Page 72 of Even if It Hurts

The realization of what he’d done.

“Now...” I jerked my head toward the food trucks and booths behind him. “Do the smart thing and go back the way you came. Wait for her to come to you.”

Jackson didn’t move to leave or agree. He just stared me down before saying, “After all this, I can’t figure out if she’s refusing to quitbecauseof youor because she’safraidof you.”

“I’ll never give her a reason to be afraid of me. But considering I know every single thing about you, it’s safe to sayyoushould be a little afraid of me.”

At the roll of his eyes as he tried ripping his hands free, I lowered my voice and started listing off every piece of information I had on him and had memorized over the week. His birth date and social, his number and address, the details of his truck.

“I get it,” he broke when I started listing the names of his family. Hardened eyes shifted past me for a moment before snapping back to me. “Look, I don’t care what you say or what you know; you being a deranged stalker isn’t gonna stop anything. She belongs here. She belongs with me. And she knows it.”

I let the corner of my mouth tip up. “We’ll see,” I murmured as I released him.

With nothing more than a scathing glare, Jackson left.

“People were looking,” Lainey whispered as she stepped up beside me, sounding somewhat awed, slightly embarrassed, and wholly unsure.

“I don’t care,” I muttered as I continued watching Jackson’s retreating figure. “He wasn’t respecting you. He came charging after you and Kaia.”

A soft hum came from my side, pulling my attention to Lainey long enough to see Kaia asleep in her arms, and the basket clinging to her fingertips.

“Let me take Kaia,” I offered as I reached for my niece.

“I’ve got her,” she assured me as she handed me the berries instead, a small smile tipping up the corners of her mouth as her gaze briefly settled on me. “I love these moments with her.”

Agreement rumbled in my chest.

As difficult as anything was for me when it came to Kaia, the few times she’d fallen asleep when I’d been holding her were something I’d come to cherish.

“What’d you say to him?” Lainey asked as she started in the direction Jackson had left.

I thought over what all to tell her before finally saying, “Things that might bother you. If you want, I’ll tell you everything. But I told him enough for him to know how I feel about what he did to you. I made sure he knew what I thought about him trying to contact you before you’re ready to talk.”

Lainey was silent for so long that I almost apologized for how I’d responded to her boyfriend, but she eventually said, “Thank you.”

“You’re not mad?”

An unconvincing sound left her. “No, I just hadn’t decided if I was gonna tell him about the...you know...bruises,” she said so softly, I almost couldn’t make out the word over the crowd we were walking into, then hurried to assure me, “Nothing like that had ever happened before, and I’m not sure he realized how hard he was gripping me.”

“Doesn’t change that it happened, Lainey.”

“I know,” she whispered, sounding ashamed. A tone I’d heard too many times in the past. One that had always infuriated me, but coming from her?

“That wasn’t your fault,” I told her, once again bringing her to a stop with me. Only that time, my hand slid to her waist and stayed there. That time, her nearly inaudible gasp betrayed her as her wide gaze darted from my hand before locking on my eyes, trapping me in place and making me want so many things in that moment.

To pull her closer. To capture those full lips. To confess more than I already had.

But I just forced myself to ask, “You know that, right?”

She quickly blinked before tearing her stare away, her delicate throat shifting with her forced swallow. “I—” A short, self-deprecating huff burst from her. “I mean, I do. Of course I do. But there’s those parts of me that think this is all because I stopped doing what was expected of me. So, I spiral down and?—”

“Nothing,” I said fiercely, my hand flexing against her and shifting her ever so slightly closer. “You didnothingto deserve that. Even if he hadn’t left marks, he doesn’t get to talk to you the way he does. He doesn’t get to control you the way he’s trying to. Men like that shouldn’t be in relationships. Men like him don’t deserve women like you.”

Her head bobbed unsteadily before she whispered, “Right.” A few tense seconds passed as we stood there, staring at each other, before she rocked back a step and flippantly rolled her eyes. “Really, I think he’s so mad because he’s in love with someone else, and he’s trying to ignore it for the sake of our parents’ plan for us...which I’m not going along with anymore.”

For someone who’d been dating Jackson most her life and was supposed to have gotten engaged to him recently, she said the news surprisingly calmly.

“And you knew about this?”

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