Worth It All(86)

Jake walked her around to the passenger side, but she turned to face him when he would have opened the door. Their eyes met and without words they came together in a heart-wrenching kiss. She held on to him, relishing his familiar touch, his taste. But there was something different in it and also in Jake’s eyes when he lifted his head.

“I needed that,” he said softly.

“Me too.” Holding on to his shoulders, she held his gaze, searching. She was having a hard enough time deciding what she needed to do. It made it ten times worse not knowing exactly where he stood. It scared her. She took a shuddering breath and let it out. “Hannah called me earlier.” There. She said it.

Jake let out a deep breath of his own, like he’d been holding it in, but his expression gave away nothing. “Really?”

“Yeah. She talked to me about coming back to Freedom Farm to work.” She stared at him, not blinking, not even breathing. “She said she’d talked to you.”

He nodded and the muscles bunched in his jaw. “Yeah. She did. I didn’t get all the details.”

“But you thought it was a good idea?” Maybe he was just trying to be nice to Hannah. Or maybe he wasn’t sure about them, so he didn’t want to hold her back from an opportunity. But would she let herself be held back? Could she even consider it, choosing what a big part of her wanted to do over what she needed to do? What she should do?

“Sure. It’s a great opportunity, right?” He moved to stand beside her, leaning back against the door.

“Yes. But it’s really far away.” He didn’t say anything and she peeked at his face. Still couldn’t read him. “If it worked out, I’d have way better hours and more time with Casey. I could go on field trips, maybe even be class mom.”

He smiled softly down at her. “You’d make a good class mom.”

And you’d make a good class dad.

She wanted so badly to ask, But what about us? Should I stay here and continue to…date you? Sleep with you? Let Casey get closer to you? And then what?

But that all sounded a lot like she was asking him to make her promises he wasn’t ready to make. She didn’t want it to be like that. And if he wasn’t ready to make them, then it only made sense for her to go and give it a chance. She felt something inside her unraveling.

He’d been backed into a corner by a girl before. Plus there was that little thing about her wanting to take care of herself and her daughter and make the right and responsible decisions. Would Jake be disappointed in her if she backed away from that now? Would she be disappointed in herself?

He held her hand while she told him more about it. What her work would entail and where they would live. “I’m shocked she would ask me to do this, that she would trust me enough or think I’d be good at it.”

“Of course you’d be good at it, Paige. You’d be good at anything you did. And she does trust you. I think that has a lot to do with it.”

She nodded. “I want to be good at something. I want to do something more.” She wanted to be more like Jake and have accomplishments she could be proud of. Be someone Jake would be proud of.

“She’s not exactly offering me a job, it’s more like a trial. Although she insists on paying me. I don’t know. I don’t even know if I could get off work.”

“But you probably could.”

“Yeah. I probably could.”

“Hey.” He came to stand in front of her again and rubbed his thumb gently between her brows. “Don’t think so hard.”

She searched his eyes for…something. Clarity, maybe. Some sign that taking this chance to be something more was the right thing. Her chest squeezed, her lungs constricted to the point she had to focus to take a deep breath.

“So you think I should go?”

“Yes.” He didn’t even pause. “It could be a dream job. If nothing else, it’s what? Another week? Ten days? Casey will get to ride and you’ll be getting paid.”

True. But she wasn’t thinking about the money so much. She was thinking about the man.

He took her face in his hands, rubbed his thumbs under her eyes, catching a tear before it fell. “Don’t worry. You’ll go, you’ll see what it’s like, and then you’ll make a decision.”

She curled her fingers around his wrists, feeling like her heart was breaking. “Okay.”

The next day and a half crawled by. JT tried his best to concentrate on work and checked in with Lynn. Then he’d lain awake all night telling himself Virginia was only a plane ride away. That hadn’t helped so he’d switched to calling himself all kinds of idiot for even telling Hannah to offer the job. He could have said no. He could have continued like he was, convinced her he loved her and that being with him, letting him take care of her, was a good move. And he would have hated himself.