure, you did some things that hurt him too. Does that mean you sit back and let that love die? Think about it, okay?” She sat up and smacked me with a pillow. As if that was enough sappy stuff for Breanna. “I’m going to bed before Mom wakes up and tries to make me help with breakfast.”
Autumn had blown in while I slept that morning and even though it was almost midday I pulled on Jordan’s hoody over my t-shirt. My life was an ant farm. Anytime I thought I had things all figured out, someone shook it. I marveled at the irony, that of all the people to shake it the most, to put things in proper perspective, had been Breanna.
Needing a clear headspace, I went for a walk down Moontown Road, the road that ran between my and Jordan’s houses. His grandfather had always walked the length of the road daily. I guess maybe I was having a walk with him, a walk with Devin, a walk with all the ghosts between Jordan and me. I thought a lot as I walked, about those ghosts and how they had marked our lives, how they had changed us.
The old man had turned a scared, wild boy into a strong, intelligent man. It frightened me to think of what Jordan could have been without his grandfather. The old man had given Jordan something to strive for and a life to believe in. I hoped he could see what Jordan had become. He was a man who made his own way on his own terms. Like the old man had.
Then there was Devin. He had made us all better and at the end shown us all what it meant to be human. We would all make mistakes, as Devin, himself, had. We would still love each other, still love him, and always remember what he meant to us. Even as we had on those days when he’d forgotten how much we loved him.
There were other things too, about the fleeting moments of happiness I’d had with Jordan. Breanna was right, that kind of happiness couldn’t be duplicated with anyone else. Not for me and I doubted for Jordan either. The love I had for him was consuming, overwhelming, and made me stronger. Despite that, the thought of going to him, of forgiving him, scared me to death.
I wasn’t surprised to find Jordan walking toward me as I headed back in the direction of home. We were magnetic, always pulled to each other.
Nervous butterflies twisted my gut around, making each step perilous, as if I were a newborn colt on unsteady legs.
He was tall and broad, the black material of his shirt stretched across his chest, and his hands were tucked into his pockets. He wore his ball cap to defend against the sun, but no jacket to defend against the breeze. He didn’t move like he was chilled, somehow a primal part of me responded to that, licking its chops. That part of me would always respond to Jordan.
I willed myself not to tremble as he closed the distance between us. With a few sure strides, he pulled up in front of me and forced me to stop. Jordan was the unmovable force, a wall of irresistible male. I looked up at his face, noticing for the first time what Breanna had alluded to.
The love of a lifetime reflected back at me.
“You can’t fix what’s broken between us with an apology.” It hurt me to say it, especially when his sincerity was so obvious when unadulterated love shone on his face. “It would be easy to just accept it, to pretend nothing ever happened. If I do that I’m afraid it could fester. All of it could fester, for you and for me. That we’d end up resenting each other.”
Like a coward, I focused on the white toes of my Chucks. “That you’d end up resenting me.”
“Never.” His fingers were firm on my shoulders. “Why would I resent you? You’re the one good thing in my life since the old man died. You, Raelynn, always you. This, right now? Is a start.”
I couldn’t argue that with him.
“I can’t breathe without you, Raelynn.”
The peace I’d made, that my sister had shattered for me, was close enough for me to touch. I closed my eyes against the tidal wave of emotion, only his fingers brushing through my hair to steady me.
I could have my peace or I could embrace the storm.
“When Devin died.” I gulped in air before rushing on. “All I needed was you…you weren’t there, Jordan.”
“I know.” His lips were warm on my forehead, but I didn’t push him away. In his arms was the only place I’d ever really belonged. “I can’t take it back…I wish I could. All I can do is try to be better.”
I opened my eyes and my sight was immediately filled with him. He stood so close, he blocked the crisp autumn wind from hitting me. The smell of winter was on the wind, winter mixed with a scent I knew all too well. I reached to him and inhaled. Clean, male, and Jordan, it was home to me.
“I’m not weak,” I whispered as I placed my hands on his chest. “Loving you does not make me weak…”
“Raelynn.” He covered my hands with his. They were so large, warm from his pockets and calloused from long days cutting granite and long nights working on cars. Faint lines of grease formed around his nails. No amount of scrubbing would ever get rid of it. My dad’s hands still looked that way. I could love those hands for the rest of my life. “You’re the strongest person I know. I kept thinking that if it wasn’t for me, for decisions I made, that none of it would have happened. That if it wasn’t for me, Devin would still be alive, you wouldn’t be crying, none of it would have happened. If I let you go, you would be happier, safer. I couldn’t protect you because I couldn’t protect him.”
