: Chapter 26

It was around two AM when I carefully ventured out of the kitchen so I could get a book from the library. I was still thinking if I could just stop my mind for a minute, maybe I could fall asleep and forget about everything that had happened in the last fifteen or so hours. At first, I was just peeking out from the doorway to the kitchen to make sure there was no one outside on the streets that would notice me. It only took me a few seconds to notice him.

Jack Hawthorne.

He was leaning against the lamp pole that was right on the corner, arms crossed against his chest. I glanced around to see if Raymond was waiting for him nearby, but I didn’t see any familiar faces or cars; he appeared to be alone. Confused, angry, excited, and a little surprised, my heart leaping out of my chest in no time, I didn’t know what to do for a second as my emotions waged a war in my heart. I kept looking at him, not sure what I should do.

Acknowledge his presence?

Go out there and demand to know what he was doing there?

No answer he could give me would change anything, though.

He was staring down at his shoes, and even though I was mad at him like nothing else, I still thought he looked just perfect in the moonlight. When he moved his head and noticed me standing in the doorway, my breath froze in my chest. We stared at each other, neither one of us taking a step forward. It was then I realized he wouldn’t come. He wouldn’t press and try to explain or apologize. No, Jack Hawthorne would do none of those things. He had been telling the absolute truth when he’d said he wasn’t sorry for what he’d done.

I swallowed down my emotions, not even sure what I was supposed to feel anymore, and that little voice that was screaming at me to go outside to face him came unstuck. Avoiding glancing at him and ignoring his eyes following me, I quickly moved to the library. I couldn’t grab a random book and disappear from sight; I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do with a book, let alone trying to pick one. I fought back tears because there was no reason whatsoever for me to cry. It was over and done with.

It was okay, but I knew I wouldn’t be. I let the tears fall and just picked a damn book that was within reach then, as calmly as I could manage, walked back into the kitchen. As soon as I was out of his sight, I leaned back against the wall and wiped at my tears.

I was still very much pissed off and hurt. It was a tossup between the two of us as to who I was angrier with—him or myself. My heart was broken, replaced with a constant ache. I was such a damn fool for thinking he had been honest with me every step of the way. I’d thought he was too serious not to be. My words, my last words to him echoed back in my head, along with the surprised and hurt look on his face when I’d spoken them. I knew I’d screwed it up at the end there, but I had wanted to hurt him. I’d wanted him to hurt just like I was because misery always loves company.

I chanced another peek and saw he was still standing in the same spot. He hadn’t moved an inch. It should’ve felt stalkerish, him standing outside, wearing a black coat as he leaned against the lamp pole, but it didn’t. It hurt my heart even more to see him standing there alone in the snow.

He wasn’t happy.

I wasn’t happy.

I wished we could’ve been unhappy together, under the same roof, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look at his face and ignore that he had lied to me so monumentally. What if I had hated him, hated everything about him?

Marriage for one, please! Coming right up!

But then…

But then…that’s when things started to get tricky. As much as I hated to admit it, if he wasn’t lying now and what he had said about Joshua was true, it looked like he had saved me from him. He had given me my dream, and on a silver platter. Not a coffee shop, but a family. Someone I could lean on. He had done all of that just for the chance of a shot with me, for me. He was in love with me, and that knowledge threatened to pull the rug out from beneath my feet.

He was in love with me.

Then again, I already knew that. I’d seen it in his beautiful blue eyes, day after day. I knew the exact moment, that first time I’d seen it, seen the possibility of us: in that dark hospital room when he had crawled in bed with me. That was the first night I’d thought, You know what, Rose, maybe he actually likes you. Despite all his prickliness and, at times, arrogance, despite all the scowling looks, maybe he really cares about you.

Feeling dizzy, I slid down the wall and let my head rest against it. I didn’t know how many minutes passed, but when I felt okay enough to move again, I glanced around the corner, making sure I wasn’t visible to him just in case he was still standing there.

He was.

We had ended as we begun.

I watched him from the safety of the kitchen’s doorway, the book I’d picked forgotten on the floor beside me. I must have fallen asleep sometime after four AM and jumped up in a panic when Owen walked through the door with a confused look on his face.

“What the hell are you doing on the floor?”

My mouth was dry, my eyes burning, and my voice came out all scratchy when I tried to speak. “Good morning to you too, sunshine. Just getting some shut-eye, as you can see.”

“Right, because that’s what you do on the floor. What was Jack doing outside?”

After a few attempts at getting up, I gave up and got on my knees so I could hold on to the edge of the island and pull myself up. “What are you talking about?”

Owen offered me his hand and helped me.

“He was right outside, half frozen from the looks of him. He said good morning and then left. Is this your version of spicing up your marriage, or did you guys have a fight or something?”

I pushed my hair away from my face. “Or something,” I mumbled.

