Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 88207 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88207 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“I know what you’re saying, Mom.” Jake was a good man. A caring man. And God, I missed him. I also loved this moment, having this conversation with my mom. “Are you ready to go?”
Mom chuckled. “Okay. I’ll mind my own business.”
We were driving back to my apartment, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Jake, about what my mom said, about Saturday night, about everything. When I pulled into a parking spot, I didn’t turn off the car. “Mom, I…”
“Go on. I don’t want you to be like me. I was angry at your father for days before he passed. I was stubborn and didn’t speak to him because he wasn’t doing what I wanted him to do, and then he died. It’s one of my biggest regrets—that I didn’t tell him I loved him. That the last words we spoke were in anger. One would have thought I’d learned that lesson, but I didn’t, not until coming here and talking to you.”
“He knew you loved him.”
“He still needed to hear it,” she said, the same thing I’d told her about myself. Mom leaned over, kissed my cheek, and got out of the car.
Ridiculously, my hands were shaking as I drove to Jake’s house. I didn’t know what would happen when I got there. I just knew I needed to see him, needed to tell him how I felt.
I was even more nervous when I got out of the car at his house, when I knocked on the door. His truck was out front, and I knew he would have gotten home from work not long ago.
A moment later, he pulled the door open. He was wearing basketball shorts and a T-shirt, his hair wet, probably just having gotten out of the shower.
My words caught in my throat and my heart pounded as we stood there looking at each other.
“Hey,” Jake finally said.
“Hi. Can I come in?”
“Of course.” Jake stepped aside, and I went.
The second he had the door closed, we turned to face each other. “I’m sorry,” we said simultaneously, then chuckled.
“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” Jake lifted his hand as if to cup my cheek, then dropped it, as though unsure he was allowed. That one gesture reinforced everything I already knew about him.
“We are.” I reached over and twined our fingers together. I loved the feel of my smaller hand in his. With a gentle tug, I headed toward the couch, and Jake followed.
“I think I need to explain my reactions from the other night.”
“I get it. I overstepped—”
“We both could have done things differently,” I told him. “These past couple of months with you have been the happiest of my life. It sparked something inside me I’d been searching for and didn’t know it. I started to come into my own in ways I never thought I would, started wanting to be…more, if that makes sense. I don’t know. It’s just…I spent my life letting other people control me in some ways, and I can’t even blame them, because I allowed it. I didn’t see my own strength, and now, now I do. Saturday night I was feeling so high, after the lake house and getting my apartment, and…I don’t know, owning my sexuality or sexual appeal in ways I’d never allowed myself to. I felt so high, and then that guy, he tried to make me feel small again, tried to take my control and make me feel weak. A month ago I would have let him, and I would have wanted someone to step in, but something hit me then—if I’d let him make me feel small, I would have continued to feel that way. I needed to deal with it myself. I know you were trying to help, but…”
“By stepping in, I made you feel small too. Like I didn’t believe in you or trust in you. Like you needed me.”
In that moment, everything inside me relaxed, and I felt seen. Jake got it. Jake got me. “Yes. And I know that’s not what you meant. You’re such a good man. I don’t know if I would be where I am if I hadn’t met you, and God, I want you, so much, but I can’t need you. When I tried telling you I could handle it and you didn’t listen, it told me you thought I couldn’t.”
“I didn’t mean that. Christ, Seth. I think you’re one of the bravest people I know. I…I don’t know what came over me. I think the drinking is a trigger for me because of my dad—he was always drunk when he hurt my mom. When I was coming into the club, I saw some drunk dude being hauled out, and it rattled me. And then that guy kept hanging around you all night with a drink in his hand. I saw him touch you, and all I could think was I couldn’t let someone else I love get hurt.”