by T. K. Leigh
“When Jessie and I dated, Asher and I spent a fair bit of time together. We had our disagreements. Usually over stupid stuff. But after every single one, we’d apologize by leaving the other an origami dove, our peace offering. No matter what, all would be forgiven.”
I swallow hard through the lump in my throat. For the past month, I’d found solace in the idea that he held onto these doves. But the second I opened this box, all hope of him forgiving me evaporated.
“Asher had given me a copy of his tour book. It has all his travel information. Hotels where they’re staying. Production office address of each venue. So every day this past month, I’ve sent him an origami dove, hoping it would be the day he realized how long I’ve loved him, that the money didn’t change anything, that it was just something that got me to where I was meant to be. So the fact he sent these back…” I shake my head, biting on my lower lip to stop my chin from quivering, the ache of losing him settling deep in my marrow. “There’s no forgiveness coming. He’s done.”
All my friends’ expressions fall. Evie’s own chin quivers. Nora clutches her heart. And Chloe wraps her arms around me, kissing my temple. “Don’t forget what Grams told you.” She meets my eyes.
“What’s that?”
“True love has a habit of coming back.” She gives me a hopeful smile.
I wish I could find even an ounce of hope in my situation. A year ago, I would have been the one instilling hope in her. Hell, I was the one instilling hope in her. Now, I don’t see any way I can make this right. I’ve betrayed Asher’s trust in a way I doubt he’ll ever move past. Without trust, we’re nothing. And now, we are nothing.
“The only thing coming back for me is a lot of lonely nights.” I gesture to all the origami doves.
“I never knew you to give up so easily,” Nora states.
“What choice do I have? I can’t chase after a broken dream.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“How was it, mi amor?” Mama asks as I remove my napkin from my lap, placing it on top of my empty plate.
“You know I love your lasagna. And I told you. You don’t have to cook for me.”
She pushes back from the table, waving me off. “Hush. You’re my daughter.”
“I can cook, too.”
“Don’t even worry about it,” Papa interjects in his deep, booming voice. “Your mother and I are retired. We have nothing but free time on our hands. You work fifty hours a week. Let us take care of you again.”
“I hate depending on you guys.”
“You’re not,” Mama insists. “You’re familia.”
“Plus, you know how your mother is. She doesn’t know how to cook for just two people. You’re doing me a favor by living here and eating all the food she makes.” He pats his stomach, but he’s still in as great a shape as he’s always been, despite the passing of years.
I must admit, it’s been refreshing to be back with my parents these past several weeks. I’m sure the novelty will wear off soon. Hopefully I’ll be in a better place financially by then. My plan is to save everything I can over the next few months, then return every cent I received from Jessie. I’m not doing it to earn Asher’s favor. That ship has sailed. I need to clear my conscience. Then I can finally start my next chapter.
“Since you put it that way, I’m more than happy to help you out, Papa.” I wink.
“I knew I could count on you, Isabella.”
“What are daughters for?”
There’s a brief pause at the table before he says, “Speaking of which… Any more news on figuring out who was behind your birth mother’s disappearance?”
I shake my head. “The FBI had to move resources away from this and to more pressing matters. Ones with more concrete evidence.”
“How did Avery take the news?”
Ever since I announced I wanted to find my birth mother, my parents have supported me completely. More so once I found out her identity and shifted my attention to solving the mystery behind her disappearance.
“She wishes she had come forward sooner with what she knew. She can’t help but think how many girls she could have saved if she had.”
“She had more than just herself to think about. Trust me.” He covers my hand with his. “When you have a child, your focus shifts. You make your decisions with one purpose in mind. Protecting them. If I were in her shoes, I would have done the same thing. As an outsider faced with the decision to save one hundred lives or one, you’d no doubt opt to save a hundred. But when that one life is your child…” His eyes well with tears as he squeezes my hand. “Well, that life is more valuable than even a hundred thousand lives. And I’ll forever be grateful your birth mother thought so, too.”
I stand and walk over to the head of the table, wrapping my arms around him from behind. “Thanks for choosing me.”
“It was never a choice. The second we arrived at the hospital to pick up our new foster and I saw your mother’s eyes light up, I knew you’d never be leaving us.”
The doorbell rings, and I release my hold on him, allowing him to stand to answer the door. He leans down, kissing my temple. “Love you, butterfly.”
“Love you, Papa.”
I watch as he leaves the dining room, then gather the plates together and carry them into the kitchen. “Mama, stop. I’ll clean up,” I say, nudging her away from the sink.
“I can do it.”
“I know you can, but you should go relax with Papa.” I turn on the faucet, rinsing off a dish.
“Isabella, there’s someone here to see you.”
My father’s voice makes me turn and I stiffen, inhaling a sharp breath, the shock of the man standing there causing me to drop the wine glass in my hand, which shatters the second it hits the floor.
“Crap. I’m sorry.” Jessie reacts quickly, lowering himself to his knees to help pick up the shards surrounding my bare feet.
“Don’t you worry about any of this, Jessie dear,” Mama says.
