Page 37 of Blindsided By You

In fact, I sense that while I may well be part of the problem here, I’m not actuallytheproblem. Something to do with that bride has Jenna spinning out. I’m good at screwing things up, but this time it’s not my screw up that has her lying there crying her heart out.

I also have no fucking idea what to do. I’m not one to make a girl cry. Me, I’m the guy who listens, checks in on how she’s feeling, works to keep her happy and laughing, stops her ending up this way before it happens.

Crying women weren’t part of my upbringing either. Mum is stoic. She needed to be—married to my prick of a father, althoughI never saw his wrath fall on her. Any time he turned even a mildly disapproving face her way, it evaporated with one of her smiles.

Rachel, his golden girl, met his moods with compliance if his demands coincided with hers, and defiance when they didn’t, but even when they clashed, there were never tears. Rachel doesn’t cry in front of people. It was only me he could reduce to a snivelling mess, my sister the comforter.

So, I’m ad-libbing here. The only thing I’m sure of is that standing by doing nothing makes me an arsehole.

Jenna’s sobbing subsides and a new sound takes its place, half wail, half moan, like an animal in distress. It cuts me like a blade, and I feel her pain in every cell of my body.

I take small quiet steps towards her, buying time, unsure of what I’m going to say. I advance like one of those negotiators stepping toward the guy standing on the ledge, knowing that one wrong move and it will all be over. But unlike the professional talkers, I’m an amateur, with no well-practised script or experience to draw on. All I’ve got is a heart swelling with both love and sadness for this woman, and a determination to free her from this pain.

Chapter 19

JENNA

There’sanewpainin the eerie silence, with the excruciating noise of the fire alarm gone. My feral sobs fill the room. But I can no more hold them back than I can control the impulse to curl foetal-like in the tangled mess of the bed.

With each ragged intake of breath, I can smell him—us. The pungent memory summoned by that scent only prompts deeper, agonising realisations of what I’ve done and how incredibly stupid I’ve been.

The bride next door is a reminder of all I’m not. I’m not her. I’m not someone’s everything. Their one and only. The sight of her in that sleek white dress—so like mine still hanging forlornly in my wardrobe—slapped me across the face, snapping me brutally out of these last few hours, where I’ve pretended to be something I’m not. Something Adam left me doubting I can ever be.

His abrupt exit from my life has left me with a void inside. The cool exterior that serves me so well in my work has taken hold below the surface. It’s as if the warmth of the love I felt for Adam seepedaway with his leaving—although he would argue it happened earlier, providing him the reason to go.

Beyond my smiling face and the eagerness with which I’ve embraced Geordie tonight, there’s a cool deep well, a pool where no ripple of true love stirs. Once it was there. I know I felt it for Adam. I let him plunge in and I know he found something. But it wasn’t enough.

Geordie claims to have found it too. He chipped away at the ice, wrapped me in the heat of his desire, swearing this is more than just a burst of sexual tension between two old friends we never saw coming.

But I struggle to believe him. Has he truly melted the frost around my heart, or am I simply desperate for it to be true? And in the morning I’ll wake to find the same Jenna who hasn’t felt anything for anyone since Adam.

As the pain intensifies, the harsh guttural sobbing morphs into a new sound. My body seeks to blur the jagged edges, reaching for what has saved me before.

When I’m running from a migraine, this keening that pours from me now in a last ditch effort to escape the all-encompassing pain will sometimes transport me to a safer place. The low wail floods every cell as I ride its wave. I soar above the river of pain. It’s a meditation, holding me aloft. I swirl along the vibrating pathway of my own sad song, my voice thrumming in my brain like an extended single-syllable mantra.

This is how he finds me.

Geordie lowers himself onto the bed. Gently, carefully. He slides across to where I teeter on the edge. I’ve retreated as far as I can from the door and what lies beyond—the image of a happiness I’d oncepictured for myself. His body brackets mine, a broad arm looped across my waist, the weight of it anchoring me. He won’t let me be swept away by this aching tide of memories. Geordie has me. Here. Now.

In the safety of his protective hug, I begin to let go of the sound. It trails away, the high-pitched note dropping to a soothing hum, and finally a light hiss of breath between lips still bruised from his earlier frantic kisses.

His lips brush my hair, and I relax into the softness. My body sinks down, embracing the calm. Geordie’s silence is comforting, his presence like one of those weighted blankets, its gentle pressure conveying I’m safe with him. But I knew this. I knew this from the moment he turned to me on the patio a week ago. I’ve been hurt, but Geordie is not a man who would do me harm.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “There are things in my past…”

“Ssssh.” He brushes a thumb across my cheek. “You don’t need to explain.”

“You know.” My voice is dull and flat. Of course he does. I suppose Rachel told him.

Geordie knows my shame. While there’s some relief in the fact he won’t think me totally irrational, it would have been nice to preserve the illusion of me as a whole person, not this damaged woman with a huge gaping hole. Adam took something from me and mostly I’ve covered it well. Now Geordie has seen into its ugly centre, he will never see me the same way again. But then, why, if he knew all this past week, did he still pursue me?

It could be just sexual attraction—I felt the heat of his gaze on me right from the start—but surely I haven’t totally imagined the other things he hints at with his eyes and his words. The tantalising allureof him possibly having feelings for me dangles in front of me. I’m desperate not to lose him this soon. Even if it’s just so I can pretend this is going somewhere. That he could be something more, and that I could be something more to him than a good lay.

“Connor told me,” he whispers. “I’m sorry Jenna. This guy who left you—you obviously loved him, so he must have had something going for him—but he’s an idiot.” His voice grows fierce. “And that he hurt you so much…” He huffs an angry breath against my ear. “I’d fucking deck him,” he mutters.

It is so unexpected. Gentle laughing Geordie, who has a reputation for hauling other guys out of trouble, not creating it—a peacemaker, not a brawler—would fight for me. I’m not normally turned on by the thought of men going all neanderthal on my behalf, but something in me wishes he and Adam might cross paths one day so he can deliver on that threat.

“Why the hell would he do that to you? I don’t get it.”

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