“No prenuptial, not telling your family the truth,” she concluded slowly. “You are one devious bastard.”
“I know, sweetheart,” he said, his voice low. “I’m sorry.”
“This…love you feel, it’s not a very truthful emotion,” she said finally. “You’ve said I don’t know how to trust men, but how have you helped in that?”
“I haven’t,” he admitted. “I realized that and that’s why I’m here.”
Kelsey shook her head as if dazed, but her face was still angry. “What do you want from me, Jared?”
He took a breath, saying “I love you so much, I’ve been dying since you left. I realized I’ve been…afraid to tell you all this. You’re right about my manipulation. I haven’t trusted you. All this time, I was hoping to teach you to trust me, trust what we have together. And yet I held back myself.”
“But, now you want…?”
“I want what I’ve always wanted,” he said, the words rough. “I want you.”
“But for me, nothing is…changed,” she said in a suffocated voice. “You’ve just proved me right about…a lot of things.”
He shook his head slowly. “If I’d sent you more flowers, carted in loads of jewelry, that would be the same manipulative pattern, Kelsey. But I’m not doing those things. I’m not using your father or your sister or your mother to get you to come back to me. Instead, I’m doing something completely different. I’m just asking.”
Kelsey looked at him, her face for once unreadable.
“But,” he said, “I only want you if you can love me in return.”
She was silent for a long moment.
“Think about it,” he finally recommended, making himself turn toward the door. “Think about it and let me know, if you want to take a risk on us.”
***
“Kelsey,” Doug said, “you know I love you. I always have.”
Sitting awkwardly on the couch in her sister’s living room, Kelsey didn’t know what to say.
“I think you’re a very strong woman,” Doug continued earnestly.
“Get real,” Kelsey said, staring at him in disbelief. “You’ve spent years trying to protect me.”
It was Doug’s turn to be awkward. “Yes, but that was more about me than you. I had a hero complex and you got cast in the role of damsel in distress.”
Not knowing how to respond, Kelsey was silent, listening to her sister moving around in the kitchen preparing dinner. Why had she let them talk her into coming over tonight? She was lousy company. Even at work, she kept replaying the things Jared had said to her, kept hearing him say, “I love you so much I feel like I’m dying.”
Just thinking about him left her plagued with longing and filled with fear. He represented everything she’d vowed to avoid, the trap she’d feared most—and he’d deliberately set out to lure her into loving him.
Of course, the problem wasn’t in loving, but in the losing that inevitably followed.
“Couldn’t you just talk to him, Kels?” Doug asked, breaking in on her ever-present abstraction.
She glared at her best friend. “I don’t know what to say to him.”
“Tell him how you feel,” Doug encouraged.
Kelsey snapped, “I’m furious with him.”
“Okay,” Doug said carefully, “that’s a start.”
“I’m so angry with him,” she raged, fear and anger rolling over her like a wave, “I want to do him bodily harm.”
“So tell him,” Doug recommended, smiling faintly. “Tell him anything you want. If he really cares, he’ll listen.”
***
Kelsey battled back a wave of panic, thinking about Doug’s words the night before.
Staring blankly at the photo layout on her desk, she tried to catch her breath and sort through the myriad thoughts in her head. She’d seen so much sorrow in her mother’s life, all spent on broken relationships that supposedly sprang from love.
Jared had said he’d known from the beginning that she was afraid to love and still he’d come after her with the purpose of making her fall head over heels in love with him. He had pursued her, tried deliberately to draw her into the very emotion she’d safely skirted.
Before him, she’d thought she had fallen in love with several men, but looking back those episodes seemed more like playing house than real love.
Drawing in a sobbing breath, Kelsey told herself she was glad she hadn’t told him she loved him. It would have given him even more power to hurt her. He already had greater influence over her heart than she wanted, just by the virtue of her feelings for him.