Stevie took a large gulp of the amber liquid in her glass. ‘Yep, not a word from him for a month. I’m done. No more.’ She shook her head and made a swiping motion with her hands, spilling a little of her drink as she did so.
To his credit, David did actually look pissed off on her behalf. ‘Shit. Why would he do that again? I don’t get it. What is the guy’s problem?’
‘Not a clue. At first I guessed something major like…I don’t know…an illegitimate child just based on the reaction he had to the letter I found, but the more I think about it, the more I think he wouldn’t have cheated on me back then. We adored each other. And we spent so much time together, plus he’s a crap liar and I would’ve known something was up, so your guess is as good as mine.’
He shook his head. ‘So what are you going to do if he comes back?’
Sadness washed over her as she stared into the bottom of her glass. ‘I’ll be his friend, but I’m done with the rest. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t stand thinking that he’ll run every time there’s a problem. And to be honest, it was going nowhere anyway. He’ll be going back to Scotland eventually, and I’ll be staying here. Long distance relationships don’t work. It doesn’t matter how much you love someone, resentment always rears its ugly head, followed by suspicion and jealousy, or worse than that, boredom. That’s not how I want to live my life.’
David placed his hand on hers. ‘If ever you need a friend or if ever you feel like dating again, I’m here.’ He smiled and squeezed gently.
She smiled back but pulled her hand away, knowing that it wasn’t going to happen between them. She liked him, despite his arrogance and the fact that he acted older than his years. But it wasn’t a romantic connection. Never would be. She refused to lead him on.
A while later, Stevie arrived home by cab, escorted by David. He had insisted on taking her home even though it was quite out of his way. It was around midnight. Through her blurred Jack Daniels induced alco-vision, she thought she could see a figure sitting on her doorstep. She rubbed her eyes and looked again, but the figure appeared to still be there.
David leaned forward. ‘Shit. Is that who I think it is?’ he asked as he paid the cab driver.
‘Depends who you think it is,’ Stevie slurred with a giggle.
He squinted his eyes in the darkness. ‘I think… I think it’s Jason Reynolds.’
She stopped in her tracks as the realisation hit and his words sank in. ‘Then you would appear to be right,’ she said almost disbelieving it her herself.
David huffed. ‘Awww, crap. I suppose I’ll be going home then?’
Without taking her eyes off Jason, she replied, ‘I think perhaps it’s best. Sorry, David.’
Despite the amount of alcohol she had imbibed, and it had been a lot, Stevie suddenly felt very sober.
‘If he gives you trouble, you just call me!’ David shouted loud enough for the whole street to hear before he closed the cab door, mumbling to himself about stupid exes turning up unannounced. The cab pulled away down the street and disappeared into the night as she slowly concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and shakily walked towards Jason.
He stood, looking sheepish as she approached. ‘Hi…I…I have some explaining to do. Can I come in?’
She sighed heavily. ‘You can come in for ten minutes, and then that’s it. I’ll be your friend, but other than that, it’s best if we… I’m not going there with you again. I’m sure you can understand.’
Jason dropped his gaze to his boots. ‘Yeah, I understand.’
She unlocked her front door with remarkable ease considering an attack of nervous energy and the level of alcohol in her bloodstream. Jason followed her inside.
Throwing her bag onto the sofa, she turned to him, suddenly feeling incensed. ‘You leave for over a month, you don’t contact me at all during that time, I receive no explanation, and then you turn up here? I should kick you out, Jason. I should tell you to fuck off out of my life!’ Tears stung at her eyes, and her chest heaved as she pointed to the door.
He held up his hands as he walked towards her. ‘Please, let me explain to you now… Things have been crazy… I didn’t know what the hell to do.’
‘So you thought, ‘I know, I’ll fuck off and leave everyone wondering…AGAIN!’ Is that it?’
He stepped towards her again. ‘No, that’s not it at all. I swear, Stevie.’
She jabbed her finger at him aggressively. ‘Don’t come any fucking closer, Jason. I don’t want you anymore. I’m not forgiving you again. Please leave. I can’t do this now. Please just go.’ Tears of anger over spilled from her eyes as she stared at him, hating him for making her swear.