As Owen walked past me, shaking his head, I carefully looked out from the doorway, my eyes searching for him. When I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I fully stepped out of the kitchen and walked through the tables until I was standing right in front of the window, looking outside.

Just like Owen had said, he was gone.

The next night, I stayed at Sally’s place, swapping the comfort of the coffee shop’s kitchen island and the lined-up chairs for a couch. I spent hours with my phone in my hand as I debated texting him. Eventually I fell asleep with my phone on my chest and never messaged him. I thought I slept for about three hours in total, and he kept me company in my dreams the rest of the time, which was even worse than not getting any sleep because when I woke up, I lost him all over again.

Sally had seen the two suitcases I owned stacked in the little office room in the back and had already guessed that something was seriously wrong. Since I thought I’d lose my ever-loving mind if I didn’t tell at least one person what was going on, I told her everything. I rushed through admitting our whole marriage was nothing but a business deal and that we’d been wrong to assume otherwise. Then I’d caught her up on the rest of it.

She was as appalled as I had been the first time I’d heard everything from him, but then she decided she found the whole thing romantic.

“So what’s going to happen now? Has he called you?”

“It’s over,” I repeated, probably for the hundredth time. “He has no reason to call me.”

I left out the fact that I’d waited for him to do exactly that the night before.

“What about this place? What will happen to the coffee shop?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled.

I truly didn’t know.

The lunch rush started, and we didn’t have time to do anything but work our asses off the rest of the day. It was around six PM when she approached me with a weird look on her face.

“Uh, Rose, did you say Jack waited for you that first night outside?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I think he started his shift again.”

Trying my best to look like I was busy in the kitchen while Owen was out in the front—me actually doing nothing useful at all, of course—I decided to keep my hands occupied and started checking cupboards, because trying to look for nothing in order to look like you weren’t interested in what the other person was saying was always a fun idea. “What are you talking about?”

She waited until she had my full attention, and my heart had started beating too quickly to ignore her until she gave it up on her own.

“I’m talking about him leaning against his car and just standing there, right now.”

I didn’t have a single word to say to that other than rushing to the doorway and trying to spot him.

“Are you going to talk to him?” Sally asked, coming to stand next to me—out in the open, like a normal person. Owen glanced at us and then, after seeing us craning our necks, shook his head and kept chatting with a customer, talking about the times the coffee shop was the least busy.

“No.”

“Have a heart, woman. It doesn’t look like he’ll budge.”

“It’ll be a long and cold night for him then.” I pressed my lips together to hide my ridiculously pleased smile.

“Oh, come on. Can I at least take him some coffee? It’s freezing out there.”

“It’s his coffee shop. He paid for it, after all. If he wants to come in, I can’t stop him, but I’m not going to roll out the red carpet either. I don’t care if you take him coffee or not.”

“Rose—”

“I love him, Sally,” I admitted, cutting off whatever she was about to say. “I love him, but I’m not ready to act like what he did didn’t hurt me or that it wasn’t wrong. I need him to understand what he did. I need him to take the time to think it through, and if that means he wants to come and wait outside or something, he is free to do whatever he wants.”

“So it’s not over. It’s over for now, but it’s not over.”

I thought her words over as I watched Jack talking to someone on his phone. He didn’t see me watching him, taking in my fill, but his eyes were definitely on the coffee shop.

“I miss him,” I conceded into the silence.

Sally pushed her arm through mine and rested her head on my shoulder. “Owen?”

He looked at us over his shoulder.

“I need you to start being romantic now,” Sally ordered, and my lips tipped up. She still hadn’t given up on him, and I thought Owen secretly enjoyed her attention.

I cleared my throat before they started their usual back and forth. “If you happen to or decide to take coffee to Jack, don’t forget Raymond. Jack likes my—the lemon bars, and Raymond likes the triple chocolate brownies.”

Sally snorted. “Right. I give it a week before you cave.”

I gave her a murderous look. “Keep dreaming.”

An hour later, I wasn’t sure if I was more annoyed with myself because my eye kept wandering over to where Jack was standing, or if I was just annoyed with him for breaking my focus at work. I decided to head to Sally’s place so I could cook us dinner as a thank you for letting me stay with her.

The second I stepped outside, my heart started pounding in my chest. Jack straightened up the moment he saw me. I stood just a few feet away from him as we studied each other. If he had walked forward and said something, I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done. Maybe, like Sally had said, I would have caved, but he didn’t. So, I did…sort of, still leaving a healthy amount of space between us, enough for four people to easily walk through, actually.

“What are you doing here, Jack?” I asked, raising my voice just a little.

“Wanted to see you.”

I opened my arms at my sides. “Now you did. Goodbye.”

He was about to take a step forward when a group of girls walked between us, successfully blocking him.

“How are you feeling?” he asked when it was just us again.

“Oh, perfect. Just perfect. Having the best time of my life.”