For Jordan, that was everything. At the heart of it, he was still that terrified little boy hiding in a dark room. He desired nothing more than the ability to shelter and protect all those he loved.
“What happened to Devin was a horrible accident, maybe it wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been mad at us. But, Devin liked to take chances, he would have taken another one eventually. Blaming ourselves for something we couldn’t control is wasting precious time we have with those we love.” I was trying to comfort him but stopped myself with a sad smile. “I thought you blamed me, that you were ashamed of us. I don’t know if I could handle feeling that way again without it breaking me.”
The apparent shock hit him hard and fast, he balked, then blinked. “No, Rae. Never.” I pressed my face to his chest when he wrapped his arms around me. He held me like I’d wanted him to hold me since Devin died. “You’re the best part of me, you always have been. You’re my best friend, my reason for breathing, you’re everything, Raelynn. I’d never be ashamed of us.”
“Where have you been, Jordan?”
“In my own head,” he whispered against my hair, the heat of his breath caressing my neck. “Or drunk. There was a lot of that.”
He continued but still held me close. There wasn’t a force on this Earth that could make me pull from his embrace. I’d needed this, needed him, for longer than I cared to admit.
“When I saw you with Hunter, I snapped. Because all I’d thought about was you and how I’d made a mess of things, I could still see you crying at the hospital, still feel the way you shook with it. I saw the sadness when you left after the funeral, looking straight ahead like the world had broken. I thought Hunter was doing the things I couldn’t find the strength to do, myself. I’m sorry, Raelynn. God, I’m sorry.” He held me at arms’ length. His eyes shone with unshed tears, as if he were broken. My heart wanted nothing more than to fix him. “I thought,” he cleared his throat, “I thought you were with him.”
“No, Jordan, I tried someone other than you once. Look how well that worked out for me.” I tried to smirk but was pretty sure it was more of a grimace.
“That’s not funny,” he growled and pulled me to him again. “I can’t lose you, Rae, I can’t.”
“I know.” This was where I belonged. I couldn’t fight that, I’d known all along there’d never be anyone for me other than Jordan. “I can’t have you sleeping with someone else’s baby on your chest.”
“What?” he asked with a confused laugh, dropping his arms before he took his hat off and rubbed his head.
“Nothing.” I wrapped my arms around his middle, stealing strength from him. “This is all I needed you to do from the beginning.”
“I know,” he whispered against my hair, settling the cap back on his head and wrapping me in his arms. “I couldn’t, not then. I’m not any good at any of this. I’m going to make a lot more mistakes. But I’ll never make this one again, I swear it.”
Forgiveness came quickly. I’d avoided him so long because it would be this easy. Some part of me had known that all along. I’d had to heal, to work through it all and be angry. I had to grieve for more than Devin, I had to grieve for the girl I had been. Because, even with Jordan, I’d never be her again. I hadn’t come home to find myself again, I’d come home to make a new me.
I’d always known what I wanted. I had since I was a little girl. I needed him to know he wanted me as much. I needed to know he could love the person I’d become.
“Walk me home, Jordan.” He stopped me from walking away by cupping my face.
“Wait.” He kissed my lips and reminded me of all the things that mattered.
His mouth was gentle but tainted with an undeniable heat. Carefully urgent, his lips guided mine until they parted. His tongue, sweet and tasting faintly of whiskey, moved against mine, my entire body moved in a contented sigh. No man could ever compare to Jordan. He was mine and I was his. There was no one else.
One hand slid around to the back of my neck, guiding my head back to take the kiss deeper. Jordan kissed me until he’d claimed my very soul, until I was breathless and shaking, and could do nothing more than cling to his shirt.
“Jordan,” I whispered when we came up for air.
His laugh was a warm caress when I shivered with arousal.
“Yeah.” He held me close for a moment longer. “Me, too.”
I couldn’t help but blush, the evidence of his agreement pressed against my stomach. I laughed for the first time in a long time.
“Standing out here where my family can see us, might not be the best idea. My brother would black your eye again.”
“I’d let him.” He kissed my hair, my ear, his fingers caressing up and then back down my spine. “I did let him.”
“I noticed that.” I tilted my face up to his. Unlike Devin or Aiden, he wasn’t pretty. He was something more, ruggedly handsome with an edge.
He was mine.
“I deserved it.” He dropped a kiss to the tip of my nose. “I owe you one too. Want to take it now?”
“Nah, I’ll keep it in reserve for later.” Oh, how I’d missed the way his mouth curved when he smiled.
“Come on.” He took my hand and started toward home and our lives. We were stronger now, together, than we could have ever been apart.