Jason took the final step to close the remaining gap between them and gripped her arms. ‘You don’t mean that.’ His brow was furrowed, as he fixed his penetrating gaze on her. The pain she saw there was mirrored in the soul deep ache inside of her.
She turned away, feeling far too vulnerable under his scrutiny. ‘Yes…yes I do. Please just go and leave me alone. I’m not some toy you can pick up and put down whenever the fuck you please.’ When his grip on her tightened, she turned back to glare at him. ‘I said GO!’ Still he didn’t release her, and so she pounded at his chest with her fists. ‘You can’t keep doing this! You can’t keep leaving and then expecting me to just be fine when you choose to come back! It’s not fair! It’s cruel!’
He backed her up against the wall and pressed into her so that she could no longer hit him. ‘I can explain if you’ll stop swearing, shouting, and hitting me, and just for once listen!’ His chest heaved and brushed hers as his hot breath made her face tingle. She suddenly became hyper aware of every inch of his hard body pressed up against hers. He wanted her. Still.
‘Jason…please…just leave.’ Her voice was calmer this time, but her eyes focussed on his mouth. As if taking the look as an invitation, he crushed his lips into hers. At first she resisted his aggressive kiss, pushing at his chest with her own and bracing against his grip, but after only a few seconds, she opened her mouth to allow access to his tongue. His hands that were pinning her arms to the wall, relaxed, and he slid one around to cup her bottom as the other fisted in her hair. She kissed him back with anger and ferocity. The anger aimed at herself for her weakness where he was concerned. She could taste the salt water of her own tears in the kiss.
Her hands grasped at his jacket, pulling him closer until he lifted her legs so that she could wrap them around him. The hard ridge of his arousal pressed at her sensitive place and she was ready to rip at the clothing that caused a barrier between them, but instead she pulled her mouth away. ‘Jason, stop. I can’t keep doing this. I keep letting you into my heart and I can’t do that anymore. You’re breaking me. I need to defend myself and my heart against you.’ More hot tears trailed slowly down her already damp face.
His brow creased, and he closed his eyes for a second as he clenched his jaw. When he opened his eyes again he shook his head and the sadness evident in his eyes was almost palpable. Lifting a shaking hand he stroked his thumb across the apple of her cheek. ‘Stevie, I belong in your heart and you know it. Just like you belong in mine. Don’t keep me out…please.’
‘But we keep going round and round in circles. This is a lose-lose situation. Nothing ever changes. No conclusions are ever reached.’ She turned her face away.
‘There’s only one conclusion to reach. We belong together. That’s it. I love you and I know I messed up, but we do belong together. We need each other. I need you, Stevie. I belong in here.’ He covered her heart with his palm as he spoke through gritted teeth. His desperate words brought her attention back to his eyes. His desperation was evident there too.
She came to her senses. ‘No…no…I need to breathe. I need some space. It’s too much. Please…please leave. I can’t do this right now. I’ve been drinking and my head is messed up.’
He placed her down and cupped her cheek, rubbing his thumb to catch a stray tear. Then, appea
ring resigned, he turned and walked towards the door. ‘I’m staying in the same place as last time. When you’re ready to listen to me, please come over. So much has happened, Stevie. I need to tell you about it all, and I am sorry for how badly I handled all of this…again. I guess I need to learn how to deal with my emotions better. I…I hope you’ll help me.’ He opened the door and left.
Stevie collapsed to the floor with an aching heart, placed her head in her hands, and began to sob.
Chapter Eight
When Stevie awoke the next morning her head pounded as if her brain was trying to escape her skull by the use of a pickaxe. She staggered to the bathroom as a wave of nausea washed over her. After retching over the toilet a few times, she sat on the side of the bath, reached to turn on the shower, and tried to gather herself. The room filled with steam as she stripped out of her underwear and eased herself inside. Hot water battered her aching muscles, and she finally began to relax. As the tension ebbed away, so too did her headache. Once she was washed and feeling a little more human again, she dried her skin and dressed in a long red and white summer skirt and white tank top.