“I meant your head, your nose. Are you still getting dizzy? Headaches? You look tired.”

I tilted my head to the side, narrowing my eyes. “Thank you. As you know, it’s my default to look bad. You look like hell yourself.”

His jaw clenched, a muscle ticking visibly. “You need to take better care of yourself,” he forced out, his eyes blazing, as if he had any right to be angry with me.

“No.” My eyes still on him, I shook my head. “Don’t do that. You don’t get to act like you’re worried about me, Jack.” I looked to the left and then the right. “There is no one around who knows us, so you can stop the pretending.”

We studied each other in silence. I wasn’t sure if this would be the last time I’d ever see him. He could just wake up the next day and say, The hell with it, she isn’t—or, even worse—she wasn’t worth the trouble anyway. I had my fun with the business deal marriage. Now it’s time to move on. The thought alone scared the bejesus out of me, but I wasn’t ready to ignore everything and act like he hadn’t hurt me either. Therein lay our problem.

“Go home, Jack,” I said quietly. “You have no reason to be here.”

In the great scheme of things, we were nothing more than two people who had passed each other while walking through their lives. Couples broke up every day, and we were not special in that regard either. You cried yourself to sleep then woke up and went to work. When you repeated the cycle enough times, one day you woke up and suddenly it didn’t matter all that much. New people walked alongside you and eventually you forgot the ones you left behind.

When he didn’t deny what I’d said, I let out a long breath, looked at his eyes for a moment longer to remember, and finally turned to leave.

“I don’t have a home to go back to anymore, Rose.”

I stopped, but didn’t look at him.

“You’re my home,” he finished.

My eyes filling with tears, I walked away.

And he let me.

So we ended as we’d begun, nothing but two complete strangers.

Closer to midnight, after Sally had gone to bed and I was getting ready to start another sleepless night, I opened the curtains and the window so I could breathe in the cold air. Someone was walking across the street and for a moment I thought it was Jack, but then he walked under the light and I realized it was just a stranger.

For a moment I was shocked, why would it hurt not to see him? Why would I be disappointed?

During the week, he came to the coffee shop around closing time twice. He leaned against his car, then when Ray left he leaned against the lamp pole. Every time he showed up he made it harder to remember why I was so angry at him. He paced and waited. When I came out with Sally but didn’t stop to talk to him, he left.

Then he disappeared for several days.

It was the eighth day of our break up and we were getting ready to close when he showed up again. All three of us were in the front. Owen and I were clearing out the dishes on the counter and taking them back into the kitchen, and Sally was stacking up clean coffee mugs and the to-go cups next to the espresso machine. We only had two customers in the shop, and both of them were regulars working on their laptops.

The bell rang, and I looked up to see someone bundled up in her coat and scarf walk in and head straight toward one of the customers, so I got back to work.

Sally was the first one to notice Jack.

“Rose.”

I looked at her over my shoulder.

“Yes?”

“He’s here,” she whispered urgently, and I looked around in confusion until my eyes landed on him. My pulse picked up and my heart started to get all excited, but something was wrong. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking from his facial expression, because if there was one thing Jack Hawthorne was good at, it was hiding his emotions. Dread and excitement over seeing him settled over me anyway as my heart betrayed me.

He stood on the other side of the counter and I did nothing but stare at him, my heart pounding in my ears.

I heard Sally clear her throat. “Hi, Jack.”

He didn’t take his eyes off me when he answered. “Hello, Sally. You’re good, I hope.”

“Yes. Great.”

Then it was back to silence again.

Feeling my chest tighten, I swallowed and wiped my hands on my jeans, managing to look away from his eyes.

I saw his hand tighten around a stack of papers he was holding, creating a tube.

“Uh, Owen did you take the—” I started in a low, rough voice, but Jack cut me off before I could finish my sentence.

“If I could talk to you in private, Rose?”

I looked back up at him, trying my best not to show that I had forgotten how to breathe like a normal person in the last minute or so. I cleared my throat and nodded.

“Kitchen?”

I nodded again and watched as he moved around the counter and walked straight back there. Sally bumped her shoulder into mine and smiled when I gave her a startled look.

“You miss him. Be nice. I think you’ve made him suffer long enough. You suffered enough as well.”

I didn’t respond, just turned to Owen. “I’ll, uh, I’ll be back in a minute. If you could just—”

“I have plenty of things to do out here. Go make up or whatever so we can breathe easy again.”

I hit him on the shoulder as I walked past him into the kitchen. I only had enough time to take a deep breath before I was standing across from Jack again, this time with the island between us. I took in his dark grey suit, crisp white shirt, and black tie. He was made to wear suits and break my heart.

I reached for a kitchen towel just to have something in my hands and looked away. While I was busy trying to find the right words to apologize for what I had said at his office, Jack spoke up.

