It was the worst admission for someone like me, someone who spent every ounce of energy running from the things that cause pain as opposed to facing them. I was so afraid of getting sucked down into a dark depression and never being able to escape it that I was just always running, staying busy, throwing myself into work and travel and filling my life with fun and joy, pretending like the past never happened.
But here it was, latching onto me after years of chasing me, laughing and screaming, “Aha! Gotcha!”
Jacob was quiet for a long time, but he nodded, chewing his lip as he digested what I’d said. “Okay,” he said after a while, his eyes finding mine. “Well, that’s okay. It’s okay that you feel this way. We all have pasts, things that hurt us, things we wish weren’t a part of us. But let me fight these demons with you. I can be the one you talk to about all of it. I can be the one to hold you through the pain.”
My throat was so tight with emotion that I swore I wouldn’t be able to take another breath for as long as I lived. But I managed to swallow, to shake my head, to find his gaze again with a shaky breath. “I wish it were that easy, Jacob.”
“It can be. If you let me in, it can be.”
“I slept with Tyler last night.”
Jacob’s head snapped back at the words, like I’d reached through the screen and slapped him.
I might as well have.
“I see.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, wishing I could reach out and touch him, but knowing I didn’t have the right to. “I wish I could tell you it was a mistake, that I regretted it, that it was never supposed to happen. But that would be a lie, and I can’t lie to you anymore. I can’t lie to myself anymore.”
Something of a laugh came from Jacob’s nose. “So, you’re with him now? Is that your big plan to face your past — to fuck the guy who broke your heart?”
I winced at the accusation, but I wasn’t angry.
I deserved it.
“No,” I whispered. “We’re not together. He… he has a girlfriend. And she’s here now. And…” I shook my head, because I was getting off on a tangent Jacob didn’t need to hear. “It was a mistake.”
“You just said it wasn’t a mistake, so which is it?”
I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut and pressing my fingertips into my temple. “I don’t know. It was a mistake for him, but not for me. Or maybe not for him, either, but… Tyler and I can’t be together. Not now. We had our chance, and it didn’t work, and I refuse to break even more hearts than those that have already been broken.”
“Except mine, right?” he asked with a scoff. “I guess I’m the collateral damage you don’t mind having in this whole situation?”
“What else can I do?” I asked, stretching my arms out toward him. “Would you rather me have lied to you? Would you rather have gotten on that plane tomorrow and flown here and never known that I slept with the best man in the wedding? Would you rather me go home with you to California and just pretend these two weeks never happened, that I never woke up to all the shit I’ve been hiding from, that I didn’t completely change into someone I don’t even recognize anymore?”
A long sigh left his chest, but the wrinkle between his brows softened, like when he weighed that option, he didn’t like it much either.
“I’m so sorry, Jacob,” I cried. “I’m sorry I’m breaking your heart right now. I’m breaking mine, too. But I love you and respect you and care about you far too much to lie to you. I know it’s not easy to hear this, but I think not telling you would be worse. I think you deserve the truth. And I think you deserve a girl who loves you as fiercely as you love her, because you are the most amazing man,” I said, sniffing against a new wave of tears. “And I want you to be happy.”
Jacob nodded, his eyes cast downward. “Just not with you, right?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
But it still broke me all the same.
Several minutes of silence passed, but I didn’t rush them. I didn’t try to talk more, because I’d said all that needed to be said, and I didn’t try to end the call, because my heart wanted to hold onto Jacob for as long as it could — as selfish as it was.
When he finally looked at me again, he blew out a slow, steady breath, and nodded once. “Well, it doesn’t seem like I can change your mind, which is maybe what hurts most of all. In most cases, you have the chance to fight for the woman you love when things go south. But this would be a hopeless fight, wouldn’t it?”
My nose stung, tears welling in my eyes.
Another sigh left him. “What if I still come to the wedding?”
I blinked. “What?”
“I know you’re hurting. And as much as you’re breaking my fucking heart,” he choked on emotion with those words, and seeing how torn up he was killed me. “I don’t want you to go through this alone. Let me still fly in tomorrow. I’ll be your plus one, and no one has to know. Then we can fly home together and… I don’t know. We’ll figure it out from there.”
Emotion surged through me again, but this time, it was mostly a sickening sense of unworthiness. How could this man be so good to me, still, even after all I’d confessed? He was still willing to get on a plane and fly out to me after what I’d done to him, just to help me, just to ease my pain.
I shook my head, rolling my lips together as more tears slipped down my cheeks. I was convinced they’d never stop at this point.
“No,” I whispered, but I smiled when I met his gaze again. “That is… the kindest, most selfless thing anyone has ever offered me, but I can’t let you do that. It wouldn’t be fair to you.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“You’d be able to be around Tyler, knowing we’d been intimate, without it hurting you?” I challenged.
He didn’t have anything to say to that.
I sighed, reaching out until my fingertips were on the screen. I traced the edges of his jaw, the fair blond of his hair. “I love you, Jacob,” I whispered. “And I am so thankful for the time we’ve had together. And more than anything, I am so sorry for the pain I’m causing. I just hope… I don’t know,” I confessed. “I hope one day we can…”
“Don’t say it,” he said, shaking his head on a grimace. “Don’t tell me you want to be friends, Jaz.”
I nodded, ashamed. “I’m sorry.”
It was all I could offer, and it was absolutely nothing.
“I love you, too, you know?” Jacob said after a long pause. “I hate that you’re doing this, but I could never hate you.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I’m going to miss you, sunshine.”
My face twisted, and I nodded, my voice shaky through the emotion strangling me. “I’ll miss you, too.”
“What are we going to tell our followers?”
It was an attempt to make me laugh, and it worked, though it hurt where it left my chest as I swiped more tears away. “They might be more devastated than us.”
“Never more than me,” Jacob whispered. “Never more than me.”