by L. B. Dunbar
Chapter 23
Wind Knocked Out
[Pam]
After we exit the shower, Jacob slips into bed behind me. It’s our final night in New York and my thoughts bounce all over the place. What we’ve done. What he’s said. Where will we go next? He curls me into him and murmurs final words to me.
“I feel so alive with you, Lilac. I’m becoming addicted to that feeling.”
I smile to myself, stroking over his arm around my waist. He tightens his hold on me, pressing soft kisses at the nape of my neck.
“Heaven,” he whispers as he inhales and quickly slips into sleep. However, I lay awake for a long time, wound up from his touch and his words. I want to believe all he says. I want it so much it almost hurts. I’d no longer be the one without a partner at my side. I’d no longer be the token single woman. I’d no longer be holding all these feelings inside me, but I can’t say Jacob’s committing to being more.
In the morning, I wake alone but not surprised. Our flight leaves midmorning, and we need to pack. Ethan and Ella are on our flight, and we’re a mixture of chatter and laughter as we exit into Jacob’s hallway. He’s holding my hand, not shy before his sister and her boyfriend. He even kissed me openly, in front of them, when I came down the stairs. My cheeks flamed, but it was so nice to be recognized by him before them. He was making a statement.
I’m his.
But as we near the elevator, the doors open, and a woman growing all too familiar steps out.
“Now what?” Ella mutters as we each stand still with our suitcases.
“We’re just leaving,” Jacob snaps, holding his eyes forward as he nods for all us to enter the elevator. He’s still holding my hand, clutching at it.
“I need to talk to you,” Mandi says, her voice low, almost broken. She looks different this morning, younger without layers of makeup, and her dark hair pulled up into a ponytail. Ethan takes my suitcase from under my hand and enters the elevator. His hand holds the door open, and I step forward, still holding Jacob's hand. His hold tightens on my fingers.
“This can’t wait, Jakey,” she says, and I cringe at the nickname. Jacob looks equally put off by it and takes a step forward, but her hand settles on his forearm. Time seems to stand still as Jacob stops. “Jacob, don’t make me say this in front of them.”
Her eyes peer upward, devoid of emotion. While Jacob stares at Mandi, I observe him, his body tense, his eyes bright. He next glances at Ethan, something transpiring quickly between them.
“I’m not doing this anymore with you, Mandi.” Jacob turns to move away from her, his arm dropping, so she releases him. We both step forward, almost crossing the elevator entrance when Mandi speaks.
“I’m pregnant.”
Our hands drop as Jacob spins to face Mandi.
“Bullshit,” Jacob spits, leaning toward her. The elevator alarm starts to ring as Ethan’s been holding the door too long.
And my heart drops to my feet, like the plummet of the lift waiting for us.
“Even for you, this is the lowest of lows,” Jacob hisses at her.
“It’s true. I have the doctor’s report to prove it.”
“It can’t be mine,” he states, rubbing a hand over his head, but all I see is frustration and a twinge of something else. “You know I don’t want them.”
The comment hits hard, but it’s almost the ultimate way to keep him. She got pregnant on their trip even though he told me he wasn’t with her. They had sex then, and he lied to me.
I step into the elevator, the motion reminding Jacob, I’m standing here, witnessing this shitshow.
He turns to me as I enter the box.
“Lilac,” he whispers. “You know this isn’t true.”
I fight the pull to look at him, but then I decide he needs to look me in the eye. I don’t know what to believe.
“You’re it,” he says again to me, but he’s still standing outside the elevator, and I’m inside.
“Listen to your heart,” I remind him. Ethan’s hands slip from the door as the annoying blare continues to drown the silence between us, and the doors slide close.
Without Jacob.
+ + +
His silence is deafening. He doesn’t make the flight, and he doesn’t respond to any texts of concern other than one to his sister.
Sad eyes meet mine as she says, “He says to go on without him.” Ethan wraps his arm around my shoulder, but I shrug him off. I don’t want his touch. I don’t want anyone to touch me. I’m suffocating under my thoughts.