“You can’t even look at me, can you?”

Startled by his words, I met his gaze. Was that what he thought?

“Jack, I—”

“It doesn’t matter now,” he continued. “I came to give you this in person.” He unrolled the file in his hands and put it on the island, right next to the triple chocolate brownies, then pushed it my way.

My eyes still on him, I reached for it.

“What is this?” My voice came out like a whisper.

When he didn’t answer, I looked down and turned the first page.

Shocked by what I was reading, my eyes flew up to his.

“Divorce papers,” he said calmly.

I was anything but calm. My mind in overdrive, my eyes tried to follow the words and sentences, but it was all a jumbled mess in front of me.

“You want a divorce?” I croaked out, the papers slightly trembling. I tightened my grip to hide it from his eyes.

“Yes. It’s the right thing…for you.”

My brows drew together and some heat started to come back to my limbs. I forced myself to drop the papers on the island and take a step back as if they would come alive and bite my fingers off.

This time I met his gaze straight on, the dread and excitement turning into anger. “For me. How about you? What do you get out of it?”

He tilted his head to the side, his eyes slightly narrowing in a calculating manner. “It’s the right thing for me too.”

A little dazed, I nodded. Barely able to speak through the tightness in my throat, I said, “I see.” Impressive word choices, I know.

I was so out of it that I didn’t even notice him taking out a pen from his suit jacket and offering it to me.

I stared at him as if he had sprouted another head.

“You want me to sign it…now.”

It wasn’t a question, but he treated it as such.

“Yes. I’d like to get it done right now.”

“You’d like to get it done right now,” I echoed.

“Preferably.”

That word—that one annoying word pushed me over the edge of worry and guilt into anger.

Preferably.

I decided right then and there that it was the most ridiculous and annoying word in the world. I didn’t touch the pen. I didn’t pick up the papers.

I crossed my arms against my chest. “The right thing to do would’ve been to be honest with me from the beginning.”

Cool as a cucumber, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his pants as red-hot fury licked over my skin.

“You’re right, which is why I’d like you to sign the papers.”

“No.”

His brows drew together as he looked at me from across the space. “No?”

“No.” I was very good at being stubborn. I was like a cow—if I didn’t want to be moved, you couldn’t move me, no matter who or what came.

“Rose—”

“No.”

He gritted his teeth. “Why?”

I shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I don’t think I feel like signing anything today. Maybe some other time.”

“Rose, it needs to be today.”

“Really?” I asked, making a thinking face and then grimacing. “Ah, I’m so sorry. I’m busy today. Maybe some other time.”

He looked truly taken back. “Why are you doing this? I thought this was what you wanted.”

No wonder I had thought him to be a cement block in the beginning—not only did he not show his emotions, he didn’t understand them even when they slapped him in the face.

Something wet slid down my cheek and, appalled at myself for crying, I wiped at it angrily with the back of my hand. That’s when Jack’s face changed and his entire body tensed. He lost the frown, the anger, the disbelief and hid behind his mask again.

I wiped off another wayward tear and lifted my chin high.

He shook his head then rubbed the bridge of his nose. Next thing I knew, he was moving toward me. I did my best to breathe in and out normally and stayed put. Even when he was standing right next to me, his chest almost resting against my shoulder, I didn’t move. I stopped breathing too.

“Rose,” he started in a low voice, his head bent closer to mine.

I stopped trying to clear the tears away. They were only angry tears, and maybe stress, nothing more, and the same reasons applied for the trembling, too.

When I felt his lips against my temple, I closed my eyes. “You’re breaking my heart, baby, trying to hold on to something that should’ve never been. Sign the divorce papers, Rose. Please.”

“I won’t,” I whispered.

“Why?” he asked again.

“I won’t.”

I felt the gentle touch of his fingertips as he gripped my chin and turned my head. I opened my eyes and looked straight into the dark blue eyes of the man I had irrevocably fallen in love with.

I wanted to say so much to him.

“Do it. I’ll send someone to pick up the signed papers.”

He held on to my chin and seemed to map out my face in his mind as his eyes touched every inch. Then his hand slipped forward, cupping the side of my cheek.

My eyes closed on their own as he pressed a kiss to my forehead then the next second he was gone. I was too scared to open my eyes, to face the reality of the hell that had been my life for the last week.

He could send his entire firm to my door if he wanted to. I was not going to sign those damn papers.

“Rose? It didn’t go well, did it?”

I took a few deep breaths and opened my eyes, feeling more determined than ever.

Sally was standing right where Jack had stood just moments earlier. I picked up the papers, holding them out for her to take. “He wants a divorce.”

She seemed to choke up before she took the file from my hand. “But, he said…how would—did you sign them?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Are you going to?”

“Nope.”

That evening when we closed the coffee shop, no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find Jack anywhere, and I took his absence as an invitation.