I should hate her use of that term of endearment toward him, especially after I told her everything that transpired between Asher, Jessie, and me. But Mama was always a practical person, able to see both sides of a story with clarity. While she may not have liked how Jessie handled the situation, we did hurt him. We all hurt each other. Every single one of us carries blame with this mess.
Mama shoos him away with the dustpan, and he straightens once he’s certain all the glass has been cleared.
“Do you…” He scrubs a hand through his hair. “Can we talk?”
“Talk?” I cross my arms over my chest. “You did more than enough talking the last time we saw each other, don’t you think?”
“Please, Izzy,” he implores.
I take a minute to survey him. The confident, composed man is nowhere to be seen. Sure, he still wears an impeccable three-piece suit, but he doesn’t carry it as he usually does. There are a few wrinkles in the fabric, his tie loosened. His eyes are bloodshot, dark circles around them. His hair has grown out more than I ever recall him wearing it, and the beginning of a five o’clock shadow is visible along his jawline. This isn’t the same Jessie I dated. Hell, this isn’t even the same Jessie who destroyed everything mere weeks ago.
“You have every right to kick me out. After what I did, I deserve it. I just… I can’t sleep.” He raises his red-rimmed eyes to mine. “I need to make this right.”
I glower at him, wanting to refuse, but I know how it feels. I’ve been in this same place myself these past several weeks. It’s a kind of purgatory I’d never wish on my worst enemies. The only thing that’s kept me from having a breakdown has been the hope that someday Asher York will be no more than someone I used to know. That there won’t be this heart-crushing ache consuming every inch of my body. I have to believe I’ll find my own version of happiness, even if it won’t hold a torch to what I felt with Asher.
“Okay,” I agree reluctantly, then walk through the living room and ou
t the front door, Jessie following close behind.
A gust of wind hits me, splatter from the rain steadily falling dotting my bare arms, causing a shiver to roll through me. It’s not bitter cold, considering it is July, but the rain causes a damp chill to run through me that my tank top doesn’t do much to protect me from. I head to the far end of the covered porch and lower myself onto the swing. Jessie starts to sit beside me, but before he does, he shrugs out of his suit jacket, draping it around my shoulders.
“Same Jessie. Always offering the shirt off your back to a girl in need.”
He smiles a sad smile. “Same Isabella. Never dressing appropriately for the weather.”
I pull my lips between my teeth, a myriad of emotions filling me. Rage. Frustration. Betrayal. Sadness. But also love. Despite it all, I still love Jessie, just not the way I once thought I did.
“Izzy, I—”
“Listen, Jessie,” I say at the same time.
We both pause, then laugh.
“Normally, I’d be all chivalrous and say ladies first, but I can’t do that this time. I need to get this off my chest.”
I give him a subtle nod. He shifts his gaze forward, pulling his lip between his teeth. He doesn’t say anything for several moments, the summer downpour the only sound.
“I fucked up.”
“No,” I interject vehemently. “We did. We never—”
He holds up his hand, cutting me off. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about when we first met.”
“When we first met? I—”
“Do you know why I first approached you?” He runs his hands along his pants, something I’ve rarely seen him do, if ever.
“Because you saw me at a party.”
“That’s only half true. I did see you at that party. But that was after Asher had already told me about you.”
“About me?”
“Not by name, but he’d mentioned a girl who’d been at a few of his gigs. Asked me to come down to the club one night as moral support. That he was going to perform a song he’d written for this girl who’d caught his eye.” He chuckles slightly as his gaze shines with nostalgia. “Said he hadn’t even spoken to her. Didn’t even know her name. I thought he was crazy, thought no one in their right mind would go through all that trouble for someone they’d never spoken to.” He swallows hard, turning his head toward me. “When I saw the look on Asher’s face as he admired you that first time he performed ‘Amante’, I knew he wasn’t just a horny twenty-something-year-old who wrote a song to impress a girl in the hopes of getting laid. It was more than that, deeper than that. But that still didn’t stop me.”
“Stop you from what?” I ask timidly.
He hangs his head, his shoulders falling. Then he returns his eyes to mine. “Seeking you out. At first, I was more curious than anything. But… I don’t know…” The corners of his mouth curve into a smile. “I saw you sitting all alone outside the rugby house in forty-degree weather and couldn’t not offer you my jacket. So I did. Then I—”
“Asked why I wasn’t inside partaking in drunken debauchery like everyone else.”
He nods. “To which you responded you had absolutely no desire to be around hormone-crazed teenagers who concocted some strange variation of Never Have I Ever and Spin the Bottle as an excuse to hook up.” He chuckles. “You went on this whole tirade. How if you were interested in someone, you wouldn’t go through the trouble of making up some game so you could get laid. That you’d approach them and tell them.”
Laughter rolls through me as I peer into the distance, recalling that night. “You sat with me for hours. When my roommate finally reappeared from whatever room she’d been hooking up in, you refused to let me get into the car with her. Offered to drive us back to the dorm.”
