“I wasn’t due to start,” Eve said, still looking at him, “until after the festival.”
And there it was. The final confirmation. Jacob’s throat felt tight, his stomach roiled, his skin stretched thin and painful over his bones. Of course she’d been planning to leave. What had he thought—that this perfect hurricane of a woman would blow into his life and actually stick around? Fall in love with him? Instead of blowing right the fuck out again?
He shouldn’t be surprised she was disappearing so soon. Jacob was easy to leave behind; he’d learned that very early on. What hurt—no, what made him furious, so furious his eyes prickled with it and his blood burned him from the inside—was the fact that she’d almost convinced him she might stay. Why had she done that? Why had she done that? And why had he wanted her so bad after all of five fucking seconds? He should know by now that other people didn’t work like him, weren’t intense like him, but she was so right and so familiar, he’d just—
“Fuck,” he muttered, and suddenly he couldn’t bear to stand in that room in front of all those people, all those strangers. He stormed past Eve and slammed out into the hall, drawing alarmed looks from two guests heading up the stairs.
Heart pounding, breaths coming a bit too fast, Jacob pulled himself together and offered them a smile that felt more like baring fangs. Their alarm didn’t fade. Actually, they seemed to head up the stairs a bit faster.
“Fuck,” he repeated, and then the door behind him opened and Eve was there.
Her fingers fluttered up to his shoulder. “Jacob—”
“Don’t touch me.” Her hand felt like a boulder. He jerked away and whirled around to face her, forcing himself to ignore the expression on her face.
The expression that said she was crumbling.
Clearly, his interpretations couldn’t be trusted when it came to this woman. Clearly, he always got her entirely, overwhelmingly wrong.
“Why?” he demanded. “Why would you—” He didn’t even know what to say.
“You didn’t give me the job.” Her words were rushed, fumbled, as she fiddled frantically with the ends of her braids. “At first. I—you didn’t—before I hit you, you didn’t give me the job. So then Florence called me, and she did give me a job. But I had to stay because I hit you, and you needed help. So I thought I’d just stay here until the festival was over. The job—”
“I don’t give a fuck about the job,” he roared, and in that second, it was absolutely true. “You—” You said you wanted me. You were supposed to be with me, not make plans behind my back and stay here out of obligation. Were you still going to leave, after last night?
He couldn’t ask. He couldn’t ask, because experience dictated that the answer would be yes.
But only children whined when they were left, and only children waited, night after night, for the ones they loved to change their minds. Jacob was not a child anymore. Nor was he some pathetic thing to be abandoned and beg for an explanation. He wasn’t pathetic at all.
Even if he had been foolishly, hopelessly in love with this woman, dreaming of a future, while she’d stumbled into his bed and been ready to stumble right back out.
He took a deep, deep breath, and felt like himself again. Felt like he was in control.
“Jacob,” she said softly. “Don’t. You’re . . . don’t.”
He knew exactly what she meant, but he ignored her. It was far better to be like this, to be distant and safe, than to be—whatever she’d made him. Far better indeed. “I appreciate your commitment to your work here,” he said coldly, “and I understand why you felt responsible, after what happened. But I don’t need you.”
She rocked back a step, her inhalation sharp. “I’m saying this all wrong, aren’t I? I know I am. Jacob, I wasn’t going to leave. I’d changed my mind. Okay? I wanted to stay. Here. At the cottage.”
Jacob’s shriveling heart leapt at those words, tried to run right for her—but it slammed into a wall of experience. He screwed his eyes shut because he couldn’t process all this and look at her, too. She was so beautiful and so precious and so obviously placating him, saying whatever it took because she could see him shattering and her soft heart couldn’t take it. Saying exactly what he wanted to hear. Just like she had all along.
It had been a lie all along.
Opening his eyes, he echoed flatly, “You’d changed your mind.”
“Yes.” The word came out in a rush, more air than substance.
“Did you tell anyone?”
She stared. “I—what?”
“Did you tell anyone?” he repeated, his spine like steel, his stomach roiling. “Like your sisters, or, I don’t know—whoever hired you to plan this party? Did you really make the decision? Or did you start to feel bad, and think about staying, and now this is happening and you need to fix it so you’re just speaking those thoughts out loud?”
“I . . .” She stuttered, blinking rapidly, looking so crestfallen it actually broke his heart. Or maybe something else was breaking his heart right now. It was hard to tell.
“You need everything to be sunshine and rainbows,” he said. “You don’t want me to be pissed. You don’t want me to end this.” Because he could see that. He’d be a fool not to see that. Eve looked ready to cry, which was really fucking with his resolve. There was something young and raw in his chest snarling and clawing at him, demanding he let this whole mess go and just have her any way he could get her. That he hold the fuck on to this.
But Jacob knew how holding on ended. It ended with the other party letting go and pushing him firmly—embarrassingly—away. He was thirty years old and he knew what he needed. He needed honesty, he needed simplicity, he needed not to be ambushed by situations like this because his relationship was a moment of pity that had spun out of control. And most of all, he needed someone who would stay. Someone just like him.
So he made himself cold, cold, cold. What a shame this frost didn’t bring numbness. “You don’t need to worry about me. I don’t need you,” he repeated. “I have never needed you, Eve.” I have never needed anyone. “And honestly, I’m pleased you have another option. Perhaps you’ll be better suited to your . . . party planning than you are to what you do here.”
Her jaw hardened, those beautiful eyes narrowing. “I’m good at what I do here, Jacob.”
He couldn’t bring himself to lie on that score, not knowing how she worried about failure. Even though he shouldn’t care, at this point. “Yes, you’re good. But that doesn’t make you irreplaceable.” He felt a bit sick, saying that, but he couldn’t not. Eve’s life here was replaceable to her, after all.
Although she wasn’t reacting that way. Not quite. She jerked back at his words as if he’d slapped her, and then she took a step forward with her hands curled into fists and said, “Really? So if I just—left. You’d be fine. That’s what you’re saying?”
She must know the answer was absolutely not, but he wouldn’t humiliate himself by saying it out loud. He looked her up and down, as detached as he could manage. Her T-shirt today said BEE SWEET, the words surrounded by embroidered little bees. But he’d tried sweet, and he’d ended up stung.