Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Instead of wiping the wet towels over his face, he began wiping them over mine. His touch was gentle, and his eyes followed his fingers as if he was afraid of missing a spot. The intimate act made my internal pain both better and worse at the same time.
Upon finishing, I remained where I was as JJ quickly wiped down his own face. At one point, he sent me a small, sheepish smile, like he too couldn’t make sense of how we’d ended up standing in front of a dingy mirror in an even dingier bathroom looking rumpled and tousled like we’d been engaging in a good kind of physical encounter instead of a bad one.
“I have a lot of things I need to say to you, Cass, but I don’t want to do it here. I know that you don’t want to be near me anymore and I accept that and want to respect it, but I don’t want to say goodbye like this,” JJ said as he motioned to the spot where we’d been unleashing our emotions on one another.
Despite all the warning bells going off in my head and the vow I’d taken to stay away from JJ in a last-ditch effort to not have to experience the pain of losing him for a third time, I simply nodded. Truth was that the man standing before me wasn’t the same person who’d told me I needed to let the old JJ go. His doubts and insecurities still consumed him, but he hadn’t been afraid to stand up to me, and now he was asking to do the mature thing and end whatever this thing was between us the right way.
He’d been right about not being the same person that I’d started seeing two years ago, but he’d been wrong about me needing to mourn that JJ. The reality was that I’d only had enough time to get to know bits and pieces of that JJ before he’d been taken from me. I’d seen glimpses of the current JJ in the one who’d nearly died in my arms. He’d had passion two years ago but now I knew he was also passionate. He’d been shy and reserved two years ago, but I saw those same qualities now too. The man he’d been had been forced to adjust to the man he’d become. I might have experienced love at first sight two years earlier, but I now understood what being in love really meant. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that whether it had happened two years ago or yesterday, it was the same thing. I was in love with JJ.
Period.
End of statement.
There were no caveats, no conditions, no concessions.
I would always love JJ, but it was like I’d said. Being around him wasn’t safe for me. It would be too easy to give myself over to the man and whether I lost him to another tragedy, or he walked away when he finally realized he couldn’t build a life with a man he’d pitied, the outcome would be the same.
I ignored the warning bells in my head that were telling me I was about to make yet another terrible mistake that would leave me with even fewer pieces of myself and gave JJ a quick nod. His unmasked relief relit the ember of warmth within me—the one that had been snuffed out the moment JJ had told me to let him go during our last encounter at the cabin. As I remembered how I’d begged him not to leave me, all the warmth fled my body.
Losing that warmth gave me the control I needed to now make it possible for me to function like the soldier I’d been. Confident, distant, efficient.
When JJ slowly took several steps back from me, I knew I was mentally back where I needed to be. I could hold myself together while he said his piece and then he’d walk out of my life for good and I’d start trying to figure out how to put myself back together again.
“Do you have somewhere we can go? Sully’s not really going to be in the best frame of mind right now and chances are that if we don’t go soon, his guys will find us,” JJ asked, his voice stiff.
“My mother’s parents left her a houseboat in Ventura Harbor. That’s where I’ve been staying since we—”
I stopped abruptly when I realized what I’d been about to say. “I’ve been staying there,” I said curtly.
JJ nodded.
My stomach tightened into dozens of painful knots when JJ moved to the door and unlocked it. He pulled the gun he’d stashed in his waistband at the small of his back and turned the safety off. Although it was absolutely the most inopportune moment to be thinking about it, I was both proud and a little turned on by how confidently he held the weapon. I’d already drawn my own gun but didn’t try and move past JJ despite my desperate need to be the first one to clear the area outside the door and around the park.