CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THIS WAS HELL. Perhaps even literally. Hayley had wondered about hell a few times, growing up the daughter of a pastor. Now, she thought that if hell were simply living with a broken heart, with the rejection of the person you loved more than anything else echoing in your ears, it would be pretty effective eternal damnation.
She was lying on her couch, tears streaming down her face. She was miserable, and she didn’t even want to do anything about it. She just wanted to sit in it.
Oh, she had been so cavalier about the pain that would come when Jonathan ended things. Back in the beginning, when she had been justifying losing her virginity to him, she had been free and easy about the possibility of heartbreak.
But she hadn’t loved him then. So she really hadn’t known.
Hadn’t known that it would be like shards of glass digging into her chest every time she took a breath. Hadn’t known that it was actual, physical pain. That her head would throb and her eyes would feel like sandpaper from all the crying.
That her body, and her soul, would feel like they had been twisted, wrung out and draped over a wire to dry in the brutal, unfeeling coastal air.
This was the experience he had talked about. The one that wasn’t worth having.
She rolled onto her back, thinking over the past weeks with Jonathan. Going to his house, getting her first job away from the church. How nervous she had been. How fluttery she had felt around him.
Strangely, she felt her lips curve into a smile.
It was hard to reconcile the woman she was now with the girl who had first knocked on his door for that job interview.
She hadn’t even realized what all that fluttering meant. What the tightening in her nipples, the pressure between her thighs had meant. She knew now. Desire. Need. Things she would associate with Jonathan for the rest of her life, no matter where she went, no matter who else she might be with.
He’d told her to find someone else.
Right now, the idea of being with another man made her cringe.
She wasn’t ready to think about that. She was too raw. And she still wanted him. Only him.
Jonathan was more than an experience.
He had wrenched her open. Pulled her out of the safe space she’d spent so many years hiding in. He had shown her a love that was bigger than fear.
Unfortunately, because that love was so big, the desolation of it was crippling.
She sat up, scrubbing her arm over her eyes. She needed to figure out what she was going to do next.
Something had crystallized for her earlier today, during the encounter with Jonathan and her father. She didn’t need to run away. She didn’t need to leave town, or gain anonymity, in order to have what she wanted. To be who she wanted.
She didn’t need to be the church secretary, didn’t need to be perfect or hide what she was doing. She could still go to her father’s church on Sunday, and go to dinner at her parents’ house on Sunday evening.
She didn’t have to abandon her home, her family, her faith. Sure, it might be uncomfortable to unite her family and her need to find herself, but if there was one thing loving Jonathan had taught her, it was that sometimes uncomfortable was worth it.
She wasn’t going to let heartbreak stop her.
She thought back to how he had looked at her earlier today, those black eyes impassive as he told her he wouldn’t love her back.
Part of her wanted to believe she was right about him. That he was afraid. That he was protecting himself.
Another part of her felt that was a little too hopeful. Maybe that gorgeous, experienced man simply couldn’t love his recently-a-virgin assistant.
Except...she had been so certain, during a few small moments, that she had given something to him, too. Just like he had given so much to her.
For some reason, he was dedicated to the idea that nobody stayed. That people looked at him and saw the worst. She couldn’t understand why he would find that comforting, and yet a part of him must.
It made her ache. Her heart wasn’t broken only for her, but for him, too. For all the love he wouldn’t allow himself to accept.
She shook her head. Later. Later she would feel sorry for him. Right now, she was going to wallow in her own pain.
Because at the end of the day, Jonathan had made the choice to turn away from her, to turn away from love.
Right now, she would feel sorry for herself. Then maybe she would plan a trip to Paris.
* * *
“DO YOU WANT to invite me in?”
Jonathan looked at his sister, standing on the porch, looking deceptively calm.
“Do I have a choice?”
Rebecca shook her head, her long dark hair swinging behind her like a curtain. “Not really. I didn’t drive all the way out here to have this conversation with moths buzzing around me.”
It was dark out, and just as Rebecca had said, there were bugs fluttering around the porch light near her face.
“Come in, then,” he said, moving aside.
She blinked when she stepped over the threshold, a soft smile touching her lips. The scar tissue on the left side of her mouth pulled slightly. Scar tissue that had been given to her by the man she was going to marry. Oh, it had been an accident, and Jonathan knew it. But with all the pain and suffering the accident had caused Rebecca, intent had never much mattered to him.
“This is beautiful, Jonathan,” she said, her dark eyes flickering to him. “I haven’t been here since it was finished.”
