Page 119 of Fire in You

Brock had.

Her chin lifted. “Has he even told you that I’ve contacted him many, many times since he moved here?”

“What?” I stiffened.

Kristen leaned forward. “I wanted to get back with him. I’m woman enough to admit that. We’ve talked it out. The weekend he came back to—”

“To finalize the sale of the house?” My stomach dropped to my toes. He’d returned looking like he hadn’t slept. Kristen had followed him. Never once did he tell me that she was trying to get back with him or that she was contacting him. “Were you two together?”

She bit down on her lip. “Part of me wants to tell you yes, because maybe, just maybe, if you shut him out of your life for good, he’ll be able to move on, to actually live, but I’m not going to lie. I tried.” She laughed again, the sound hurting and cutting all at once. “It didn’t happen and not from lack of effort.”

I sort of wanted to hit her. For real. It didn’t matter at that moment that Brock and I weren’t together then. This woman who knew I was with Brock was sitting here telling me how she was still trying to seduce him.

“What in the actual fuck?” I said. “Do you hear yourself?”

“I hear myself. Trust me.”

“Then why are you here?” I demanded. “What is the point?”

“The point is I’m trying to do you a favor. I’m trying to stop you from making the same mistake as me and stop you from making a fool out of yourself like I have.”

My brows flew up. “Really? I’m supposed to believe that? You’re sitting here telling me that you’re in love with the man I’m with, and I’m supposed to believe you’re trying to do me a favor?”

“I’m not still in love with him. I’ve learned my lesson,” she said, eyes bright. “And yes, I am doing you a favor, because if you’re still in love with him after all these years, you’ve wasted just as much time as I have, because he’s not with you because he loves you. He’s with you because he believes he ruined your life.”

My mouth popped opened.

“When he learned you dropped out of college? Screwed him up in the head. When he found out you were seeing someone that your parents never met, it messed him up. When he found out you were single again, living all alone, he was torn up. Everything that ever went wrong in your life since that night you were shot, he blamed himself for it.”

Oh my God.

“You might think it’s crazy. You may not even want to believe me, but he would go to the ends of the earth for you,” she said, snatching her purse off the floor. “But not for the right reasons.”

My hands were starting to shake. “You need to leave.”

Kristen shook her head at me like I was a fool turning down a million dollars. “You need to ask yourself why now. Why is he with you? If he wanted you and loved you for all the right reasons, why did it take six years?”

There could be a thousand reasons why it took us six years to find our way back to each other. Each of them equally valid. But I knew Brock carried some heavy guilt over what happened to me. Everyone knew it.

“Not only does he feel like he’s obligated to you. He feels like he owes your father. It’s a double whammy for him. Getting with you is making up for how he believes he failed to be there for you and for your father.”

I flinched, because I’d thought that myself. More than once. It was like she plucked it right out of my darkest thoughts.

Kristen rose. “Don’t be like me. Don’t spend years of your life convincing yourself that he’s there for you because of the right kind of feelings.” She turned and then looked over her shoulder. “Good luck, Jillian.”

I sat there, not moving, long after Kristen left, unable to shake what she’d said to me. I couldn’t laugh it off or disregard it, because . . . because it made sense.

It made too much sense.

“Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow is wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly.”

—Old Eskimo Proverb

Chapter 33

I didn’t cry.

I didn’t even flip out after Kristen left.

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