Chapter Twenty-Three
JANA’S LIFE CONTINUED to feel like it was on fast-forward, despite backing out of the exhibition match. Hunter was putting in extra hours on his sculpture, and Colton had asked Jana to fill in for the past three nights, which was great for her bank account, but it meant that she and Hunter were rarely together before midnight, and they usually ended up tangled in the sheets, with very little time to talk. She knew he was stressed about getting his sculpture done, and she made a point of trying to keep their conversations light when they did find time to talk.
Jana was meeting the girls for breakfast at Seaside, and Hunter was going into the shop early.
“Have fun telling the girls about us.” He said it with a smirk. All week he’d been dropping not-so-subtle hints that he was tiring of waiting for her to publicly claim their relationship.
She smiled up at him. “It’s not like I’m going to announce that we’re seeing each other.”
As he walked her out to her car, his tone became serious. “But you’re going to let them know, right?”
She shrugged. “It’s not like I’d lie about it. I just don’t think I need to make a statement about it.”
“Jana, you know that when we do go out with everyone—and eventually we will—I’m going to have an arm around you, or hold your hand, or kiss you, regardless of whether you let them know first or not.”
“Why does it have to be such a big deal?”
“It’s not like I want you to announce it, but come on. You could have told them when they saw the flowers, and you didn’t. You could have told my sister any number of times, since she texts you a million times each week.”
She was silent for so long, Hunter’s gut clenched.
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not good at this, Hunter. I told you I stink as a girlfriend and I wasn’t kidding.” Hunter accepted her past, moving from one guy to the next with no strings attached, but he didn’t know how badly she’d been hurt in the past or how badly she’d hurt Spencer.
“I don’t understand what that means.”
They’d never talked about specifics, and now she felt compelled to tell him—and the confession brought a thrum of panic. She knew the importance of this conversation, of his finally understanding where she was coming from, and she wanted to give him that. Desperately. She drew her shoulders back, swallowing the fear that accompanied the dull ache in her gut, and forced herself to explain.
“What if…? I don’t know. What if I flirt and don’t realize I’m doing it?”
He gritted his teeth. “Seriously? I’d better be the only man you flirt with.”
“That’s what I mean. Do you know why I never date, Hunter?” She couldn’t slow down, and the truth roared out. “Because men suck. They make promises they can’t keep, and they manipulate you until you open your heart up and lay it out on the table. Because all they care about is winning—and then they leave, they hurt, they take that trust and shred it to pieces.” His eyes filled with empathy as he reached for her, but she shifted out of his grip, unable to stop the rest from being set free.
“And it’s not just that. A string of guys hurt me, yes, and that was bad, but honestly…I get so caught up in having fun that I must not see clearly. Every guy I’ve ever dated has accused me of flirting with other men, and maybe they were right. I don’t know anymore. Every boy I ever dated thought I wanted to cheat even if I never did. I must give off really slutty vibes or something.” Her eyes filled with tears. She turned away to keep him from seeing. Her chest ached like an open wound. He’d walk away now for sure. How could he not? She couldn’t bear to look at him, to see the disdain that she imagined she’d see in his eyes. The disappointment and judgment that she surely deserved.
“Because you probably were,” he said so softly, the pit of her stomach felt like she’d swallowed lead. He put his arms around her from behind and held her. She braced herself for a breakup.
Please make it quick, because while I could take losing anyone else, I can’t take losing you.
“Heck, Jana. I was doing that back then, too. I was doing that until I found you.” He turned her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers. Salty tears slipped between their lips. “That was then, pretty girl. This is now. I have total faith in you.”
Her lower lip trembled. “You still don’t understand.”
HUNTER’S INSTINCTS WERE to force her to see the difference between who she was then—who they both were before finding each other—and who she was now. But the look on Jana’s face told him there was much more than she was letting on.
“Then tell me, Jana. I don’t want to play games. If you don’t want me, you better step up now and tell me.”
Her chin fell to her chest. “It’s not that.”
He forced his insecurities aside and held her. “Then tell me what it is. I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” He was totally confused. She might be afraid to commit, but he couldn’t imagine her purposely hurting him.
“When I tell you the rest, you’re going to think I’m a slut and probably a witch.”
“Every single one of your tears destroys me, baby.” He wiped them away and kissed her damp cheeks. “Unless you’ve slept with some other guy since we agreed to be exclusive, I’ve got no right to judge anything you’ve done.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I could never do that to you.”
A relieved sigh escaped his lips. “Then tell me what’s going on. I don’t understand.”
“A few years ago I dated this guy Spencer. He was a really nice guy. The kind of guy who is serially monogamous, brings you flowers every week, dresses nicely, asks you how your day was. You know, the—”
“The kind of guy every girl dreams of. Yeah, I get it.” He had no idea where she was going with this, but he knew he was the antithesis of the man she described, and that made him even more tense.