Coffee…coffee is what I need.
She tramped down to the kitchen and set a pot of the magic elixir brewing whilst she ate a plain, dry croissant in the hope it would settle her stomach. She knew that she had to see Jason today, and the thought of that made her stomach lurch yet again. She gulped down her coffee and grabbed her car keys. Best just to get it out of the way. Rip off that Band-Aid, Stevie.
She drove across town, taking the short cuts that would help her avoid the busiest areas of London and pulled up outside the Sure Stay hotel at ten o’clock. Making her way through a large group of tourists, she finally reached the harassed looking receptionist. ‘Excuse me, could you tell me which room a Mr. Jason Reynolds is staying in, please?’
‘Certainly. I’ll need to ring and announce that you’re here. What name shall I say is visiting, please?’
Stevie’s nostrils flared and she breathed in a deep, annoyed breath. This hadn’t been the case last time she had come to see him here. Gritting her teeth, she said, ‘Tell him it’s Stevie.’
The heavily made up woman frowned at her. ‘Stevie?’ The word was spoken as if it tasted bad, and she had to bite back a nasty retort.
Instead she rolled her eyes and sighed heavily. ‘That’s what I said, yes.’
The receptionist dialled Jason’s room and announced her arrival. She cleared her throat and addressed Stevie again. ‘He asked would you prefer that he meet you down in the bar or would you like to go up?’
‘Tell him I’ll go up.’ After the receptionist relayed the message and Stevie acquired the room number, she made her way to the elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. Once the doors opened, she walked down the long corridor and with every step wondered what awaited her once she arrived at Jason’s room. Her deep breath did little to calm her jangling nerves as she plucked up the courage to finally knock.
As if Jason had been waiting and watching her through the spy hole, the door opened immediately, and he pulled her into his arms before she could protest. Being pressed against his hard chest didn’t help her resolve at all, and she struggled to break free. He held her at arms-length, his lips in a hard line.
Closing her eyes, she whispered, ‘Please let go of me, Jason.’ He stepped back and freed her from his grip. He appeared to be tired but so, so handsome. His long, shaggy hair was loose around his shoulders, and his tight white T-shirt showcased the sculpted body beneath. She swallowed hard wishing that she didn’t desire him quite so much. Things would be far less complicated if she didn’t.
He walked over to the bed and sat, leaning his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. ‘You’re not going to believe what’s happened, Stevie.’ His voice was croaky as he spoke. He looked up to where she stood frozen near the doorway. ‘Come and sit down, please?’
Recovering the use of her legs, she reluctantly walked over to a chair in front of the desk in the corner. Avoiding being near him was the best idea, but he clearly didn’t like it as he came and crouched before her.
He rested one arm on her thigh and tilted her chin so that they made eye contact. ‘You’re avoiding touching me. You can’t even seem to look at me.’
She snorted. ‘What do you expect? Just tell me what you have to say, and then I can go.’
His eyes saddened. ‘Yesterday, you said you’d be my friend. Today, you don’t seem to even want that.’
‘I’m still hurting, Jason. To be abandoned once is bad enough. But for it to happen again… I don’t know what you expect me to do or how you expect me to react.’
‘The letter you found at my mum’s house…it contained some…pretty life changing information.’
Before she could think she blurted, ‘You have a child with someone else, don’t you?’
Jason’s face scrunched in disgust and he stood. ‘What? No! How the hell did you come to that conclusion?’
‘That photo with the letter I found at your mum and dad’s…I saw it. It was of you with another woman. She seemed familiar, but I haven’t quite figured out where I knew her from. She wasn’t at our school. But you clearly had an affair, and your mum was telling you the girl had your child, wasn’t she?’ Her fists clenched along with her jaw, and her stomach roiled as the words fell from her lips.
A smile spread across Jason’s face. ‘Oh, I get it. I get why you’re so touchy.’ He crouched before her again. ‘The man in the photo wasn’t me. And the woman seemed familiar because it was my mum.’
