Page 43 of Bloom and Burn
Well, shit. Something’s definitely wrong.
“Jack, what’s going on? You are being weird.”
He does look at me then, but I kind of wish he hadn’t, because I don’t like what I see in his eyes. There is hurt, betrayal, confusion, a hint of disappointment, like I’ve taken the light out of his world.
“Your dad refused to sell,” he grits out, his voice sounding hollow. “And he told me you are the boy with the plants that I used to bully.”
I hug myself. Oh shit. That’s not howthatwas supposed to go. “I can explain.”
His expression falls. “So it is true. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Because I’ve gotten over it. Because I didn’t want the past hanging over us. But it kept bugging me, so I planned to come clean today. Why did dad have to go and ruin it?
“Because it’s in the past. We were both stupid kids, Jack. I contemplated confronting you about it, but then I saw that you weren’t that boy anymore. And then I got to know you and couldn’t help but want to keep the drama where it belongs—in the past. I wanted a clean slate, and I got it. You’ve grown so much. You’ve changed. You’ve become better. You regret what you did, and that was enough for me.”
“Still, hiding it when you knew…”
“It’s not fair, I realized that, yes. And I wanted to tell you. Today. But my father beat me to it.”
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. He’s tense and I dare not touch him, afraid it might set him off. I messed up by not telling him. I should’ve done it earlier. But I really wanted to forget that once and for all, it was my right to. My heart aches, my stomach twists. I hope I didn’t ruin this. I really didn’t mean to lie—it just felt better not to dig up the past, that’s all.
“It was wrong of me to do that. I’m sorry. But I really did it because I forgave you. Because I wanted to get to know you without the past getting in the way of that.”
He opens those gorgeous eyes and pins them on me. They look lost, vulnerable, and it breaks my heart to see them like that. “I regret what I did back then every day of my life. So please, tell me the truth, Ryan. I don’t think I can take anything but it right now. If this was some ploy to take your revenge on me, I need to know.”
“It is the truth. I don’t care who you used to be as a kid. We were all impressionable and dumb. We made mistakes. I never held that against you. I care about whoyou are now, and the fact that you still beat yourself up about what you did is enough. You regret it and you make amends daily. What else could I ask for?”
He sighs deeply and from the bottom of his heart. “I’m sorry for being an ass back then. It was a shitty thing to do. And I am sorry I didn’t recognize you and apologize immediately.”
His sincerity caresses my heart. “Apology accepted,” I say, ghosting my fingers along his jaw. With his slanted eyebrows and puckered lips, he looks like a sad puppy. “And I’m sorry too, for not telling you earlier. It wasn’t because of a malicious intent, but I shouldn’t have kept quiet anyway.”
He smiles shyly, nuzzling his cheek into my hand. “I freaked out when your old man told me. I thought you played me because you wanted revenge.”
“Trust me, if that were the case, you’d be lying in a ditch on the side of the road.”
The chuckle he lets out is fragile, delicate. “I’m sorry that I didn’t get him to agree. I really am out of ideas now.”
We embrace each other, my heart fluttering with love for this man. “We’ll figure it out. Together.”
He kisses me gently. “Together.”
“Are you dumb?” Emily scoffs at Jack once he’s done rehashing what happened at the town hall. “Of course Ryan had a reason not to say anything. And hello, you really didn’t recognize him? I knew you were bad with faces, but seriously? Didn’t you have a crush on the guy before we moved?”
“What?” I shriek at the same time Jack does.
I don’t know what’s more shocking—the fact that Emily did recognize, but didn’t call me out me or that Jack apparently had a crush on me in high school.
She shrugs. “You are both idiots. Perfect for each other. God, I’m so happy you can at least communicate because I don’t even want to imagine the drama this misunderstanding could’ve caused if Jack acted on impulse like he sometimes does.”
Yeah, I second that. With the way he stormed into my shop, I was ready to fight tooth and claw and crush him if I had to.
“So you knew? Who I was?” I ask, dying to know.
She winks at me. “I figured it out. But since you didn’t bring it up, I thought you had a reason for it. Then I got to spend some time with you and kind of put together why. It wasn’t my place to tell my brother, so I didn’t. That’s all.”
Oh. We stare at each other. I don’t know what to say and, judging by the way Jack is twiddling his thumbs, neither does he.
Emily claps her hands when the awkward silence gets too much. “Right, with that crisis averted, what the hell are we gonna do about the facility?”
