CHAPTER 3
Jake
“What are you doing, Jake?”
I have my head down, watching my boots with each step I take. That’s probably not smart, but Mom’s driveway is so ingrained in my memories that I don’t need to look to know how to get back to my truck. Unfortunately, it causes me not to see Reed in enough time to avoid him.
“If it isn’t the man who pretended to be my best friend. If you got shit to say, Nashville, do it some other day. I don’t care to hear it right now,” I mutter, barely sparing him a glance. He’s one of the reasons I’m choking on anger.
“Man, you need to back down and breathe a little. All you’re doing is hurting Katie and Jeff. That’s going to hurt Lennon and that’s not what you want,” he says, grabbing my shoulder when I start walking by him. I stop and force myself to look up at him.
“Let go of my fucking arm,” I bite out.
“I know you’re pissed,” he says, and it floors me.
“Do you, Reed? Do youreallyknow?” I snap, shoving him away from me.
“Jake—”
“You have no fucking idea about how fucking mad I am! If you did, you wouldn’t be standing in front of me.”
“You’re not the only one hurting here.”
That’s it.I’ve been keeping a tight leash on my anger, but I can’t stand here and listen to this shit anymore.
“I’m the only motherfucker who has been lied to for seven years by people who claim to love me,” I snarl. I draw my hand back and plow it into his face, hitting him square in the eye. He punches me back in the stomach, but I don’t stop and connect again—this time in an uppercut just under his jaw. We swap jabs but even as angry as I am, I realize that Reed is pulling his. That’s okay. Let the asshole do that.I’m not.
If I accomplish nothing else tonight, at least I’m going to make Reed’s face uglier. We keep at it until Reed tackles me and drags me to the ground. Both of us are breathing hard as we break apart, sitting in the dirt. We lean back against Mom’s car.
“I fucked up, man. I should have told you.”
“You should have,” I bite out, wiping some blood from the corner of my lip.
“You didn’t see Katie after you wrote her that letter, Jake. I did. You nearly destroyed her.”
“She showed you the letter?” I ask.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. The letter was hard as hell to write. I knew I needed to do it to let Katie go. I knew if I didn’t, she’d keep holding on, and I’d keep hurting her. I tried.Fuck, I tried.I just couldn’t be the man she wanted. Katie wanted to live here and raise kids. She never wanted to leave our hometown. I wasn’t going to be my mother. She worked her ass into the ground every day, only to come home to work even harder in the garden. I couldn’t see spending the rest of my life at some thankless nine-to-five job and having kids. I think it would have killed me because I had dreams, and I wanted to live them.
I wrote that letter because Katie didn’t love me enough to leave, and I didn’t love her enough to give up what I wanted. In the end, we were just getting to where we resented one anotherand fought every single time I came home. It wasn’t healthy, and eventually, she would have hated me. The more I tried to explain how I felt, the worse it was making everything. It sounds hokey as hell, but sometimes love isn’t enough.
I know because I love Katie, I always have, but we were just too damn different in what we wanted. That doesn’t mean it didn’t kill me that she moved on–or that it didn’t destroy me when it was my brother.
I accepted it. It’s not like I had a choice. I made my decision, and even if there were times that I regretted it, I knew it was the way things had to be…
“She did,” Reed finally answers. “Katie knew she was pregnant. I found out through Callie and came to tell her she needed to talk to you. That's when she told me she couldn’t and why. She was broken after you left, Jake. The letter nearly finished her off. If it hadn’t been for Jeff, I’m not sure what she would have done.”
“I don’t need to hear how my brother swooped in to save the day,” I snap, getting up.
“Well, he did. He was there for her when you weren’t. That might suck to hear, brother, but it’s true.”
“We’re not brothers, Reed. As far as I’m concerned, you can go fuck yourself. Maybe I would have been there for Katie if I had fucking known she was carrying my kid,” I growl, spitting the blood from my busted lip in his direction.
“If that makes you feel better, go ahead and believe it. I think you’re just lying to yourself.”
“What would you know about it?” I stop to ask, as I open the door to my truck.
“Because if it mattered you would have confronted everyone sooner. You would have been here to get to know Lennon.”