“I almost didn’t,” he confesses. “I knew I should walk away right then and there. Knew what I was about to do would kill Asher if he found out. Granted, he’d never pointed you out to me, but I knew you were the one he wrote about. I saw the way he looked at you. So I kept telling myself it was just a ride home.”
“And it was. You were a complete gentleman.”
“Nothing I did was something a gentleman would do. Asher and I have always had a standing agreement. Never fall for the same girl. If we learned we thought the same girl was hot, we’d both walk away. Made a promise to each other that our relationship was more important than any piece of ass. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“Despite that promise, do you know what I did?”
Remaining mute, I shake my head.
“I told him not to talk to you yet.”
“And your reason for that?” My words come out shaky.
He lifts his remorseful gaze to mine, his lips a tight line. “To give me more time with you. I wasn’t stupid. I’m still not. I couldn’t compete with Asher. I’ve never been able to. Once girls realized he played guitar and could sing, I was no longer of any interest. Just once, I wanted the girl. It sounds immature now, but all my life, I’ve felt like I was living in Asher’s shadow. Mom and Dad always told everyone how gifted he was with his music. Then there was me. What could they say? ‘Oh, Jessie. He really knows how to punch those numbers into a calculator’?”
“Is that why you never wanted to go to the club with me? Because Asher would see us together?”
He slowly nods. “And why I waited to introduce you to my family. But I figured our annual Thanksgiving dinner up at Grams’ place would be the perfect way to do that. I’d have a buffer between Asher and me in case he realized what I’d done.”
I stare forward, seeing that first Thanksgiving through a different lens now that I know the truth. That he only started dating me as some adolescent competition with his brother.
“That night…,” I murmur, then look at Jessie. “Do you remember what you told me right before we went inside?”
He licks his lips, his Adam’s apple bobbing in a hard swallow. “That I loved you.”
“Did you mean it? Or did you only say that because of what you knew was about to happen?”
“I wish I could tell you I love you more fiercely than I’ve ever loved anyone, but I can’t. I did love you, still do, but my love has never measured up to what you deserve. It’s juvenile. I see that now. But all I cared about was finally having something he didn’t. Something I knew he wanted.”
I nod, swallowing hard through the thickness in my throat. “And when you proposed?”
This shouldn’t matter. But it’s not me I hurt for. It’s Asher. This doesn’t sound like the actions of the man I promised to marry. Jessie always seemed mature beyond his years. I knew him to be somewhat manipulative, but I’d written that off as him being a great negotiator. I never could have imagined he’d be capable of this level of deception. And to his own brother.
“I only did that because you two were spending so much time together at Grams’ lake house. You didn’t even come up to bed with me. You stayed up all night with Asher. You guys had a bond, a connection. I saw it the first time I brought you home and introduced you to him. But that summer, I felt you slipping farther and farther away. Toward him. So I proposed.”
“Even though you didn’t love me like you should have.”
He nods. “Even though I didn’t love you like I should have,” he repeats. “And I’m so sorry. I lied to you for years.”
“I lied to you, too. I made you think you broke my heart, that it was your fault we broke up, when in reality…”
“You were in love with Asher.”
“Nothing you said or did would have kept me yours,” I explain.
“I think we both know you were never mine.” He pinches his lips into a tight line. “And that’s why I’m here. To fix this.”
“I’m not sure anything can ever fix this,” I exhale.
“I need to at least try.”
“What do you mean?”
He stands, then smiles down at me. “There are a couple backstage passes in th
e inside pocket.” He nods to the jacket he draped around my shoulders. “We’re playing up in Boston tomorrow night. I penciled in a fifteen-minute interview with a member of the ‘press’,” he explains, using air quotes.
Pulling back the jacket, I reach into the inside pocket. Sure enough, there are two laminated passes. I raise myself to my feet, brows scrunched. “I don’t understand. You want me to talk to Asher? After everything, I thought you’d be happy if I never saw him again.”
He threads his fingers through his hair, then looks up at the night sky before returning his eyes to mine. “At first, I was. But my happiness came at the price of Asher’s.”
“Does he know?” I ask in a quiet voice. “The truth about how you met me?”
“He does now. The guilt ate away at me. So, after watching him mope around for a week, I finally told him.”
I expel a breath. “Yet he still sent back the origami doves.”
“I think he’s confused. And hurt. Maybe…” He sucks in his lower lip. “Maybe he needs to see you again. The choice is yours, Iz. I wanted to give you the opportunity. What you do with it is up to you.”
“So are you guys… Are you okay?”
“Asher and me?”
I nod.
“We’ll be okay. It’s not the same, but we’re sorting it out.”
“You’re still his manager?”
“He said it was up to me. But we both know there’s no one else out there who cares about him like I do.” He lowers his voice. “Except for you.”
I force a smile, straightening my spine. “I’m glad you were able to work things out.”
“We were. We are. Now I need to fix us.” He gestures between our bodies. “And the two of you. Hopefully it’s not too late for that.”
Chapter Forty
“Nervous?” Nora asks as we make our way through the arena in Boston, following the directions Jessie gave me toward the backstage dressing room area. I’m not sure I would have done this if she hadn’t agreed to come with me as moral support.