He shrugged. “Well, that was your choice.”
“You don’t like my fiancé. And you haven’t made much of an effort to change that. I don’t know what you expect from me.”
“Appreciation, maybe, for all the years I spent taking care of you?” He wanted to cut his own balls off for saying that. Basically, right about now he wanted to escape his own skin. He was a bastard. Even he thought so.
He was sitting in his misery now, existing fully in the knowledge of the pain he had caused Hayley.
He should never have had that much power over her. He never should have touched her. This misery was the only possible way it could have turned out. His only real defense was that he hadn’t imagined a woman like Hayley would ever fall in love with a man like him.
“Right. Because we’ve never had that discussion.”
His sister’s tone was dry, and he could tell she was pretty unimpressed with him. Well, fair enough. He was unimpressed with himself.
“I still don’t understand why you love him, Rebecca. I really don’t.”
“What is love to you, Jonathan?”
An image of Hayley’s face swam before his mind’s eye. “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“A relevant one,” she said. “I think. Particularly when we get down to why exactly I’m here. Congratulations. After spending most of your life avoiding being part of the rumor mill, you’re officially hot small-town gossip.”
“Am I?” He wasn’t very surprised to hear that.
“Something about kissing the pastor’s daughter on Main Street in the rain. And having a fight with her.”
“That’s accurate.”
“What’s going on?”
“What it looks like. I was sleeping with her. We had a fight. Now we’re not sleeping together.”
Rebecca tilted her head to the side. “I feel like I’m missing some information.”
“Hayley was working for me—I assume you knew that.”
“Vaguely,” she said, her eyes glittering with curiosity.
“And I’m an asshole. So when I found out my assistant was a virgin, I figured I would help her with that.” It was a lie, but one he was comfortable with. He was comfortable painting himself as the villain. Everybody would, anyway. So why not add his own embellishment to the tale.
“Right,” Rebecca said, sarcasm dripping from her voice. “Because you’re a known seducer of innocent women.”
Jonathan turned away, running his hand over his hair. “I’m not the nicest guy, Rebecca. We all know that.”
“I know you think that,” Rebecca said. “And I know we’ve had our differences. But when I needed you, you were there for me. Always. Even when Gage broke my heart, and you couldn’t understand why it mattered, why I wanted to be with him, in the end, you supported me. Always. Every day of my life. I don’t even remember my father. I remember you. You taught me how to ride a bike, how to ride a horse. You fought for me, tirelessly. Worked for me. You don’t think I don’t know how tired you were? How much you put into making our home...a home? Bad men don’t do that. Bad men hit their wives, hit their children. Abandon their daughters. Our fathers were bad men, Jonathan. But you never were.”
Something about those words struck him square in the chest. Their fathers were bad men.
He had always known that.
But he had always believed somewhere deep down that he must be bad, too. Not because he thought being an abusive bastard was hereditary. But because if his father had beaten him, and his mother had left him, there must be something about him that was bad.
Something visible. Something that the whole town could see.
He thought back to all the kindness on Pastor John Thompson’s face, kindness Jonathan certainly hadn’t deserved from the old man when he was doing his absolute damnedest to start a fight in the middle of The Grind.
He had been so determined to have John confirm that Jonathan was bad. That he was wrong.
Because there was something freeing about the anger that belief created deep inside his soul.
It had been fuel. All his life that belief had been his fuel. Gave him something to fight against. Something to be angry about.
An excuse to never get close to anyone.
Because underneath all the anger was nothing but despair. Despair because his parents had left him, because they couldn’t love him enough. Because he wasn’t worth...anything.
His need for love had never gone away, but he’d shoved it down deep. Easier to do when you had convinced yourself you could never have it.
He looked at Rebecca and realized he had despaired over her, too. When she had chosen Gage. Jonathan had decided it was just one more person who loved him and didn’t want to stay.
Yeah, it was much easier, much less painful to believe that he was bad. Because it let him keep his distance from the pain. Because it meant he didn’t have to try.
“What do you think love is?” Rebecca asked again, more persistent this time.
He didn’t have an answer. Not one with words. All he had were images, feelings. Watching Rebecca sleep after a particularly hard day. Praying child services wouldn’t come by to check on her while he was at work, and find her alone and him negligent.
And Hayley. Her soft hands on his body, her sweet surrender. The trust it represented. The way she made him feel. Like he was on fire, burning up from the inside out. Like he could happily stay for the rest of his life in a one-room cabin, without any of the money or power he had acquired over the past few years, and be perfectly content.
