JASON and KEANNE(35)

Her words slammed into him like poisoned arrows, and slowly the past was remade in his mind, making the present so much clearer – so fucking clear that his actions became unforgivable.

“When I heard what you did for Lilac, I knew…I just knew you didn’t really love me. You loved her enough to be there for her even when she didn’t ask you to be. If you loved me - if you had loved me, then you would have been by my side when I asked you.”

“No.” His voice grew in strength when all she did was cry, the sound of her tears ravaging him from the inside. He couldn’t let her think like that when it was not true – oh God, it was not true, but he was so fucking afraid he was too late.

“It wasn’t like that. I swear to God, it wasn’t---” Jason reached out to her but she recoiled, nearly falling to the ground in her haste to escape his touch.

Her rejection was like a knife wound that started to bleed and showed no signs of stopping. “Listen to me,” he said desperately. “It wasn’t like that. I realize now…” He raked his hand through his hair, feeling restless and so goddamn terrified that he would not find the right words to convince her that she had it all wrong.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered. “What you told me now…I realize how I’ve been unfair to you. Now, I know…I love you, Keanne.”

“NO!”

“Yes,” he said just as fiercely. “I love you – probably as long as you have loved me, but a part of me couldn’t face it. You were too young and I wanted to give you a chance to grow up and know your mind before you became mine. All these years, I was especially hard on you because I wanted – I needed…Keanne, I goddamn needed and need you now to be strong because only a strong woman could love someone like me.”

She shook her head. “You’re lying!”

“I love you! I’m not lying when I---”

“How can you say you love me when I saw that your phone was full of photos of Lilac? And that you were late yesterday – oh God, while I was waiting for you to come, you were on the phone with her for hours!” The pain was so great she felt like she was suffocating in it.

Inside Keanne, her heart was breaking and she wondered if the tearing sensation would ever stop. “You told me that you hadn’t talked to her, but you did,” she wept in accusation. “You did! You talked to her almost every day so tell me – TELL ME,” she screamed. “Tell me how you can say that you don’t love her when you talked to her more than you talked to me?”

“It’s not like that.” He could no longer bear the separation between them. Jason stalked to her side and pulled her into his arms, ignoring her struggles. She sobbed against his chest even as her fists weakly beat his shoulders.

He stroked her back, every tear that fell from her eyes no less painful than a whip striking his chest. The wounds of betrayal he himself caused were still bleeding and he knew they would continue to bleed until he found a way to make it up to the girl who had loved him selflessly since the very beginning.

“I know you won’t believe me,” he said hoarsely, “but now everything’s much clearer. I saw you in Lilac and because she was available and you were…not…I fell for her. I fell for her because she reminded me of what you could be when you were old enough – someone so strong you were able to overcome your past and not be cynical or hard like Nick or me.”

“With Lilac, I’m in control. With you, I’m not, and that was another reason I made myself believe I loved her.”

But she didn’t speak, only crying in his arms, her sobs sounding like they came from the deepest part of her. He had hurt her that much.

“Keanne, please,” he whispered hoarsely. “Please…”

When she struggled to be released, this time he let her go. Her eyes were red and swollen when they met his. “You’re right,” she told him dully. “I don’t believe you.”





Chapter Fifteen





“You tell me you’re not melodramatic like me, cherié, and yet here you are. Just to forget the man you are in love with, you dropped out of school and flew halfway across the world to lick your wounds.”

Amie Summers’ teasing words caused Keanne to look up with a grimace. They were on one of the stone benches facing the vineyards, the afternoon sun creating a seemingly magical effect on the half-finished sketch in front of her.

“Sometimes, I wonder if you really are on my side and not on his.”

“I am on the side of true love, mon bebe. I always was.”