Jase is deadly silent, listening to what I have to say. I can feel his eyes on me although I don’t look up at him. Resting his head on my thigh that’s covered by the blanket, he waits for me to continue.
“It hurts to even say it. I can’t deal with lies. I don’t want to be a woman who lets a man lie to her.”
“I won’t.”
“I don’t know that I believe you.” Finally looking into his eyes, I suck in a deep inhale to calm my words. “I can’t stay if I find out you’ve lied to me about something. I can’t be with you if that’s all there is between us.”
“There’s nothing else and there will never be anything else.”
My mother used to warn us about ‘always’ and ‘nevers.’ Especially about the people who speak them with certainty.
With the window cracked, a gust of cool air blows in trailing along my skin and with it, the ends of my hair tickle down my bare arm as I prop myself up. “You sound so sure.”
“I am.” His hard jaw seems sharper in the faint light with the shadows from the moon. There’s an intensity that swirls in his eyes, but it seems different now. Not so much riddled with fear as it is with loss and regret.
Or maybe it’s a reflection of myself, maybe it’s just what I want to see. He may be certain, but I’m not so sure of anything anymore.
I can only nod, and lie back down. Back to his bed although I’m on my side and I intend to sleep all night with my back to him. I’ll do it every night until the hurt goes away. That deep pain that’s settled into my chest like fucking cancer.
“Is there anything else I can…” Jase pauses and I hear him readjust as the bed jostles.
“Anything else you can say or do?” I finish the question for him, my eyes open and staring straight ahead at nothing in particular.
“Is there?” he asks when I don’t answer the question I raised.
“We just move on, don’t we?” I tell him, feeling that pain spread like a web, tiny and sticking to everything inside of me as it spins. “That’s what happens.”
“Why do you sound so defeated?”
“Because it hurts, it all hurts and I don’t know how to fix it other than to believe you. Even that hurts right now.”
The mattress groans as he leans forward, rubbing my back as I lie there, refusing to give in to anger. “What matters is that Jenny’s alive.” My bottom lip trembles and my throat goes tight as I ask, “You’re going to save her, right? You’re going to bring her home?”
“I’m doing everything I can,” Jase whispers as he lies down next to me although he’s not under the covers. He pulls me in closer to him and as much as I’d love to shove him away for everything he’s done, I need to be held by this man for the very same reasons.
“When we were little, she was my hero,” I admit to Jase, still staring ahead at the blank wall that’s been a photo album to me all night, flicking through memory after memory. “I was thinking about the time when I’d just reached high school and how she helped me with my English homework. She loved poetry. She was so good at it.”
It sounds like Jase is going to say something, but instead he stays quiet. He kisses me on my shoulder though, through the sleepshirt and then on my jaw by my ear. The kind of kiss where I’m forced to close my eyes. When he lays my arm in the dip at my side and then rests his forearm in front of me, I twine my fingers with his.
His touch means more to me right now than I think he’ll ever know.
The second I part my lips to thank him, he speaks first. “Tell me more about her.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. She was my big sister, the one who looked out for me, helping me with everything… until it all went wrong.”
“What went wrong?”
“Our mom did. That’s when everything changed.” The hollowness in my chest seems to grow thinking about it all, so I stay quiet. The silence doesn’t stretch for long.
“Do you still hate me?”
For lying about my sister while I was mourning her?
For lying about scaring me into staying with you?
For lying about the debt and taking advantage of me?
The questions line themselves up in my head, but stay unspoken.
“No,” I answer him. “I hate what you did, but I don’t hate you.”
“Why do I feel like things aren’t okay?” he questions and that gets a reaction from me. Fighting the covers with my legs, I turn around to face him, propping myself up with my elbow and feeling the comforter fall down my shoulder.