“Don’t even say that. We will work this out.”
“But, if he doesn’t . . . Mason’s a good guy, Em. Any girl would be lucky to have him.”
Chapter Nineteen
Jay
The crack in the ceiling was growing wider. The next time it rained, it was definitely going to leak. Jay shut his eyes and tilted his head back against the couch cushions. He’d have to borrow a bucket from work. There really wasn’t a whole hell of a lot else he could do about it.
Sitting there, slumped and exhausted, he watched the steam rise from the cracked mug sitting on the table in front of him. The stupid-ass heart shaped handle was too small for him to squeeze his fingers through, so he had to wait until it cooled enough for him to touch the mug itself before he could drink his coffee. Yet he continued to use it every single morning. All week he’d been sipping lukewarm coffee as some kind of repentance for what he’d done to Em. To himself.
She’d never actually answered him aloud, but he’d asked her to go and she’d gone. He hadn’t seen her since. How much clearer of an answer did he need? Mostly that had been his fault, though. He’d been actively avoiding her as much as possible, swapping shifts and even calling in sick once simply because the thought of being in the same room as her, but not being with her, came very close to making him ill.
He was weak at the core. If she looked at him with those sad, sweet eyes again and begged him to come back, he wasn’t sure he could resist. Hurting her—even for her own good—had been agony. He’d never hated someone more than himself in that moment, and he wasn’t strong enough to go through it again. So, he hadn’t given her the chance.
Until today. No one could cover for him and calling in on a Friday night was out of the question. Bart would fire him for sure.
Seeing her again was like flipping a switch in his brain, bringing the light rushing back into his world. But, how long can light be absent from your life before any at all will burn you?
Jay tried to keep himself busy. Too busy to notice the way she flitted around the dining room. Too busy to notice the way she was chatting it up with Mason Locklier. Too busy to notice that she didn’t seem to notice him at all. It was a Friday night, it should have been easy. It wasn’t.
Every five seconds he caught himself watching her. She looked beautiful. Definitely one of Ashlyn’s outfits. And way more form fitting than anything Em normally wore. Despite their agreement, neither she nor Ash had been by the house to pack up her things. He knew it was stupid—that it would have to happen, eventually—but he was pathetically grateful for the clothes still hanging in her side of the closet, her pink toothbrush in the bathroom, the pillow that still smelled like her.
When their shift ended and he watched Mason help Em into his truck, Jay had to forcibly remind himself that this was what he wanted, what he’d asked from her. Didn’t make it hurt any less, though.
***
“Come on. Come on.” The truck turned over after almost a solid minute’s worth of coaxing and Jay breathed a sigh of relief. One more day accomplished.
He alternated warming his frozen hands between his thighs on the drive home. The temperatures were still dropping below freezing at night, but he couldn’t waste the extra gas it would take to run the heater. He was almost on E as it was and he still had the rest of the weekend to get through. The frostbite would be a lot worse if he had to walk to and from work.
As soon as he turned into the drive, Jay shoved his hands in his pockets and headed for the house, looking forward to nothing more than a hot shower and a warm bed. The front step creaked under his boot. It was coming loose, and Jay added it to the mental list of shit he needed to take care of. Someday. Along with repairing the truck, and doing something about that ever-growing hole in the ceiling, and changing the locks, and fixing the leak in the bathroom sink, and about a million other things. Home ownership was a major pain in the ass. Most days, it felt like an endless losing battle. But then again, so did everything else in his life, so why should this be any different?
Collecting the mail, he sorted through it as he kicked off his shoes and coat, weeding out the junk. Unfortunately, there wasn’t as much as usual, which meant all the more bills to deal with.
It was, undeniably, one of those days. The kind where the last thing you want to do is waste your money on a lotto ticket. Where absolutely nothing goes the way you want it to. Which was why, when the doorbell rang just as Jay was about to get into that shower he’d been craving, he wasn’t the least bit surprised by who he found standing on the porch.
“What the hell do you want?”