Twenty-Four Hours (Shattered Boundaries Book 1)

by Anthony, Carolyn

  Call it woman’s intuition, but Eve sat up straighter and focused on his body language. Her instincts screamed that there was more than just Maddelyn not making grades and being upset about the divorce. No doubt, it had been a devastating conversation for all of them. But something else had Jake on edge...almost frightened, if she had to guess.

  “Why are you just telling me this now?”

  He rested his hands on her thighs and squeezed. “Baby. I tell you about my girls and you worry. You worry when they’re sick, when they’re upset and you’ve never even met them. They’re not your problem. This is my deal. You have enough happening with the dissertation and the move.”

  The panic she’d felt earlier dissipated as comprehension dawned. Whatever Maddelyn’s situation was, it was serious—he was either afraid to tell her or wouldn’t admit it. Jake had a strong protective instinct and wouldn’t tell her what was happening if he thought it would hurt her. Being a loving and protective father, however, he might not want to face or even voice something going on with his daughter. The clenching of his fists and the throbbing vein in his neck suggested he was somehow torn between his feelings for her and whatever had happened with Maddelyn. Eve paused, centered and willed the wrenching twist in her gut to stop.

  “Not my problem?” Tilting her head, so she could see his eyes, she kept her voice calm. “Jake...do you truly believe me when I tell you I love you?”

  “Yeah, baby. You know I do.”

  Shaking her head at him, Eve continued, “Okay then, do you think I go about my life as if all’s well when I know you’re upset—especially if I know something’s wrong and you pull the silent act? Do you think I can’t handle it? It’s better if I know what’s going on rather than guessing.”

  “Not this.” He ran a finger down her cheek.

  “Not what?”

  Suddenly, he got up to pace in front of the fireplace. “Eve—” He pressed his palms to his forehead.

  Getting up from the table, she walked in front of him and slowly drew his hands away from his face. “You tell me everything...or so you claim. Whatever it is, it shouldn’t be this hard.”

  He took her cheeks between his palms.

  Eve studied him closely, noting the pain in his eyes.

  Opening his mouth to speak, he stalled out. His eyes searched hers for a brief second and then he locked all emotion down. It was a flash, an instant, but with one twitch of his cheek muscle, he shut her out.

  Eve stepped back.

  Jake advanced on her. “I told you from the start I couldn’t give you a commitment. We always knew you were leaving and that I had to stay here. Divorce or no divorce, we’re gonna be on separate coasts for two years. A commitment wouldn’t be fair or realistic to either of us.”

  Oh, no. Not happening. Not this time.

  If she were destined to lose him a second time, she would damn well hear the reason why. He was deflecting and he was not getting off that easy. Digging for courage, she braced herself for a confrontation.

  “That’s a copout and you know it. Don’t presume to know what’s fair to me, Jake. I know you told me not to, but when we were young, I waited seven years for you. For what? To see one day that you’d been home, were newly married with a newborn. So, yeah, I moved on, but let’s be clear, time obviously isn’t the issue for me. And no, you didn’t commit to me.” She nodded. “You’re right. Falling in love with you is on me. What you did, however, was give me hope. Now, you’re refusing to talk to me and saying goodbye in some cryptic way?”

  “Baby, there are situations you don’t know about.”

  “Enlighten me then.”

  When Jake just stared at her and remained silent, she backed farther away from him until her butt hit the table. She struggled for composure, but the disappointment and hurt became just too suffocating.

  “So that’s it? Nothing? According to you, you’ve trusted me with things you haven’t shared with any other person on the planet. If that’s true, I’m asking you to trust to me now.”

  “I don’t want to lose you, but you’re leaving and my situation isn’t your problem. Our lives went in two separate directions. It is what it is and we have to accept that now.”

  Eve walked past him to sit on the end of the couch.

  “Now?” She looked around. “If you knew you weren’t going to try, why did you bring me here? Why did you push me so hard last night?”

  Jake shrugged. “I wanted us to at least have one night. A taste of the life we should have had together, but for some fucked up reason it didn’t happen. Was it selfish? Yeah. Does it make me an asshole? Pretty sure it does...but I’m leaving in a week on assignment for two months. I won’t see you again before you go to New York.”

  “So this is the way you leave it? Leave us?” Last night he took her further physically and emotionally than he ever had before and then...this?

  “I wanted all of you, Eve. I always will.”

  “All I’m hearing is you. What you wanted, what is best for you. What about me, Jake? Do you have any concept of what you’re doing to me? What you’ve done?”

  If it was possible for a human heart to physiologically break, the splitting pain throughout her chest, the sensation that her entire body was shutting down organ by organ had to be what it would feel like.

  “I do,” he admitted in barely a whisper.

  She nearly didn’t make out his response. “No. You don’t. You have no concept. If you did, if you cared about me at all, you’d talk to me.” She finally met this gaze. “After this past year, how am I supposed function without you? I’m losing my best friend, my support, the only man I’ve ever genuinely loved and trusted.”

  “You’re not losing me, hon.” He pressed his fingers to his temples.

