by Violet Duke
No. Hell, no. He wasn’t going to live his life that way; he wasn’t going to simply accept feeling like he didn’t deserve it all, like he was somehow unworthy. He’d been made to feel that enough by his parents fourteen years ago. He wouldn’t stand by and accept it ever again. Even if it meant losing the woman he wanted to be a part of his life for the long haul. Because what kind of life would that be? Conditional love and acceptance?
No. Just no.
“Jake, just let me talk to her—”
“Don’t you dare interfere or confess or do anything stupid like that. I didn’t go through juvie to have you make it all unnecessary by some grand gesture. Give me your word, right now. Swear to me that you won’t tell Emma.”
Silence. And then: “I swear I won’t.”
“Or Daryn and Haley, either.”
Their siblings deserved not to have to discover that everything they thought they knew was wrong. God knew that fire affected their lives, too. Daryn, being not that much younger than him, had had to live in Jake’s tarnished shadows all through high school. And Haley, the same age as Megan and Emma’s deceased brother. She’d had it the roughest since her classmates had gotten killed and injured because of that fire.
Thankfully Carter had another call come in, saving Jake from having to talk about this more tonight. He wanted to focus on one issue at a time.
After hanging up, Jake tossed his phone on the dashboard and leaned his head against the seat. Since Emma and Megan were having a girls’ night, he’d planned on doing a couple of weeks of piled-up laundry as his big evening activity, but the shoe shop owner next to Emma’s bakery had needed some help with some new storage racks, which had ended up taking hours. With it being close to midnight now, he was beat, and not looking forward to the drive back to the city. I’ll just close my eyes for a few minutes . . .
“So it wasn’t you who caused the fire?” came a small voice from just outside his truck.
Holy shit.
Jake looked out of his partially open window.
And found Emma standing right outside on the dark, deserted sidewalk with a small box of cupcakes in her hands and a look of horrified confusion on her face.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Don’t.” Emma held up her hand to stop Jake from explaining the second he hopped out of his truck. She’d heard only part of the conversation, but it was enough. “You don’t need to tell me who that was. I actually don’t want to know. Because I don’t want to have hate for another person.” She stared at his tortured expression. “And I would. Hate whoever you were just talking to. Whatever coward allowed you to suffer the punishments for actions that weren’t yours.”
“Emma, he didn’t—”
She held up a second hand and just shut her eyes. Attempted to get her shaky breathing under control as she tried to process what she’d just overheard.
He wasn’t the one responsible for that fire. Jake had been innocent this entire time.
Everyone involved had been condemning the wrong man all this time.
Even her.
There was only a single thought echoing a thousand times in her head in response, and it fell from her lips on a broken whisper. “I am so sorry, Jake.”
She couldn’t even begin to describe the expression twisting across Jake’s features at the moment, but the resolute, almost horrified anguish in his voice was abundantly clear when he nearly shouted, “Don’t ever, ever . . .” His jaw locked tight as a tremor shook his entire frame. “Emma, you have absolutely nothing to apologize for. I don’t ever want to hear you say sorry to me. Not for that night.”
“But you’ve been living with all of us blaming you for something you didn’t even do.”
“And that’s a choice I made with my eyes wide-open, sweetheart.”
She didn’t want to ask. All the same she couldn’t stop the question from tumbling out. “Why? I don’t need or even want you to tell me who was on the other end of that call. But I don’t know that I’ll ever stop wondering why. Why you would put yourself through all that for someone else?”
Jake’s wrecked gaze drifted back up to the sky.
“Were you . . . protecting that person?” Emma shook her head at the absurdity of her even asking that; of course he’d been protecting that other person.
While she’d long held the belief that Megan had the purest heart of anyone she knew, more and more she was realizing that Jake’s was assuredly the strongest.
She’d mistaken that strength for kindness until now. But a kind person wouldn’t put himself in the path of a bullet intended for another. A person who had Jake’s type of strength, on the other hand, would. Because it took an indomitable strength to be able to hope for survival in even the most unlikely situations, to be able to believe that the person whose life you were sparing was destined to live that life to the fullest.
In this, Jake was so much stronger than she could ever hope to be. Not just because he’d taken the fall for someone else’s crime, that life-altering bullet intended for another. But because he’d survived where others might not have.
Because he’d taken on an infinite load of suffering so others didn’t have to.
She laid a gentle hand over his heart until he met her gaze again. “You didn’t just do it to protect that one person.” A look of surprise flickered in his eyes before a dark cloud fell over them, even stormier than before. “You did it to keep your father from dragging it out—didn’t you? You absorbed the brunt of it so you could spare everyone around you. Around me.”
Another slow realization dawned on her.
“You’ve been punishing yourself. You’re still punishing yourself.”
He flinched. “Emma, you of all people know better than anyone the answer to that question. And just as important, you know the reason why.”
She nodded. He took her hand and swiftly tugged her over to the bakery.
