Page 15 of Intrigued By Love

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She struggled in my hold, and I let her go. “I was always left to figure out you’d disappeared to help your family or some project for your family. It showed me I was so important that I had to spend weeks at a time wondering if you were ever coming home.”

I sat up. “Bullshit. I was working my ass off for your future.”

“And you would run home to solve your parents’ issues the minute they said jump.” She stomped toward a chair where a robe lay.

Slipping it on, she tied the belt in a huff.

“You’re angry about me seeing my parents?”

“No, I’m angry about you keeping me separate from your life involving them. You let them believe I wasn’t important enough to include in the world you’d grown up in. Your mother told me this often enough.”

“She didwhat?” I reached down, gathering my clothes before putting them on.

When the fuck had she been in Vegas? Fuck, it was probably during her monthly spa trips. I’d always assumed she went to Palm Springs, but now it was obvious—I was utterly wrong.

“Don’t be so shocked. She showed up in the casino at the Ida Las Vegas at least once a month on her way to visit her personal spa consultant to tell me I was your side piece. That I’d never be the woman you would marry and not to get my hopes up. You were going to marry someone from your social circle. Four years I put up with it.”

“I told her never to approach you. It was to protect you from her venom.”

“Well, it didn’t work out. And you running home to handle some crisis or another added fuel to the belief.”

“Why didn’t you talk to me? I would have cleared it up. Dammit, Kailani, I wasn’t ashamed of you, I was ashamed of them.”

Her expressive eyes widened. “Then why did you drop everything whenever they needed you?”

“Because I didn’t want their shit to pile up on our door. You were the one thing in my life that wasn’t tainted by Hollywood or my family’s elitist attitude or views.”

Her shoulders sagged, and tears glistened in her dark eyes. “It doesn’t matter, Jax.”

“The hell it doesn’t. You’ve convinced yourself I’ve done something I haven’t. I want you to give us a chance to fix this. An honest chance. I want you, and I know you want me. The past wouldn’t hurt you so much if what we had meant nothing to you.”

“I won’t make promises that I can’t keep. Fixing things sounds so simple, but nothing has ever been simple between us.”

“And what of love?”

“What about it?”

“Isn’t the love we shared worth a second chance, worth fighting for?”

She closed her eyes for a brief second. A move she’d always done when she tried to ignore the truth of a situation.

“As I said before, love was never a problem. It was everything else.”

She’d just all but admitted she still loved me. This woman was so frustrating.

I wanted to shake her. She’d shredded my heart, my soul when she left. There was no fucking way I could walk away from her again.

I cupped the back of my head. “Name what constitutes everything else?”

“Your job for one, my job for another.” She cocked a hand on her hip. “And the biggest thing of all, your family. They say jump, you say how high. It doesn’t matter the cost to you and especially to me.”

“Dammit, I explained I was protecting you from them. And you left me because of it.”

“I left you because you assumed I would always be there and couldn’t see what your disappearing acts were doing to me. You’d compartmentalized me and our relationship into a nice little box that was separate from every other aspect of your life. I was supposed to be your person, your woman. I would’ve stood by your side through everything, even your parents and their antics.”

I took a step toward her, but she raised a hand to stop me. “I’m not finished. I left because I realized I deserved more, not just from you or your family, but from me. My love for you never changed, just what I would endure to keep it.”

Tears streamed down her face, and she turned her back to me as she lifted her hand to wipe at her cheeks.

---