  “Am I not!” Eve wept. “Is that not what you just said five minutes ago? Two separate coasts? Unrealistic for either of us? Be consistent damn you!” She slapped at the tears running down her cheeks with both hands. “We’ve always known I was going to New York, but I hoped we might be able to make this work. Second chances are rare in this lifetime—especially circumstances like ours. I didn’t need a marriage. I only needed you. And I would have loved you, and all that comes with you, with everything that I am.”

  19 hours

  2

  I’ll be back, baby...and you better be ready.

  The pounding in Jake’s head wouldn’t let up. His brain felt like it was pushing through his fucking cranium. How could he spare her a trip back to a painful past, which was a given if he told her how bad Maddelyn actually was. He wanted Eve, but he had to take care of his daughter first.

  “Is it someone else?”

  Eve’s cracked voice jarred him out of painful thoughts and he spun towards her. “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Please, at least tell me that you didn’t betray me that way. Tell me you wouldn’t have risked me by sleeping with someone else and not telling me.”

  “Come on, baby. No. Only you, from the second I found you again.”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  All he wanted in that moment was to hold her—pull her back to bed, burrow under the covers and make all the pain go away.

  “Then I don’t understand,” she whispered, staring out over the balcony. Jesus, she couldn’t even look at him. “I believed in you—in us. I trusted you, trusted that you meant the things you’ve said to me. I should have known better.” She turned, her bloodshot eyes meeting his. “I’ve never been good enough for you, Jake. Not when I was younger and not now that you’re actually officially free to try.”

  He caught her arm and turned her around to fully face him. “Don’t ever say you’re not good enough. You know how I feel about you. Shit, I came back for you, Eve.”

  “And you stopped looking for me. Jesus, Jake! Nobody ever told me you tried to find me.
That you came by the house, and then you just gave up.”

  “It was better for you.” He shook his head. “Your mom was just protecting you. I was in a bad place when I got back from that first tour. She could see it. Shit, Eve. I think I even showed up drunk once. You’re lucky I didn’t find you. You couldn’t have handled what I’d become. Trust me.” Memory lane definitely wouldn’t help things here. “Look, I found you now and I don’t want to lose you again.”

  Eve went limp and slipped her arm out of his hold. “You’ve already lost me by not talking to me. You know the sad thing? I’d have understood. If you would have talked to me like the friend you claim I am to you, I’d have known about Maddelyn and I’d have walked away if that’s what you needed.” Her shaky voice began to even out. “And I would have never come here and allowed you to flip my entire world upside down worse than you already have.”

  “You think I don’t know that? Yeah, I should have told you. And I’m very familiar with you disappearing when you think it’s best for me, which it never fucking is, by the way. It’s you protecting yourself and I get that. I put you in that space a long time ago. That’s on me. But you deserve a chance to be happy, Eve. I can’t give you that with what I have to deal with right now.”

  She lifted her hands and dropped them to her sides. “You’re talking in contradicting circles. What exactly are you dealing with Jake?” She laughed, a little unhinged. “Talk to me—please. Say something!”

  “You don’t understand.” The knife twisted in his gut with every word out of her mouth. How could he tell her without hurting her? But he was hurting her. He knew his silence triggered Eve’s insecurities, her doubts about how he felt about her. She wasn’t used to anything but full disclosure from him since they’d reconnected. He’d gained her trust, her love, by being uncharacteristically open and giving with her...until recently.

  Disappointment and heartbreak all took turns playing across her beautiful face. Tears consistently slid down her cheeks.

  “You recently told me, I’d regret not telling you how I feel if anything were to happen to you, Jake. You were insistent that I talk to you. Made it comfortable and safe to express how I feel about you—and you’ve just shut me out.”

  Her eyes appeared to look straight through him and a chill shot down his spine. Tears still trailed down her pale cheeks, but she appeared unconscious of it. And that was the frightening part to him. There was no sobbing, just tears—tears that fall when you become numb. When you’ve suffered too much.

  The energy escalated as she stalked from one side of the room to the other searching for the rest of her things.

  “Pieces of you.” She stopped and faced him. “I’ve only ever had pieces of you. All I’ve asked of you is to tell me the truth no matter how much it might hurt me. I trusted you when you said if the time ever came that you had to say goodbye, that you’d tell me yourself. Do I not deserve at least that? Do I mean that little to you?”

  The throbbing in his temples double-timed and he dropped his head. Trust wasn’t something Eve gave easily. That ex-husband of hers had emotionally fucked her up to the point she didn’t trust men at all—mentally or physically. It’d taken him a long time to gain her trust in both areas. Their history had given him an edge no other man would have had with her, even though he’d been no saint.

  “Your silence speaks volumes.” Eve got up, hauled her purse over her shoulder, and shifted the pillows on the couch as if searching for something. She stopped and faced him. “How do you do this to someone you claim to love?” Shrugging her shoulders, she shook her head. “More importantly, someone you call a friend? You’ve known me, my family, the vast majority of my life. Do you have any idea, do you even care, what it is you mean to me?”

  “I know you love me, baby. I don’t doubt that at all.”