“I need a minute,” I warn them both, briskly walking to the restroom as my stomach roils. I’m thankful there isn’t a line as I fall into a stall and heave, although there’s nothing in my stomach. There’s nothing inside me but disbelief.
How had this happened to me again? How had another man in my life chosen the other woman? Then again, I was the other woman. I was the second one, the runner-up. My hands plaster against the stall walls as I bend over the toilet, heaving once again.
When I finally return to a waiting Ethan and Ella, they’re in line to board the plane, and Ella wrings her hands, watching me. “He doesn’t love her.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? She’s having his baby.”
Ethan shakes his head. “I don’t believe her.”
“I don’t think it matters what we believe. He stayed with her.” I take a deep breath. “As he should, right? He’s going to be a father with another woman.”
I glance at my phone one final time, for some sick reason, and hate that there isn’t a message from Jacob. I hate that I want there to be one. He’s a complicated man, and I’ve been holding out for him for too long without reason or promises. Just waiting.
My thumb moves to the side of my phone, and I power it off.
+ + +
Jacob: I didn’t want to do this by text, but you aren’t answering me.
Jacob: She’s lying, and I can prove it.
Jacob: Please. Don’t give up on me.
Jacob: On us.
Jacob: Lilac?
Jacob: My heart.
Jacob: I can’t let you go.
Jacob: I need you.
I stare at the words once I power on my phone on Monday morning. I’ve just pulled into the parking lot at Mae’s, and as I need the phone for work, I don’t have a choice but to turn it on. The texts light up the message app, and as much as I don’t want to look, my eyes are pulled to his words as they’ve always been with his writing.
My finger hovers over a response, but my heart holds me back. Jacob has needed me for years. He’s told me over and over again—in concerns of his writing, in needs for his home—but it’s never been me directly. He’s never wanted me. Sure, he wanted sex, and we have that pull to one another that was finally acted upon, but I’m not the girl for him.
The monster demands a mate.
He has one now, and as much as he says he can’t let me go, he’ll need to. She’ll give him the baby he claims he doesn’t want. Jacob will not deny his responsibility. He’s felt guilty for his sister’s condition, so he’ll step up for Mandi.
Before I exit my car as I’m parked in the lot at Mae’s staring at line after line of text, I have only two words for Jacob.
Me: I quit.
Finding strength I don’t feel, I enter Mae’s Flower Shop. We share an office, and our desks sit at right angles, each under a window providing us a view of the large garden center. I’m seated in my chair when I’m accosted by Mae’s jovial voice.
“Spill,” Mae calls out, dropping into her seat. “Tell me every sordid detail. I want positions and poses. He rocked your world, didn’t he? Tell me everything. I’m living vicariously through you.” Her enthusiasm would be catching if it weren’t for my breaking heart.
“It wasn’t like that,” I state, swiveling in my chair as I turn to face her. He rocked my world but not in ways she might imagine.
“What happened?” she asks, slowly leaning forward in her desk chair.
“Who’s Mandi?”
“His girlfriend.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mae’s expression morphs to shock as her mouth hangs open, and her eyes widen. “The one he wasn’t going to marry? Now he’s having a child with her?”
Hearing it said aloud is like an arrow through the heart. “Yep.” I reach forward to straighten a few things on my desk, which don’t need straightening.
“Pam?” she questions.
“I’m okay,” I state, shrugging a shoulder.
“You are not okay. You’ve been in love with the mystery man for years. How did this happen?” she asks. Taking a deep breath, I back up and tell her about his vacation with Mandi and Jacob’s declaration not to marry her or anyone. If I do some basic math, it doesn’t add up that she’d know she’s pregnant within weeks, so it had to have happened before their vacation together. Perhaps New Year’s when he was in New York with her, and I started another year alone.
“I’m so sorry. What’s he going to do?”
