Page 49 of On the Edge

“I need to get on my flight,” I say, turning toward him and letting my hand with the ticket fall to my side.

“Please. Just step out of line for a minute so I can talk to you. Don’t leave like this.” His voice is right on the edge of begging.

“Don’t leave like this?” I bark out a laugh. “Oh, that’s rich, coming from you.”

Leaving is his specialty.

“Ma’am,” the gate agent says to me. “Would you mind stepping out of line so I can let these other passengers on the plane?”

I’m so flustered as I glance at the line that’s formed behind me, with all their eyes on me and Nate, that I mumble “of course” and step toward him, when what I really should have done was given her my ticket and walked down the jetway. I should have walked toward Marco, who is waiting on the other end of that flight, and not toward Nate, who doesn’t deserve me.

He takes my arm and gently leads me to the side where there’s a little space near a wall of glass overlooking the tarmac. The airport lights sparkle in the darkness, and I keep my eyes trained on the plane instead of looking at Nate.

“Hey,” he says, tucking his knuckles under my chin and tilting my head toward him. “Why did you disappear?”

“I had a plane to catch.” I shrug. In reality I’d made sure that the entire trip from Levi to Helsinki I was engaged in conversation with someone that wasn’t Nate, then slipped away from the rest of the team the minute we got through security. I’ve been hiding in the AirFrance priority lounge for the last hour and a half, hopeful I could get on the plane without having to have this conversation with Nate.

“Jackson,” he says, ripping me out of my thoughts. “You know that I wanted last night to happen as much as you did, right?”

My eyes narrow. “I didn’t want last night to happen,” I lie. “That was the alcohol speaking. So thank you for saving me from making a huge mistake.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” he says, his eyebrows dipping low as he considers my words.

“That’s on you.” I shrug. “I’m being honest here and you’re refusing to take me at my word.”

“There’s no way I can take you at your word when every single thing about your body is screaming something different,” he says, looking down at me.

And that’s when I realize how close I’m leaning into him, and that he can see through my thin sweater that my nipples have hardened in response to his proximity.Ugh.My body is a traitor. I’ve spent all day furious at myself for letting my attraction to him get the best of me. Again. And here he is next to me and my body is already reacting the way it always does, always has, when he is around. The further I am from him, the better for everyone. Especially Marco.

“I came back because of you,” he says again.

“Please don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Make it seem like we could ever care about each other like that again.”

“Did we ever stop?” he asks, taking a step closer so that he’s only inches from me. I can feel his breath on my forehead, a warm caress, and my body aches to curl in and get wrapped up in him where I belong.

No,I tell myself,that’s definitely not where you belong.

“Nate,” I choke out through the lump that’s rapidly rising in my throat. My nose feels like someone just flushed it with saline, and it brings tears to my eyes. I punctuate each word as I tell him the truth, finally. “You. Broke. My. Fucking. Heart.”

And it’s still broken. I’m not sure it will ever be whole again.

“I know, Jax, and I came back to make it right.”

I pause for a second at the nickname, the one I haven’t heard in years. The one I hated, until I didn’t. It’s his pet name for me, and until now he hasn’t used it once since he’s been back. I want to ask him about it—why he doesn’t call me Jax anymore—but the second half of his declaration, that he came back to make things right, is the one that really needs addressing.

“You don’t get second chances with things like that,” I say, my voice firm and maybe a bit louder than I intended. “You can be the sledgehammer, or you can be the glue. You don’t get to be both.”

“So is Marco the glue, then?” he asks, his voice tinged with jealousy and a hint of sarcasm. “Did he put your heart back together?”

“I’mthe glue, Nate. My heart was healed long before Marco and I got together.” That might be the least true thing I’ve ever said; but I wish it were true, and I need him to believe it is.

“If it’s so healed,” he says, dropping his voice so low I almost have to lean in to hear him, “then why are you still hurting so much?”

I look up, shocked when I shouldn’t be. He’s always been able to see everything I try to hide from him. He gets me at a level that’s intrinsic to who I am, and he always has. It’s part of why his leaving left me so devastated. He shattered my heart, but more than that, he shattered my sense of self—because without him, I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. And I can never, Iwill never, give anyone that kind of power over me again.

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