“I guess.” She wiped her eyes and said, “Every girl except me.”
“Baby,” he whispered, wishing he could ease the pain he heard in her voice.
“Every time I tried to break up with him, he begged me not to. You know me, Hunter. I’m not a pushover. I told him I didn’t want to settle down and get married. I told him I didn’t love him. But he kept showing up everywhere I went. He pushed and pushed, no matter what I said or did. And finally I did what I felt was my only option, and it ended really badly.”
“What did you do?” A bad breakup was something he could deal with, and the fact that she was so torn up over whatever had happened only emphasized how vulnerable she felt. Sometimes that was hard to remember, because she acted so strong and in control all the time.
Fresh tears tumbled down her cheeks. She covered her mouth with her hand and looked away. The pain in her eyes was enough to make him want to find Spencer and strangle him.
“Whatever it is, Jana, you can tell me.”
“It’s embarrassing.” She looked down at her hands as she explained. “I was only twenty, and all I wanted was to live my life. All he wanted was to settle down and have a family. After trying to break it off for a few weeks…” She looked at him and said, “Weeks, not days.” Then she looked down at her hands again. “I couldn’t see any other way out, so I made a play for his best friend, who I knew was into me. I made sure Spencer would see us together.”
“Okay, so you messed around with his friend. You felt trapped. What does that have to do with us?”
Her eyes shot to his. “Hunter, look at how I handled it. He hated me after that, called me all sorts of names, and then…”
Hunter fisted his hands. “And then?”
“To get back at me, he posted about it on Facebook. I’ve never been so humiliated in all my life, because of course he didn’t say I’d tried to break up with him for weeks. He just said he caught me and his friend making out and that I was a slut and he was now a ‘free agent.’ My family saw it, of course, because he tagged me in the post, which is why I refuse to be on any kind of social media anymore. My closest friends knew the real story, but I had to explain it all to my brothers and sister, even my parents, and that was so hard.”
The song she sang to Billy came back to him loud and clear. Jana’s inability to commit was born of hurt, and that cut him to his core. She’d boxed herself off from relationships in the same way he had. Like a guy. But while Hunter had simply not ever met a woman worth the effort until Jana, Jana had cordoned off her heart so she wouldn’t ever be hurt again. And she’d struck back the only way she knew how, to do what had been done to her in the past. To dish out the hurt she’d suffered. Who could blame her for that?
“I hope Brock beat the tar out of the jerk.” Because if he didn’t, I’m going to.
“Spencer’s really not a jerk. He was hurt.” She must have recognized his mounting anger, because when he opened his mouth to refute what she’d said, she cut him off. “I’ve felt horribly guilty ever since. I should have handled it better, differently, and I swore I’d never be in that position again.”
He roped in his anger at the sight of more tears filling her eyes, and he gathered her in closer. “That’s why you’re afraid to fully commit?”
“I don’t want to get hurt and I can’t take a chance of hurting you,” she whispered. “I don’t want to hide us. I’m just not ready to let everyone know. My life is such a mess right now. I need a little more time to be sure we’re going to make it.”
In that moment, Hunter realized the magnitude of her insecurities and how a string of bad relationships and one desperate act had led her to become the tough-as-nails-on-the-outside, sensitive-as-an-open-wound-on-the-inside woman she was. The woman he was falling deeply in love with.
Hunter was used to taking what he wanted, and in the past he probably would have forced her to tell everyone about them. But with Jana—only with Jana—what he wanted didn’t matter. All that mattered was making Jana feel safe and earning her trust, so that she could finally let go of all those insecurities that were eating her up inside and allow herself to live the life she deserved.
“I’m sorry you went through that.”
She tipped her face up.
“I’m not Spencer, and I’m sure not the guy women dream of marrying. But there’s one thing I’m darn sure of, and that’s my feelings for you.” He tried to lighten the mood by saying, “Even if that means I have to work extra hard to keep your attention on me when we’re out, I’m one hundred percent, totally and completely, all in.”
He cupped her beautiful face in his hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “I have total faith in us, and because of that I’m not going to push you to claim our relationship in front of our family and friends right now. I wish I could say I’d wait forever, but you know me. I feel too much for you to hide it that long, because even if you say you don’t want to hide it, that’s what we’re doing. But I know you need to trust what’s happening between us, and I understand that. After all you’ve been through, you need to develop your own faith in us, and maybe more importantly, in yourself.”
He let those words sink in. “Hopefully one day you’ll realize that I don’t ever want to hold you back from doing all the things you dream of. I want to help you set yourself free.”