Without bothering to flip on the lights after she let them in, he turned to her and started in on the very conversation she’d been trying to avoid for the past few weeks.
“Then say it. Out loud, Emma. Say the words we both know to be true. Even though I didn’t set the fire, even though you know that I didn’t set the fire now, admit out loud that you still feel the same way you did that night.”
Emma shook her head, not wanting to make that admission, even as she felt the helpless tears sliding down her cheeks.
Jake broke his gaze away and said it for them, in a tone bleeding with pain. “I may not have been responsible for the fire, but I was still responsible for your brother’s death.”
“I’m so sorry, Emma.”
He’d never had a chance to tell her that back then. Neither of their families’ lawyers would let him.
His apology now seemed insanely, insultingly inadequate. And it simply reminded him why he hadn’t been able to say the words to her that night when she’d first figured out he hadn’t been able to save her little brother. Why a thousand unmailed letters to her had sat under his mattress in juvie.
Why he had one more apology to give her now.
“I’m sorry for not being strong enough to stop what’s been happening between us these past few weeks.”
Her tear-filled gaze snapped up to his. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that. Because I’m not.”
God, his heart wanted to believe that. More than it wanted its next heartbeat. “We have to talk about this.”
“Why? Why do we have to? It’s been fourteen years. And we’re happy. You make me happier than I ever remember being.”
“Sweetheart, you make me happier than I ever thought I could be.” His words held such vehement truth, it sounded more like a whispered benediction than a mere statement.
Her tremulous smile tugged at the tangled chords of emotions in his chest until he couldn’t feel one emotion without tripping over another. He wasn’t sure if he could survive losing her again.
But he had to do what was right.
You save o
ne, and I’ll save the other.
Jake thought about that promise he’d made her that night.
That night had been the scariest of his life. Over the year, he’d replayed it over and over again. He’d asked the juvie shrink he’d been assigned to if he’d made the right decision. He’d asked the cop who’d taken his statement. He’d asked one of the firefighters who’d been called in to testify at his trial.
They’d all said the same thing.
They couldn’t tell him if what he did was right or wrong. Just that what he did had saved two lives. They kept telling him to look at it that way: he’d saved two lives.
Not that he’d killed one in the process.
Jake had broken his promise to Emma that night. And her little brother, Peyton, had died as a result.
He constantly thought about that promise he’d made. Whenever anything bad happened, those words would resound in his head like a reminder of the biggest failure of his life. The most devastating.
That same reminder popped up even more so when something good happened.
And Emma was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
He shut his eyes for one more turbulent heartbeat, and every moment of their time together the past few weeks hit him square in the heart.
She was everything good in his life rolled into a beautiful gift he knew he didn’t deserve. But he couldn’t stop wanting her. Hoping beyond hope that he could keep her.
It was time.
“Those three floral pendants you wear. Can I ask you about them?” He nodded at the three dainty gold chains she always wore, each a different length and style, and each with a different floral pendant charm.
Sometimes he’d catch her staring off into space, thinking, and she’d reach up to touch one of the pendants. It would be as if she was seeking a specific one of the three. A calm look would then settle over her features when she found it.
And it drove him crazy every time.
“You always touch them when you’re lost in thought,” he continued. Just like she was doing now. “I’ve spent every spare minute I’ve had for weeks on end trying to figure out their significance, which was difficult because while I recognized the daffodil and the tulip pendants, I had no clue what the third flower was.”
“Hyacinth,” she said softly. “And the reason why I wear them is because all three flowers represent forgiveness. But in different ways. And for different stages in my life.”
Her smile was filled with some emotion between happiness and sadness that he couldn’t quite decipher. “I’ve had the charms for years now. I actually got the hyacinth first, not long after the fire, because I read somewhere that you give hyacinths when you want to tell someone you’re sorry, because they represent sorrow and deep remorse.” She touched the pendant on the shortest chain gently. “I hold this pendant whenever I think about Peyton. Sometimes I’ll be out and about and I’ll see something—a kid on a bike that reminds me of him, or a roly-poly puppy that I know Peyton would’ve loved. That’s usually when you see me holding the pendant. Because I’m giving him a hyacinth in heaven. To seek forgiveness.”
She held up the other two. “The daffodil and the tulip I actually got right after college. Here in Juniper Hills, in fact.” She blinked in surprise. “I almost forgot about that. While I was out researching places that Megan and I could move to, I found this little town, and they were having a craft fair the day I visited. Turns out the designer of my hyacinth pendant had carved two others, as well. These two. And she told me all about them. How those flowers also represent forgiveness. Since I already had a pendant, I didn’t buy the others. But after Megan and I moved here, I saw the jewelry artist again. And I bought both pendants.”
Jake looked at the two pendants she was now holding. “One for you and one for Megan?”
Emma shook her head. “I think maybe at the time I may have bought them with that in mind. Three siblings, three pendants. But even from the beginning, when I started wearing all three pendants together, only the hyacinth represented a person for me.” She chuckled. “I think the other two were just pretty.”
