Next to Never (Fall Away #4.5)

“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m doing great. I’m a managing partner of the accounting firm now, and I . . .” I laughed at myself, kind of embarrassed, “I got it in my head that I’d try to run a half marathon next spring, so I’m trying to get in shape.”

Actually, anything to keep me busy. Anything to keep me from being bored and thinking too much.

Jase held my eyes, and drew in a deep breath.

“And you?” I asked. “How’ve you been?”

But he didn’t seem to hear me. His hand drifted toward me and reached my neck, and I stilled as his thumb rubbed at a spot there.

His chest rose and fell in heavy breaths, and he seemed mesmerized. Pulling his hand away, he rubbed his thumb over his fingers, staring at it. “Grease,” he explained.

Flutters hit my stomach, but I steeled myself.

It will never be over. I heard his words in my head. I blinked long and hard.

No.

Opening my eyes, I forced a smile and returned the favor, giving him a once-over and taking in his blue cargo shorts and white polo shirt.

“What are you wearing?” I asked.

His eyebrows pinched together in confusion, and he looked down at his clothes. “Nothing. It’s just a . . . golf polo, I guess.”

“You don’t golf.”

“Things could’ve changed,” he shot back, joking with me. “Why? You don’t like it? I’m told it’s fashionable.”

“It’s not.”

I turned around and scanned the clothing, sifting through the coveralls and aprons, finding the T-shirt selection. I knew Jase owned T-shirts, but they were the sixty-five-dollar kind from Ralph Lauren.

Picking up a gray one that probably only cost ten bucks, I tossed it to him.

“Your shoulders are one of your best features,” I told him. “Keep it simple. Women don’t want a man who looks like he’d screw them on twenty-four-hundred-dollar sheets, Jase.” I mocked. “They want a man who looks like he’d bend them over a kitchen table.”

His eyebrow shot up, and all of a sudden he didn’t look nervous anymore.

“Remember,” I taunted. “They marry the lawyer. They screw the plumber.”

He laughed, but his eyes turned heated, and he took a step forward, looking like he’d just been challenged and he was accepting.

“Is that right?” he responded. “Because I seem to remember someone saying how good those sheets felt on her twenty-first birthday.” And then he shrugged. “But I guess that was my imagination.”

I offered him a nervous smile and began retreating as he inched into my space. Yeah, I shouldn’t have joked with him about this. Maybe we could be civil for our sons’ sakes, but moving up to banter had escalated things too fast. Those sheets had felt great, but I wasn’t ready to remember that right now.

We stood chest to chest, everything from so long ago flooding back to swamp me. His eyes hovering down over me, his smell, the heat of his body . . .

“It comes back so easily, doesn’t it?” I mused.

He stared down at me. “It never left.”

Reaching out, he held my face in his hand. “I’ve dialed your number thousands of times,” he whispered. “And every time I forced myself to hang up, I wanted to fucking break everything around me.”

He leaned in, his shaky, hot breath falling on my lips.

But I turned my head. “I can’t.”

“I know.” He hovered over my mouth.

And then he dropped his eyes, a hint of sadness in them. “I’ll always love you, Kat.”

I nodded, feeling old tears well up. “I know.” I pulled away, forcing a weak smile. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have teased you. Old habits die hard, I guess.”

But not too hard.

I paid for my items and left the store, still feeling the heartbreak, but reassured that I was finally strong enough to walk away.

• • •

Jase . . .

The rain pummeled my windshield as I sat in my car, outside her house. Madoc had gone home to work on his car, and I’d been driving around, cruising every street except for Fall Away Lane. I couldn’t stand to be home. I didn’t want to see my office, my bed, or all the photos on the wall of a fictitious life I’d invented. All the pictures of me smiling through the lies I’d been living for forty-two years.

Stepping out my car, I walked through the downpour, not caring that I was getting drenched as I climbed the steps of her porch.

This was supposed to be my house. The house I was going to live in when I married her, and if I’d had the guts to do what I wanted to do from the moment she was nineteen and slapped me in the face, calling me an asshole, we’d be here with a house full of kids, and I wouldn’t hate myself so much.

Sacrifices and decisions aren’t hard for good people. For selfish ones like me, they’re hard until they’re no longer yours to make.

For people like me, we don’t truly realize what we want until the choice is taken away. Only then do we know.

I knocked on the door, a knot in my throat as I waited for her to answer. When the door opened, though, it was Jared looking at me. Dressed in a black hoodie and flipping his keys around his fingers as a little Boston terrier stood at his feet, he looked up at me with interest.

“Hey,” he said. “Madoc’s not here.”

“Yes, I know. I’m not looking for Madoc.”

His eyes narrowed on me, and I immediately wanted to shrink. I didn’t know how he did that, but I half expected him to back me up out the door and send me on my way.