Page 113 of My Fiancé's Brother
“But you love Jackson.”
I nodded in misery. “I feel like an idiot but yeah. I do.”
She twisted the coaster around in her hands. “Maybe you just need to tell Jackson how you feel?”
I lifted my wet eyes to her. “Already did that. Right there in a big dramatic fashion in the hospital parking lot, I confessed my undying love to him.”
Her gaze went big. “What did he say?”
I shook my head. “He looked cornered. Sort of like a wild animal that was trying to gnaw off his leg out of a trap.”
She started to laugh. “It can’t have been that bad.”
“I might have been downplaying just how bad it was. Sheer panic and fear. It was written all over his face.”
She reached her hand out and covered mine. “I'm sorry.”
“I want safe. I want security. I want someone who’s going to come home every night. I want to raise a little family. I want those boring family vacations that everyone complains about. And Jackson is the exact opposite of all of that. He lives a dangerous life. He doesn’t want commitment. He doesn’t want kids. Even if I got him, he would emotionally destroy me. I couldn’t live with that kind of fear and uncertainty in my life.”
Beth gave me a funny look. “Can I ask what you love about him then?”
I swallowed hard. “That’s the irony. He makes me feel safe.”
“Well that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” she argued.
I wiped my nose with the back of my sleeve. I was a disaster doing the ugly cry in public, and I couldn’t even stop myself. “Who am I to him? He came to New York for some mysterious treatment and somehow Matt, not this Matt, but the wild Matt wanted to reconcile with him.”
“What happened between them?”
“I have no idea. But whatever it was, it wasn’t good.”
“And they never did reconcile.”
“It was like Matt wanted him there but then couldn’t deal with him being there. And Jackson was just waiting, like me, for Matt to show up every once in awhile. So Jackson and I spent time together.”
Beth gave me a sympathetic look. “And you fell for him.”
More tears fell. “It was like the perfect storm. The more aggressive Matt acted, the more protective Jackson got. And the safer I felt. It was like that situation played into all of our needs.”
“And then you two slept together.”
I looked at my hands. “I don’t think it meant the same thing to him as it did to me.”
“It was your first time,” her voice was sympathetic, “of course it meant something to you.”
“It definitely wasn’t his first time.”
We both looked at each other and then at the same time, we started to laugh. I laughed until I cried. Beth had her face on the table, and her shoulders were shaking so hard. When we both came up for air, we both had tears in our eyes.
“Shit,” she said. “I mean, out of all the guys, you had to pick him? Seriously!”
I wailed. “I don’t even know how that happened.”
“How was…”
Really good,” I interrupted. Flashes of Jackson, naked, devastating me with another kiss. Touching me. Lifting me up. Moving on top of me. It was a movie that played over regularly in my mind. Once started, it was hard to stop.
Beth leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her hands covering her mouth. “Julie would have a shit fit if she ever found out.”