  She walked up to him, her face inches from his. It was the closest she’d been to him in the past half hour.

  His blood surged under his skin, the need to touch her almost uncontrollable.

  “At least one of us is clear on that.” Cold, ice blue eyes studied his face and his chest contracted. Eve was never cold with him. Ever. “Have—I just been a diversion from whatever…” Her voice cracked. “…You’re going through and refusing to tell me about?”

  “Eve—”

  “No,” she seethed and turned away from him. “What is it you always say to me, Jake? ‘I’m always good, hon. Don’t worry about me.’ I have no doubt you’ll be just fine without me. You were for twenty-three years—I wish I could say the same.”

  Jake clenched his fists. This had all gotten way the fuck out of control. Letting her go was the right thing to do, he got that, but he also couldn’t let her keep thinking he didn’t give a shit.

  “I care about you so fucking much, baby. I need you to remember that.”

  Eve scoffed, walked back to the couch and picked up her phone.

  “Why? So, you can haunt me for another two decades and end up with someone else? Not this time.” Striding past him to the bed, she shoved her things into her bag, left it open and heaved it over her shoulder, before swinging back around to him. “I’m not perfect by any means. I’m intense and there’s a part of me that’s still broken—I acknowledge that, but I now know my capacity to love and my love is unconditional. You helped me see that...and you’ve just proven you don’t deserve it. I trusted the wrong man. Again. The fact that it’s you...” Her voice became barely audible “...is soul crushing.”

  Jake’s adrenaline skyrocketed and his breathing became shallow. The one woman who could genuinely make him happy, who’d never judged him, was always there for him day or night, was about to walk out the door. She was the most loving woman he’d ever come in contact with. He felt it every time she held him, smiled at him, kissed him. He was more relaxed and comfortable with Eve than anyone. Stupid, mundane, everyday shit was just better with her—coffee, doughnuts, Duck Dynasty reruns, meals, talking. They didn’t even have to talk...they were just content to be in each other’s presence and that was rare.

  When she walked past him to the door, that fresh, beachy, fruity scent that clung to her drifted to him and his lungs stopped working all together.

  Fuck me. Can’t do it.

  “Eve, stop.” He lunged at the front door. “Please.” Wounds she’d attempted to heal a long time ago were about to rip open, because he was coming clean. He wouldn’t lose her twice. Not like this. He’d told her when they first started talking that he couldn’t think of his life without her again and goddamn…if that wasn’t the case.

  Eve stood staring at the closed door, tears falling down her cheeks.

  Motherfuck—no other way.

  On a long exhale, Jake put his hands on her shoulders. When she jerked to wrench away from him, he gripped her tighter.

  “It’s not another woman.”

  Finally looking up at him, she haphazardly dropped her bags to the floor and fully faced him.

  “One chance. Tell me now. Whatever it is.”

  What he was about to do to her felt like a knife to the abdomen. She’d trusted him with a very traumatic and sensitive past and he was about to put her right back into it.

  “We’re taking Maddie to a psychiatrist tomorrow. She’s hurting herself over this whole divorce situation.”

  Eve’s shoulders tensed under his hands. “How?” Her voice evened out and the tears at last stopped falling. “Exactly how is she hurting herself?”

  “She barely eats, unless I’m there. She’s lost about fifteen pounds. You’ve seen pictures of Mads—she can’t lose that much weight. She’s emaciated. Her friends come to the house, Kelly says she won’t see them. The only time she comes out of her room is when I’m at the house.”

  Eve’s muscles began to quiver under his hands, but her voice was steel. “What else?”

  He gazed down at the floor. “Kelly�
�s worried about an eating disorder. I don’t think that’s it—shit, I could be wrong. She has lost weight. We’ve tried everything, so we’re getting outside help. You know Maddie’s a gifted swimmer, already nationally ranked. She refuses to go to practice. Kelly’s loving. A damn good mother, but she’s too soft. It’s like Maddie has given up. I won’t allow my little girl to give up on her life.”

  When her eyes met his, tears pooled again. “She’s refusing to wear a swimsuit,” she whispered more to herself than to him. “Has Kelly checked her? Arms, inner thighs, stomach?”

  Grabbing her by the biceps, Jake held her away from him. “Why would you ask me that?”

  Eve opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. If her chest wasn’t moving up and down at record speed, he would doubt she was even breathing.

  Tears let loose all over again and she slowly shook her head. “She’s a fourteen-year-old girl, Jake. Transitional age. All the angst, changes in her body, boys, friends, school, the pressure and expectations of being a nationally ranked athlete and now her parents divorcing. It’s too much for her. Your daughter needs you.” Eve’s eyes skirted around the room and her breathing came hard and fast. All color drained from her face just before she bolted into the bathroom.

  Rushing after her, Jake’s heartbeat doubled at the sight before him. Her long hair skimmed the ground around her as she dry heaved into the toilet. He reached out, collecting her hair.

  “No!” Eve gagged and jerked away from him. She crawled backwards to the wall. “Please, don’t touch me.”

  Jake put his hands up and backed away from her.

  The light always there in her eyes was gone. Her expression looked so broken, so lost.