“But they mean something to you now?”
“Over time. The tulip’s significance sort of grew slowly for me. After the bakery was up and running and I was finally in the black. After I got settled here and really felt at home, that’s when I thought more about what the jewelry artist had told me. About how the white tulip represented forgiveness, yes, but also a fresh start. So I guess the tulip sort of became my personal talisman after that.”
Finally, she ran her thumb across the pendant on the longest gold chain. “This one . . . this one I didn’t have any special attachments for until recently.” Lifting her gaze up to meet his, she said softly, “Not until that first day I saw you standing in my bakery.” With a shaky sigh, she admitted, “I think I kind of fought that one, frankly. Because it started happening unconsciously. I would think of you and then naturally reach for this pendant. I didn’t even realize I was doing it until Megan pointed it out. That’s when I began analyzing what might have been going on in my subconscious. And sometimes, especially when you were being particularly annoying, I’d purposely stop myself from holding the daffodil pendant.”
Stunned, he stared at the pendant she was now affectionately tracing with her finger. “Are you saying that last pendant represents me?” That was the absolute last thing he’d expected to hear.
“Believe me—I was shocked, too. But the more I started thinking about how the jewelry artist had described the daffodil, I could see why my subconscious was linking you to it in my mind. It’s actually pretty similar to the tulip in that it’s a symbol of forgiveness and a sort of rebirth, but the woman had specifically told me that the daffodil has also long been thought to represent happiness and chivalry.” She chewed on her bottom lip and shook her head slightly. “I think that’s why I fought it in the beginning. Because it was almost . . . too perfect a fit. And it also scared me. To have you just waltz back into my life out of the clear blue sky fourteen years later, and then suddenly have this significant connection to one of my pendants. I reasoned that I couldn’t allow the pendant to get attached to you because after you left, I’d never be able to wear it again.”
Exhaling heavily, she added, “But I figured out soon enough that I was scared I was getting attached. Not just to you but to what you and that third pendant represented in my life, past and present.” She released the dainty pendant and looked up at him again. “I just wasn’t ready. And a part of me couldn’t believe it was possible.”
He didn’t dare hope. But he couldn’t simply hold his heart in his hand and wonder, either. “Do you forgive me, Emma?”
“Jake, stop,” she begged.
“I have to know. We both do. Have you forgiven me for what happened that night?”
The look in her eyes gave him the answer before she uttered a word.
Emma wished so badly that she did forgive him, but she knew without a doubt in her mind that she didn’t. She didn’t, couldn’t forgive him. She didn’t blame him, of course, not for the fire, or even for Peyton dying. Not really.
But what she did blame him for was the real thing that had been torturing her heart all these years. The part of the night that even Megan didn’t know about.
“I don’t know that I can forgive you, Jake,” she whispered raggedly.
She gripped his hand and held it firmly against her face, afraid the truth would steal him away from her.
But he didn’t pull away. In fact, he pulled her closer, tugged her into his arms, and allowed her to collapse against him. His arms tightened like steel bands around her. And she clung to that, wished for it to be enough to keep all the rest of it away.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay if you can’t forgive me.”
The weight of his words slammed into her like a punishing wave. “It isn’t fair.” She clutched his shirt in her hands, not wanting to let go.
A warm, calloused hand cupp
ed her cheek, and she leaned into his touch, not wanting to lose it.
“You save one, and I’ll save the other,” he uttered in a raw, tortured whisper.
And just like that, she was back there in the fire that night. The night her home and family went up in flames. Emma staggered back a step and clutched at her heart.
“That’s the promise I made you that night in the fire. The promise you trusted me to fulfill. The promise that made you make the hardest decision you’d ever had to make. That’s what you can’t forgive . . . isn’t it?”
He was right.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was the one thing he’d told her, promised her while the fire had blazed all around them that night. His words had been the one driving force that had finally propelled Emma to move her lead feet and go save her sister. Only she’d made that decision not knowing what Jake had already figured out.
That they’d be able to save only one of her siblings that night.
Emma felt the tremors shaking her limbs just like she had that night.
That one broken promise.
Replaying it in her head could always bring her right back into that fire like nothing else could. Bring her back to the worst night of her life, where fire as far as the eye could see scorched the very air around her, broiled her alive. Coated every inch of her with fear, stronger than what she’d thought she could overcome.
She was right back there feeling it all again.
Only this time she knew how it would end.
“Jake!”
At first she thought she’d been imagining things, seeing things through the wall of flames and smoke. But his voice came through the fire, loud and clear.
“Emma! Back up as far as you can. I’m coming through.”
He charged through the ring of fire encasing the stairwell, wrapped up in what looked like the living room drapes. He made it to her just as another large section of the ceiling fell, exposing more of the attic and the scary sight of the giant, melting hole in the roof, which was crumbling wider by the second.