Stevie was finding it hard to get her head around what he was saying. ‘So who was the man? He looked like you did when you left ten years ago.’
‘I know. Uncanny resemblance, isn’t it? The man in the photo was my dad.’
She folded her arms over her chest in a defensive gesture as anger surfaced again. ‘Erm…no, Jason. I know your dad, and that man was nothing like him. Even I’m not that gullible.’
‘Stevie, he was my real dad. My birth dad. My mum was pregnant with the child of her first love when she met my…when she met Mick. He knew she was pregnant but asked her to marry him and said he would look after both Mum and me. But things didn’t go smoothly for them.’
Her stomach plummeted. ‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘There were terrible complications at the birth which rendered my mum infertile. She almost died too.’
With a spinning mind, she tried to understand what he was telling her. ‘Hang on…hang on. You’re making this up. This is just lies, Jason. It doesn’t make sense. It’s too…too dramatic and unrealistic.’ She scrunched her brow and shook her head. ‘How the hell do you expect me to believe your mum was infertile after you when she had Dillon?’
‘Listen, Stevie, that’s what I’m getting to. Mick had wanted children of his own, but thanks to me being born and my mum ending up infertile, he couldn’t have that. They adopted Dillon a couple of years later, but he blamed me for the fact that he was left unable to father his own children with Mum.’
Her jaw dropped, and she struggled to find the right words. ‘Oh my God. Dillon is adopted? And Mick wanted…and that’s why—’
‘Yes, that’s why he resented me so much. Everything fell into place once I knew. But as you can imagine my brain went into complete meltdown. I couldn’t get my head around any of it. I know I handled things badly, but please try to understand what reading all of that did to me.’
She nodded, still reeling from the news. She couldn’t speak for a few minutes as the new information whirred around her head. After a silence, she asked, ‘So what happened after you left the house? Where did you go?’
He exhaled noisily. ‘I went to try to clear my head and re-read my letter. And then I went to see someone mentioned in the letter, a lady named Delia. Stevie, she’s my grandmother. I have a living grandmother.’ His eyes were glassy as he spoke, and her heart clenched in her chest.
Her voice dr
opped to just above a whisper. ‘Did she tell you where your father is?’
‘She went one better than that. She gave me his address. I put Dorcas in charge for a while longer up at Wild Front Here and jumped on the next available flight to America. He actually lives in a little place called Sebago, in Maine, in the USA. I met him.’
She gasped as tears formed in her eyes. ‘Was he aware of you all these years?’
‘No. He had no idea I even existed, so you can imagine the shock when I turned up literally on his doorstep. But we talked, and I showed him the letter and photos. He was brilliant. I look just like him, and I have two more brothers, Josh and Elliot.’ His enthusiasm and excitement were almost palpable. Yet again, she felt her heart melt once she heard his reasoning.
‘Wow…you have a whole new family, Jason…that’s…wonderful.’
‘It really is. They just accepted me. I couldn’t believe it. Any of it. I stayed with them for a few weeks and just needed to get my head straight on everything else.’
His apparent disregard for Dillon's place in the situation suddenly affronted her. ‘And what about Dillon in all of this? He has a right to know, yet you didn’t think for a minute that speaking to him would be a good idea?’ She frowned. ‘You jumped on a plane to sort your own life out? And you never thought that a simple text to me would be a good idea? I’m happy for you, Jason. I really am, but poor Dillon. What this will do to him…and to not tell me…after everything else.’
He seemed annoyed. His brow scrunched again, forming a line between them. ‘I’m telling you now.’
‘But why could you not tell me before you left? After everything we’ve been through since we reconnected… We were so close. You should’ve spoken to Dillon first, and then I should’ve been the next person you wanted to tell. It goes to show that you and I are not meant to be. As I said I’m happy for you, but I can’t keep playing this guessing game. And as we both know, eventually we’ll both have to get back to our respective lives. I think it’s best that we keep things platonic from now. It’s the right thing for both of us. I’m sure of that.’
Reasons to Stay Page 7
