Page 33 of Even if It Hurts

“Just finished crying herself to sleep,”I’d told him, gesturing toward the hallway entrance.

His narrowed gaze had snapped to me at that.“Then good night.”

He’d left me standing there, staring after him in bemusement, for long seconds before I’d been able to grab my things and leave. But when I’d made it downstairs, the nighttime doorman had been waiting for me again with an amused, told-you-so smile as if I hadn’t been leaving just minutes after Asher arrived.

But I’d been too irritated and disappointed with the man upstairs who could barely look at or speak to me—but still deemed it necessary to have men escort me to my car—to sayanything other than a whisperedthank youonce we’d made it to where I’d parked.

“Then quit,” Jackson said suddenly, jerking me from the torrent of Asher-fueled thoughts and back to the present with him, where we sat in the diner.

Glancing from my mostly untouched food to his empty plate, I tentatively asked, “What?”

He held a hand toward me before letting it fall to the table. “You don’t wanna be a nanny anyway, and all you’ve done since getting this job is complain about your boss.” He gave me a look as if the answer should’ve been obvious. “So, quit.”

My mind raced as I wondered if that was true. But just as quickly as those thoughts formed, they faded away when I remembered Jackson getting frustrated and hanging up on me just the night before. And not because of anything to do with Asher or my refusal to work on the farm, but because of my excitement over Kaia.

And as I replayed the very few conversations we’d had these past days, a deep sadness swept through me and gripped at my heart because it was clear he was lying to methen. It was clear he was using whatever he could to try to push me back to a life I didn’t want.

“Was it that I didn’t tell you or that I left?” I asked, confusing him. At the furrowing of Jackson’s brow, I lowered my voice to a whisper and clarified, “What ruined us?”

“Lainey...” he began on a ragged breath. “We aren’t—we’re fine.”

There was that word again.

“You know we aren’t,” I insisted as a deep grief threatened to choke me. “Jackson, there’s a wall so tall and thick between us, but when I really think about it, I don’t know when it appeared.”

“You think there’s a wall because of your guilt.”

“I know there is,” I maintained, even as my jaw wavered at his callously delivered words. “You never wanted me to go away to school; you fought me on it constantly. And things changed during those years, but I thought it was because we weren’t always together the way we were so used to. Now, I’m not sure that’s what it was.”

His head shook slowly but sternly as I spoke. “Nothing has changed. We’re figuring out our way throughyourbetrayal, but we’re fine.”

“Stop sayingfine,” I breathed...begged. “That word is just—” A sound of discontent left me as I buried a hand in my hair. “Jackson, I know what I did, but do you even realize what you’re doing to me? What my parents are doing to me?”

Frustration stole across his handsome face and clashed with a look as if daring me to find one thing that he was at fault for.

“Y’all aren’t just angry at me for lying—not even lying—omittingthat I was studying something elseon top ofwhat I originally went to school for. That...thatI would understand. But y’all are angry that I’ve found something I’m passionate about because it isn’t what any of you want for me. It isn’t what has been expected of me for so long. And you...you were so kind the other night when I thought I’d been fired, but the second you found out I hadn’t been, you started reminding me of all the responsibilities I was shirking in the fields and office.

“And I’m sorry if I’ve been complaining about my boss throughout breakfast, but I haven’t been complaining about him ever since getting hired,” I went on. “If that were true, you wouldn’t have cut me off in the middle of gushing about Kaia last night, saying, ‘If you’re trying to prove you’re happier there than at the farm, I get it,’ before hanging up on me. Actually...” A stunned laugh burst from me when realization hit, and I started sliding out of the booth, only to stop when Jackson gripped my arm and jerked me back.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“I’m leaving. Because you’re twisting everything around and onto me whenyouwere the one who started complaining about my boss,” I said, my exasperated smile widening when Jackson’s face fell. “You asked what time I actually left there last night before going off about him and how you don’t like how unpredictable he and the job are—as if ranching and farming are predictable.”

I started pushing from the booth but was roughly pulled back again. A pained gasp tore down my throat when my hip caught the corner of the table before my ribs slid across the edging.

“There is no wall between us,” he said softly but no less severely. “We are fine, but we’reonlyfine because you refuse to wake up and see what you’re doing to us by going through your life as ifwenever were, as ifIhaven’t always been your future.”

I reared back at the accusation, the small movement sending an echo of pain through my side. “I’m not—that isn’t true.”

“You sure about that?” he challenged. “We always talked about getting married after high school, butyouwanted to go to college. So, we planned to get married after you graduated college, butyoudecided to get your master’s without even telling me. And when you finally came back,youcontinued going on with your life and making plans without me. Everything you’ve been doing the past six years has beenyou, not youandme.”

“Jackson—”

“So, take all your misplaced blame and understand all this disconnect you’re feeling is because you’re pulling away. None of this would be happening if you put a fraction of the effort into us that you put into anything else.” He released me to gesture to the window and ground out, “Things with your parents would smooth over if you’d see how selfish you’re being by taking this job when you’re needed on your family’s farm.”

I stared at him through blurry eyes as guilt, doubt, and pain formed a lethal storm in my chest. Just as my lips parted to say something—apologize, tell him he was wrong,anything—the alarm sounded on my phone, breaking through this crushing moment.

Wiping at the lone tear that managed to slip free, I cleared my throat and quickly searched through my bag until I found my phone.

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