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Her fingers found her necklace and pulled out her bee ring. She wanted to yank it off and hurl it at Jagger’s handsome face, but it was hers and touching it gave her the only comfort she felt right now.
When she’d been deserted by her young love fourteen years ago, she’d thought she would never recover and the pain would never stop. It had dulled but never went away.
Being around Jagger again, laughing and teasing and kissing and thinking they might have a chance was a cruel form of torture. Right now, she hurt as deeply as she had as a besotted eighteen-year-old. Now she knew how awful it was to live without Jagger for fourteen years and how long and lonely the future would be.
It was more obvious now than it had been during the past fourteen years…
She and Jagger would never be together.
Chapter
Eleven
Jagger was angry and stunned by Belinda’s reaction to him finally being able to tell her the truth of what had happened. Fourteen years of wanting to find her and talk to her about all of this and she called him the liar. He’d known more agony was coming from the first moment he’d seen her walk off that plane. Right now, he was confused by her reaction and angry at her father. It was mind-boggling that she couldn’t see the truth.
He shouldn’t have been stunned. Even though Belinda had snuck around with him a little when they dated to avoid upsetting her dad, she was fiercely loyal to her parents. He could imagine the past fourteen years of him not being there and her parents being her support would only solidify that.
But couldn’t she see reason and facts? She really thought he’d installed cameras in their barn and watched the feed during his nonexistent free time to catch her kissing Mike?
She was completely irrational.
He didn’t even attempt to explain anything to Hays, who stood clinging to his phone and staring at him as if Jagger were fragile.
Jagger? Fragile? Never.
He hurried to his room, changed out of his wet, salty clothes, and headed straight for the weight room, lifting until he sort of calmed down. He was irate and admittedly apprehensive. If Belinda wouldn’t listen to him, her parents would keep on lying, and they’d never be together.
He slept fitfully that night and was up early to lift weights again. He kept living heavy and at this point he was hurting his own strength gains by overworking specific muscles. He didn’t care. The release of anxiety and frustration was all that mattered at this point. He headed for the ocean when his grip strength was shot and swam until he was certain Paul and Belinda had left for the day.
Nobody had ever called Jagger a wuss or a chicken, but he felt like one right now. He couldn’t face her and see that anger in her eyes and have her call him a liar again. He might explode and say all the bitter things he’d thought about her, and especially her dad, for the past fourteen years. He was as stunned as she was that neither of her parents had even admitted to her that he’d come for her, let alone that he’d seen her kiss Mike and her dad had knocked him out.
He and Hays started their day, searching for Paul and Belinda. His heart wasn’t in it, but he’d committed to Mercedes and Shawn to keep fighting for Mercedes. He’d finish this week if it killed him. It might. Belinda was so hardheaded. He wanted to shake some sense into her and then kiss her again. He was the irrational one, thinking Belinda would see reason about her conniving parents or want to kiss him again. Neither would ever happen. His false hope of being with Belinda, loving her, marrying her, had all been flattened, squashed, eradicated by her parents’ lies.
Focusing on finding Paul and Belinda didn’t take his mind off the anguish. He was chasing her, as he’d longed to do for fourteen years, but it was only for Mercedes, not because he and Belinda had a chance.
The chase was longer today. It might have helped Paul and Belinda not having the head cams to give them away. Paul and Hays had apparently rigged straps to mount the cameras in front of their right shoulder, still an identifier but at least not sticking up above any crowd with Paul’s height.
By three in the afternoon, Jagger followed a tip from a pretty brunette at the Marriott’s front desk and he had them. They were darting through the Marriott in Poipu on the south side of the island. When Belinda saw him coming after them in a back hallway near the fitness center, she jumped and screamed and then scowled at him.
Putting her hands on her hips, she said, “Well, shoot me then, you lying jerk.”
He wanted to do a lot more than shoot her. Instead of pulling out his gun, he gave her a stare down. “I think I’ll just let you keep running from the truth instead.”
“Running? Argh! We’ll see what the truth is,” she hollered at him. “As soon as we get done with this week, I’ll prove that you are biggest self-serving liar on the planet.”
He gritted his teeth and forced himself to smirk at her and not rise to her bait. She was stinging him worse than any bee, but he didn’t know if he’d ever taste sweet honey again.
“Come on.” Paul tugged on her arm. With one last glare, she let Paul lead her down the hallway.
Jagger followed and called Hays, reporting where they were and that he was on their tail. Hays was close in his Jeep.
Jagger tailed them throughout the hotel and out onto the beach path. Belinda kept giving him dagger looks over her shoulder. He was half tempted to shoot her and get this over with, but it was kind of fun to tick her off.
At some point, she’d have to admit to the truth—unless her parents insisted on lying to her and she chose to believe them over him. How could he and Belinda ever have trust in their relationship? He didn’t know that they could. He’d never wanted to tear her from her parents, but right now he wanted to slam his fist into her dad’s smug face and have all of Belinda’s anger directed where it should be, at Pastor Ralphs. Maybe the man could spend a few years without the spark Belinda brought into life and see how it felt.
Sadly, the only future Jagger saw was Belinda standing by her parents and him alone and unloved.
Belinda and Paul darted into the Sheraton. Jagger easily followed them.