The problem was, he couldn’t make her stay with him.
This house, his company, those things were his. In a way that Hayley could never be. In a way that no one ever could be.
People were always able to leave.
He felt like a petulant child even having that thought. But he didn’t know how the hell else he could feel secure. And he didn’t think he could stand having another person walk away.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Rebecca shook her head, her expression sad. “That’s a damn shame, Jonathan, because you show me love all the time. Whether you know what to call it or not, you’ve given it to me tirelessly over the years, and without you, without it, I don’t know where I would be. You stayed with me when everybody else left.”
“But who stayed with me?” he asked, feeling like an ass for even voicing that question. “You had to stay. I had to take care of you. But the minute you could go out on your own you did.”
“Because that’s what your love did for me, you idiot.”
“Not very well. Because you were always worried I thought of you as a burden, weren’t you? It almost ruined your relationship with Gage, if I recall correctly.”
“Yes,” she said, “but that wasn’t about you. That was my baggage. And you did everything in your power to help me, even when you knew the result would be me going back to Gage. That’s love, Jonathan.” She shook her head. “I love you, too. I love you enough to want you to have your own life, one that doesn’t revolve around taking care of me. That doesn’t revolve around what happened to us in the past.”
He looked around the room, at the house that meant so much to him. A symbol of security, of his ability to care for Rebecca, if her relationship went to hell. And he realized that creating this security for her somehow enabled him to deny his own weaknesses. His own fears.
This house had only ever been for him. A fortress to barricade himself in.
Wasn’t that what Hayley had accused him of? Building himself a perfect fortress to hide in?
If everybody hated him, he didn’t have to try. If there was something wrong with him, he never had to do what was right. If all he loved were things, he never had to risk loss.
They were lies. Lies he told himself because he was a coward.
And it had taken a virginal church secretary to uncover the truth.
She had stood in front of him and said she wanted love more than she wanted to be safe. And he had turned her down.
He was afraid. Had been all his life. But before this very moment, he would have rather cut out his own heart than admit it.
But now, standing with his sister looking at him like he was the saddest damn thing she’d ever seen, a hole opened in his chest. A hole Hayley had filled.
“But doesn’t it scare you?” he asked, his voice rough. “What if he leaves?”
She reached out, putting her hand on his. “It would break my heart. But I would be okay. I would have you. And I would...still be more whole than I was before I loved him. That’s the thing about love. It doesn’t make you weak, Jonathan, it makes you stronger. Opening yourself up, letting people in...that makes your life bigger. It makes your life richer. Maybe it’s a cliché, but from where I’m standing you need to hear the cliché. You need to start believing it.”
“I don’t understand why she would want to be with me,” Jonathan said. “She’s...sweet. And she’s never been hurt. I’m...well, I’m a mess. That’s not what she deserves. She deserves to have a man who’s in mint condition, like she is.”
“But that’s not how love works. If love made sense, if it was perfectly fair, then Gage West would not have been the man for me. He was the last man on earth I should have wanted, Jonathan. Nobody knows that more than me, and him. It took a miracle for me to let go of all my anger and love him. At the same time... I couldn’t help myself.
“Love is strange that way. You fall into it whether you want to or not. Then the real fight is figuring out how to live it. How to become the person you need to be so you can hold on to that love. But I’m willing to bet you are the man she needs. Not some mint condition, new-in-the-box guy. But a strong man who has proved, time and time again, that no matter how hard life is, no matter how intensely the storm rages, he’ll be there for you. And more than that, he’ll throw his body over yours to protect you if it comes to that. That’s what I see when I look at you, Jonathan. What’s it going to take for you to see that in yourself?”
“I don’t think I’m ever going to,” he said slowly, imagining Hayley again, picturing her as she stared up at him on the street. Fury, hurt, love shining from her eyes. “But...if she sees it...”
“That’s a start,” Rebecca said. “As long as you don’t let her get away. As long as you don’t push her away.”
“It’s too late for that. She’s probably not going to want to see me again. She’s probably not going to want me back.”
“Well, you won’t know unless you ask.” Rebecca took a deep breath. “The best thing about love is it has the capacity to forgive on a pretty incredible level. But if there’s one thing you and I both know, it’s that it’s hard to forgive someone leaving. Don’t make that the story. Go back. Ask for forgiveness. Change what needs to be changed. Mostly...love her. The rest kind of takes care of itself.”