Page 38 of Meant to Be
“I guess it’s different for women.” Her voice was terse. He could feel her withdrawing from him.
“How’d he take the rejection?”
“He was annoyed, but I think mostly at Julia for getting in the way. Look, it’s Jagger we’re talking about. He’s a make-love-not-war kind of guy. Plus, I never saw him in New York, except with friends or at parties.”
But Mitch put Jagger and Patrick on his list of possible suspects, along with Doctor Singer. Someone had attacked her in New York and followed her to Charlotte Tavern. It wasn’t on the way to anywhere else, so no one would end up there by accident. Which led to his next question.
“Is that why you came here? You’re having some sort of life-after-near-death crisis?”
Her gaze jerked to his. “In a manner of speaking.” She sighed, and shook her head, making him feel pathetic for asking yet again what she was doing there. “I didn’t seek you out to renew a relationship. I know I can’t go back, but I want to live, Mitch. I want my life to matter. And even with all that I’ve done, I can’t seem to go completely forward without a resolution around what happened to us.”
Mitch pursed his lips in frustration with her vague explanation. “It was pretty straight forward, Syd.”
“No, Mitch, it wasn’t.” She surprised him by leaning forward, matching his in-your-face tactic with her own. “We had our lives planned. I was going to be a doctor and you a lawyer. And then you decided you wanted to serve your country, even though it meant risking your life, being away from me, and not knowing where we’d end up. I supported you in that decision.”
“Then why postpone the wedding?”
She opened her mouth, but he interrupted her. “Because your parents didn’t want you marrying me.”
She let out an expletive and sat back. “They had no problem with you specifically.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She shook her head then looked him straight in the eye. “Have you ever considered they were right to persuade me to postpone the wedding? We were so young, Mitch. We didn’t know the first thing about the realities of life. Maybe they sped up the inevitable. Maybe we wouldn’t have made it.”
His eyes narrowed. “You believe that?”
She looked down for a moment. “Look at you now. There isn’t a woman in this town between the ages of twenty and thirty-five you haven’t been with. That kind of lifestyle isn’t conducive to a loving marriage.”
“First, that’s not true and second, I’m not married.” Granted, he’d sowed his oats, but his reputation far exceeded reality. Frustration lapped at him that she’d use town gossip against him. “Yes. But what if you got tired of me? The same woman, day after day, week after week, year after year? I know you think your inability to commit to a relationship now is my fault, but be honest, Mitch, you like the excitement, the variety. It’s easy to blame me, and I’m willing to take it. But, in the end, the only one you hurt is you. What’s the saying? Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die?”
Mitch was taken aback at her tirade. He wanted to respond equally, reminding her that he had good reason to accuse her of being the cause of their break up. Had she talked to her parents about his attempts to contact her years ago? But then he reminded himself of her situation. It was wrong to poke at her when she was so raw and vulnerable.
He was about to apologize when she said, “I know you care for Jenny and wish it was me not her, but—”
“Wait. Stop. I don’t wish it was you in Jenny’s place.”
She pursed her lips and glared in response.
Anger flared in him. What kind of man did she think he was? “Syd, I may be hurt and bitter about what happened between us, but I don’t want you hurt or dead.” God. The idea of it soured his stomach. “In fact, I don’t want you dead so much that I’m going to protect you, which means you’re coming home with me tonight.”
