Page 43 of Still the One
“If you really believe that about me, what are you even doing here?” Tears stream down Jamie’s face and, as it turns out, my heart’s already breaking just looking at her like that.
“I can’t stay away from you,” I whisper. I’m not sure Jamie heard me.
“I’m going to need you to stay away from me from now on.” I guess she did hear me. “I can’t do this with you, Mac. You mean too much to me. It’s ripping me apart.”
“Fair enough,” I stammer. This was inevitable. I should be getting up and ready to leave, but my ass seems glued to the chair I’m sitting on. My body doesn’t want to leave Jamie. I don’t want to leave Jamie, but I can’t be what she wants me to be and she can’t be what I want her to be. Her request makes perfect sense, yet it will be excruciatingly hard to honor. But I’ve done hard things before. I had her walk away from me before. If I need to be the one doing the walking this time around, then so be it. I’ll do it. “I’m sorry. I—” I’m not sure what I could have done differently, except not attend Sandra’s wedding. “I’m sorry it has to be this way.” Once I do get up, I make for the door immediately, but I can’t just leave Jamie like that. I need to feel her body against mine one last time. I need her arms around me.
“Damn you, Mac,” she whispers in my ear as she holds me, as I fit into her embrace so snugly, so perfectly, you’d think her arms were made for the sole purpose of hugging me. “I fucking love you,” Jamie says.
But I still have to walk away.
Chapter 24
Jamie
“I’ll talk to her.” Alan has come over to my place. “Talk some sense into her.”
“Don’t. Please. The sooner I give up all hope, the better.” I had no idea it would hurt so much, as if I’ve gone back in time and made the worst mistake of my life all over again.
“But she loves you,” Charles says, as though that’s all it takes.
“It’s not enough.” I had to protect myself. As soon as Mac told me her co-worker had asked her out, my stomach caved in on itself, and I knew I couldn’t spend my days pining for more of her—for all the things she wasn’t able to give.
“Since when?” Alan is outraged.
“Since I left her three months before our commitment ceremony.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Even Alan can’t argue with that. “But that was twenty years ago.” Turns out he can. “This is now.” He squeezes my hand. “I get why you can’t be the one to talk some sense into her. You’re the reason why she’s like this. But maybe I can. I can at least try.”
“Mac is more than old enough to make her own decisions.”
“What are we going to do to cheer you up?” Charles changes tack and even though it’s sweet of him to try, I can’t be cheered up right now. Maybe this is exactly what I deserve after what I did to Mac. Maybe my comeuppance is twenty years late, but it is finally here in full force.
“I’m going to have to ride this out.” You’d think this emptiness inside me would subdue my feelings, but it’s the opposite. It’s like an echo chamber for every regret I’ve ever had. For all the stupid mistakes I’ve made and all the reasons I can’t be forgiven for them. And some things are unforgivable—like what I did to Mac.
But why couldn’t she have frozen me out in Maui? It might have hurt for that weekend, but at least then it would all have stopped. I might have thought about her once in a while, the way I’ve done the past two decades, but she wouldn’t have dominated my life from dawn to dusk—and all the hours I lay awake in between. It’s too late to protect my heart. It has already been broken—again—and I can hardly blame Mac for that.
It’s been three days since she walked out of my apartment, and I’ve wanted to text her every hour since. Every minute. I have no idea how I’m going to get over her, and it serves me right, because while this is painful, it’s not half as painful as your fiancée abruptly leaving you for another woman mere months before your wedding. Months before our first IVF appointment. Months before the next stage of our life was about to fully take flight. I don’t deserve Mac’s forgiveness. I don’t deserve her.
My phone buzzes, and my heart skips a beat. Maybe Mac’s changed her mind. Maybe she misses me so much, she wants to try after all. Or maybe she decided to cash in one last booty call because, damn it, it was so good between us, and she wants one final taste before she gives it up forever.
I check my phone. “It’s Sandra,” I say on a sigh. Damn her and her romantic destination wedding. For wanting us both there. But none of this is Sandra’s fault either.
“I heard,” Sandra says. “About you and Mac and what you’ve been up to behind my back. How are you?”
I swallow hard. “What did Mac tell you?”
“That you’ve been sleeping together since my wedding. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it was…”
“I get it,” Sandra says, cutting me off. “But, Jamie. This is big. Or was big. How can we fix this?”
“It can’t be fixed. You should know that if you spoke to Mac in the last couple of days.”
“I understand her trepidations, but I told her that she should give you another chance, Jamie. She’ll never know what she’s missing out on if she doesn’t.”
“She won’t. She can’t. I screwed her up too badly.”
