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“I didn’t know your last name,” he reminds me. “Or your number. Or where you worked. And you left without saying goodbye.”
Wait. What? “Jake,” I huff-laugh. Is he mental? “You were the one who left without saying goodbye.”
A challenging look. “Babe, it was you.”
“I was in the shower, and when I got out, you were gone. So, I left.”
He chews it over. “But…no. That’s not how it…”
Yep. You left me.
“I’d gone to get coffee. You told me you would die for a Starbucks, and they had one downstairs. When I got back, you were gone.”
“You didn’t tell me you were going for coffee.”
He gives me a second to catch on.
Oh, he was being sweet. A surprise.
Ugh.
I sigh and lean against the barn beside him. All I can do is search his eyes as I think of something to say. All this time, we could have stayed connected had I not made assumptions and rushed out of there.
But what else should I have thought?
That not everyone’s like you. Not everyone’s first instinct is to run.
And for the past year, he thought that was exactly what I did that day—ran. With no intentions of reconnecting. After all, he’s Jake Mitchell. There’s always a way to reach him. Well…his team. And if I’d wanted to, I could have.
And I almost did. For a reason he still doesn’t know yet. It certainly wasn’t because I thought he wanted to see me. I thought he got what he wanted and left.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he says.
“I’m thinking how I shouldn’t have assumed why you weren’t there.”
“You thought I bailed.”
I did.
He leans in and gives me a soft, quick kiss. “You thought wrong.”
I guess so.
Our conversation wanes into silence, and we both turn everything over in our heads. Think over how things played out. How there’s still so much to hash out and say. At least, for me there is. And then my mind circles back to before I decided I didn’t care about walls and rules anymore. Before I basically attacked him like some kind of feral cat in heat. “So, that’s why you wanted me with you this weekend…because whether I acknowledged our past or not, I was still a familiar thing for you.”
“You’re the only one in the world right now who knows what’s about to happen.”
I grin weakly. “Still doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’m the one writing the article.”
He chuckles. Pulls off his hat and runs his hand through his hair. Puts it back on. “Yeah. I can see how it wouldn’t.”
“Is no part of you mad about that? Does that not change…” I want to say thingsbetween us, but I can’t bring myself to utter that. There really can’t be an us after this…right? How could there? “…how you see me?” I finish.
He flashes a slow, sultry smile. “Did the last twenty minutes not already answer that?”
Heat flushes my cheeks.
Okay, so maybe not. Maybe he gets it. I’m helping a girl tell her story. I’m giving her a voice. And he’s not blaming the messenger. “That’s awfully big of you.” He’s letting me off way too easy. Almost suspiciously so.
