A Sip of You(55)

I was speechless and didn’t even know how to respond.

“Remind me again how Jeremy makes this more complicated?” Beckett added.

I took a deep breath. “Because I need to tell William the truth about Jeremy. I don’t think it’s fair to keep it from him. I can’t lie to him, Beckett. Not after that, not after what he said. Besides, I don’t think it would take his team much digging to figure it out, so it’s just a matter of time anyway. He deserves to hear it from me.”

“I don’t buy that. William never had his guy investigate you, so why would he start now? Plus, you haven’t played the let’s-tell-each-other-our-number game—which, by the way, is always a game without a winner—so you’re just omitting one tiny detail about Jeremy. Do you want William Lambourne telling you about all the women he’s slept with? Do not start that conversation.”

“Jeremy wasn’t just a number. He was my brother-in-law. I should tell William.” I buried my face in my hands. “And I don’t know how I’m going to. It’s so awful.”

“Cat, it’s not that awful. You were twenty-two and grief-stricken. You made a bad decision and it was just sex. Give yourself a break. People make bad decisions in crisis times. It happens. Get over it.”

I sipped the water and turned the bottle in my hands, considering. “It was more than just a bad decision.”

“Ok, so it was a bad decision that lasted a few months or so.”

I turned the water bottle to and fro, sick at the memories assaulting me. The first time Jeremy and I hooked up was after Jace’s memorial service. What kind of wife sleeps with another man on the day of her husband’s funeral? Me, that’s who. I’d been drunk, but that wasn’t an excuse. I knew it was wrong. And not just wrong because my husband had died only days before and I had just buried him. It was wrong because Jeremy was Jace’s brother. That was wrong on a whole other level.

It didn’t take a psychoanalyst to figure out why I did it. I was out of my mind with grief and in serious denial. Jeremy looked so much like Jace, and he had so many of the same expressions and mannerisms. He was my friend, too, and the closest thing I had to my dead husband.

That first time I think I was genuinely a little confused. Jeremy had driven me home from the horrible memorial service, made all the more horrible by that fucking Mrs. Ryder, and I’d turned to him. He should have rejected me, but he didn’t. We ended up in bed—in Jace’s and my bed at our place by the beach—and the next day I just felt numb. Those days right after the accident were a total blur and I was exhausted and overwhelmed and so very lonely. Jeremy helped me forget, for just a little while, the horrible turn my life had taken. But that didn’t last very long.

Jeremy wasn’t a bad guy. I didn’t think he planned to seduce me, and it hadn’t been like that. He’d been hurting too, and I’d wanted to believe we were using each other for comfort. That was my justification, though even then I’d known it was weak. And I’d known it was a lie. Jeremy wasn’t using me. I was using him

Alcohol was usually involved, I was often the pursuer, and the sex between us was never very good. But to me, it was better than being alone. I’d missed Jace so badly my bones hurt and the pain was made even worse by my guilt. I’d been driving the car, I’d been drinking at the beach before I got behind the wheel, I hadn’t seen the pick-up truck barreling toward us until it was too late. I was the one Jace’s parents and most of our friends blamed for his death. I was lucky the police didn’t blame me too, but the driver of the pick-up truck, a chronic alcoholic with a long list of previous DUIs, had been drunk off his ass and the accident was deemed his fault. He too had died at the scene, which left me the only one who walked away.

Jeremy seemed pretty oblivious to just how messed up I was, and very quickly he made it clear he wanted more than sex. I think I’d always known he was interested in me. He’d always looked at me with something more than brotherly affection. It was his chance, and I couldn’t blame him for taking it. I wasn’t in love with Jeremy, but even that didn’t stop me from sleeping with him. When I finally came to my senses and tried to break it off, it didn’t go well. And then I realized I’d fucked up my relationship with the one person who truly could have given me comfort. I couldn’t share my memories of Jace with my friend with benefits, and he was the closest person to Jace besides me. Which meant I was back to square one: totally alone in my grief.

I was so distraught and emotionally drained that I didn’t have the strength to even offer Jeremy an explanation; I just stopped talking to him. I cut him out of my life like a cancer. I stayed away from him, kept my head down, and focused on trying to get myself back together. After about a year, I left Santa Cruz and moved to Chicago. Jeremy wasn’t the only reason, but he was a big motivator. And, as fate would have it, Jeremy was the person I ran into in Napa. It was like the universe was having the last laugh or punishing me for the horrible way I’d acted. And even after I was such an asshole to him, Jeremy still wasn’t over me. He was engaged, and he was willing to throw that away to be with me. That was its own unique torture.