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The dreams he’d started to dream—they were dust. It was what he deserved.
But Jo? She deserved better.
He pressed his palms to hot eyes and eased himself down to the edge of the bed.
* * *
Mac forced himself downstairs for dinner. Food was the last thing on his mind, but he didn’t doubt for one moment that if he didn’t appear Jo would storm upstairs to demand an explanation.
The concern in her eyes when he strode into the kitchen cut him to the quick. ‘I’m fine,’ he bit out before she could ask.
He took the jug of iced water and two glasses she had sitting on the kitchen bench through to the dining room. She followed a few moments later with a fragrant platter of spaghetti and meatballs.
She dished them out generous servings, but she didn’t start to eat. She gulped down water, the glass wobbling precariously in her hold.
‘I take it your trip didn’t go precisely as you’d hoped?’
It hurt him to look at her, but he forced himself to do it all the same. He deserved to throb and burn. ‘He’s a mess, Jo.’
‘He’s been through a lot.’
‘Seeing me didn’t help. Seeing me just made things worse.’
‘How...?’ Her voice was nothing more than a whisper.
He had to pull in a breath before he could continue. ‘He hates the sight of me.’
She didn’t say anything. She sliced into a meatball, slathered it in sauce and ate it. Her lips closed about the morsel and need rose up in him so hard that wind rushed in his ears, deafening him. Seizing his knife and fork he attacked a meatball, reducing it to a pile of mush. He started in on a second one and then on the spaghetti.
‘I can put that in the blender for you if it’s how you’d prefer to eat it.’
He set his cutlery down, afraid he wouldn’t be able to push food past the lump in his throat. His stomach churned too hard for food anyway.
Jo continued to eat, as if unaware of his mental turmoil. He wasn’t stupid enough to believe that, though. She was eating to stave off heartbreak. A fist reached out and squeezed his chest, all but cutting off his air supply.
‘So,’ she said eventually, with a toss of her head, not meeting his gaze. ‘What’s the plan from here?’
His very heartbeat seemed to slow. It was all he could do not to drop his head to the table.
From a long way away he heard himself say, ‘I revert back to Plan A.’
Her gaze flew to his and he watched with a sickening thud as realisation dawned in those sage eyes. Her eyebrows drew in and she gripped a fistful of her shirt right above her heart.
He swallowed and forced himself to continue. ‘I focus on making enough money to take care of every single one of Ethan’s needs for as long as he needs me to.’
‘I...’ With a physical effort she swallowed, but she didn’t loosen the grip on her shirt. ‘Where does that leave us?’
Bile burned like acid in his throat, coating his tongue. ‘There can’t be an “us”, Jo. At least not for the foreseeable future.’
She stared at him for long, pain-filled seconds, as if she hadn’t heard him properly, and then she flinched as if he’d struck her. The colour leached from her face; the creases about her eyes deepened. Heaviness settled over him. His chin edged down towards his chest. His heart was thudding dully there. How could he have done this to her? Why hadn’t he taken more care?
I’m sorry! The words screamed through him, but he couldn’t force them out.
She swung back, eyes blazing. ‘You fall at the first hurdle and give up? Come running home with your tail between your legs?’
He wanted to open his arms and make his body a target, to tell her to hurl whatever insults she could at him. Anything to make her feel better. Only he knew it wouldn’t help. Not one jot.
‘Has life always been easy for you? Have you never had to fight for anything?’
She laughed, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh he ever wanted to hear again.
‘Russ used to brag about you—about how you were this wunderkind who went from triumph to triumph.’ She shot to her feet. ‘But the fact of the matter is all that coming so easily for you has made you a...a loser!’
Her words cut at him like whips. He wanted to beg her to forgive him.
‘When something really matters, Mac, you keep trying until you succeed—despite the setbacks. If Ethan really mattered to you, you’d try harder.’
What she was really saying, though, was that if she mattered to him he’d fight harder for her. It was what she deserved.
As for Ethan... He shook his head. He couldn’t force his presence on the young man again. He’d done enough damage as it was.