“I don’t know, and it’s not my concern,” I lie as it’s all I’ve been thinking about for twenty-four hours. After arriving home from a day of travel, I finally allowed myself the breakdown I needed. I folded onto my bed and cried. Waking up this morning, I found myself still in my clothes from the day before, and I refused to be that girl. The girl I once was when Brendan and I fell apart. I curled into myself, hating myself, and walked through the motions of each day for months. I can’t go back to that person.
“You don’t mean that,” Mae hesitantly states.
“I quit.”
Taken aback, Mae blinks several times as she sits straighter in her seat. “You what?”
“I can’t keep going back for more with that man. We had sex, and we shouldn’t have. My heart was already too involved.” Heartbreak was inevitable, I’d told her a few weeks ago.
Mae reaches out for my hand, and as much as I don’t want any human touch, I accept her comforting fingers. “You’ll get through this,” she says, encouraging me as she knows what I’ve already been through with Brendan. I nod, but my heart disagrees. Tears blur my vision.
“I don’t want to cry,” I whisper, and Mae releases my hand to flap hers before her face.
“Okay. Okay, there’s no crying at the flower shop. Only happy thoughts,” she teases, but she doesn’t believe her words any more than her saying them. “Drinks tonight. That’s a happy thought.”
Mae isn’t wrong, and we find ourselves at Town Tavern on a Monday where cheeseburgers are their specialty. I’m so hungry I could eat three of them when I hardly finish half of one on a typical night. To my surprise, my sister, Tricia, and Leon enter the bar.
“Hey,” Tricia says, nearing our booth. I’d invite her to sit with us, but I can’t handle happy. Glancing from Leon to Tricia, their fingers entwined and rings on each of their left hands, I just can’t deal with their happily ever after tonight. Instead, I want to get drunk off my ass kind of happy. “How was New York?”
I groan, and Mae shakes her head. Tricia’s face falls. “What happened?”
It’s a familiar question, one I answered over and over and over again when Brendan and I broke up. People who heard we were engaged, assumed we were married, or those who knew we fell apart wondered what happened. At least this time, it won’t be the entire town that knows my plight. Just my family and Mae.
“He…” Suddenly, I don’t feel like telling Jacob’s tale. It isn’t my place to spread his situation to others, and honestly, it makes me feel like even more of a fool for falling in love with an unobtainable man. “It just isn’t going to happen for us.”
Tricia skeptically eyes me for a second. “Leon and I were in Traverse City looking at baby things the other day.” Her voice lowers on both his name and the future baby. “We saw Spencer Campbell. Remember him? He had the biggest crush on you in high school.”
Mae’s brow arches as she knowingly gazes at me over the table. What she knows is Spencer asked me out, and I went to New York with Jacob instead.
“He said he’s been trying to connect with you. Saw you here a few weeks ago and wanted to see you again.”
Both Mae’s brows lift, and I’m curious why the man is telling my sister he wants to see me.
“Maybe you should call him. You know, see where it goes.”
“Maybe,” I state.
While I appreciate my sister trying to play matchmaker, I also don’t. She knows I’ve had feelings for Jacob for years, even if I didn’t discuss him much. It won’t be so easy to give him up. I recall how less than two weeks ago, we sat in this bar where he kissed me before my family, making a statement to them about who I was to him. They even had that freaking bet going, which Ethan won, claiming he knew Jacob had fallen for me. Ethan knows nothing about literature, so he doesn’t realize it’s always the angel who falls and never the villains.
My chest pinches at the thought. Jacob isn’t evil, just misguided. He’s been hurt and never looked at the source, initiating and encouraging the same kind of abuse in adult relationships. I feel sorry for him when I shouldn’t feel anything for him.
“Okay, well, be safe tonight,” Tricia breaks into my thoughts and smiles at Mae before excusing herself.
“Maybe she’s right. You should call this Spencer guy. Get back in the saddle as they say,” Mae teases once my sister and her happily ever after walk away.
“Who is ‘they’ and why does it have to be a ‘saddle’?” I joke.
“Whatcha want? A Harley? The point is to get anything between those thighs that would rev them up again.”
I laugh. “I’m not ready, Mae.”
“Honey, you’ve been ready for years. You got sidetracked.”
Sidetracked, I want to snort. More like waylaid. It’s been eleven years since Brendan. There’s a reason I’ve been single for so long. I suffered from a fear of opening my heart. Maybe my interest in Jacob was because he was unobtainable. I didn’t have to worry about losing him because I never had him. But then I let him have a taste, and like a victim to the vampire, I can’t seem to walk away from my monster, falling deeper and deeper under his spell. Falling until he’s sucked me dry.
My phone lays on the table, and before I know it, Mae has it in her hand, tapping at the screen and holding it to her ear. Then she passes it to me, and a deep masculine voice says, “Hello.”
“Spencer?” I question, narrowing my eyes at her. “I’m so sorry, could you give me a minute?”
He laughs while he says he can wait, and I cover the receiver, glaring at my friend. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Okay, maybe he doesn’t have a horse or a Harley, but he runs an adventure shop. I’m sure he has something to put the wind back in your sails.” Mae’s idioms are not lost on me, but I don’t appreciate them.
“Or maybe you could put the wind back in his.” She sets her lips around the straw of her drink, imitating what she means, and I can’t help but laugh a little for the first time in two days. Shaking my head, I excuse myself and walk to the back of the bar to speak with Spencer.
+ + +
Near the end of the week, I absentmindedly answer my phone from an unknown caller.
“Hello?”
“Pam Carter?” The stern feminine voice surprises me. It’s not an automated system sound or even the crinkle of a telemarketer calling.
“May I ask who’s calling?”
“This is Theresa McTigue, Jacob’s agent.” My heart races at the thought his agent is calling me.
“Is everything alright?” I hate that my first concern is something happened to Jacob directly. I’ve already lived through that night of concern when his Corvette kissed a tree. He could have died that night, and it caught up to me days later when I buried my father. Jacob could have died that same night.
“I understand you’ve quit, Jacob, but I was wondering if you could do us a huge favor.” I immediately did not like the sound
of things. I’d been doing Jacob’s bidding for too long.
“Did something happen to him?” I question, frustration filling my voice more than concern. Obviously, something happened to him. I wonder if his agent knows about Mandi.
“Typically, I wouldn’t discuss a client’s personal life with someone outside our agency, but Jacob is special to me, and I know how important you are to him as well. He’s been admitted to alcohol treatment for thirty days.”
My breath catches. “Is he okay?”
“He will be. By now, you know of the scandal with that ridiculous woman. Our legal team is investigating, but in the meantime, Jacob fell apart. He threatened to quit writing, and I had to intervene. He’s our star.” She’d said the same thing when I met her at our meeting last week. Had it only been a week? I’d lived another life in the past few days. I wasn’t feeling well again, and I attributed it all to stress.
“I’m so sorry, but I’m so glad he reached out to you for help.” I wish he’d reached out to me, but perhaps I couldn’t help him. Maybe I’d been part of the problem. I rarely mentioned my concerns for his drinking until recently. Maybe I’ve let it pass for too long.
“He didn’t have a choice. After calling me drunk, threatening to quit, I went to his apartment. I’ve never seen him like this.” I don’t know how well she knows her client or how often she’s seen him outside the business setting, but it’s apparent she cares about him and knows enough about him to call Mandi ridiculous.
“But he okay?”
“He will be.”
We both sit in silence a second.
“So what can I do for you?”
“We’d like you to keep up his social media accounts. Continue to run his reader group. Just the usual without anything unusual, and we’ll try to keep the Mandi thing out of the press as long as we can. You’ll continue to be compensated, of course.”
I take a deep breath. “You know, Ms. McTigue, I don’t really do it for the money.”
“It’s Theresa, and I know,” she says, letting the words soak in. “That’s why I’m asking you to continue doing it, even though you told Jacob you quit.”
