Page 82 of His Best Friend's Baby

“You’re the one leaving.”

“I don’t have a choice!” he nearly shouted and she flinched.

“Everyone has a choice, Jesse. You can either choose to stay or to go.”

He laughed bitter and angry. “Well, I’m leaving in two weeks. What are you going to do then, Julia? Where will you go? Where will you live? With Agnes and Ron?”

Her heart stopped before resurging. She felt her face go hot. An answering anger built in her.

“It’s not your problem. It’s not your business.”

“It is my business. You’re Mitch’s widow. You’re living in my house.”

His words crushed her. That’s all she was to him, all she’d ever been. Another one of Mitch’s mistakes he had to deal with. Another mess he had to clean up.

“I’m relieving you of it. I’m just another girl you slept with. You are free from worry.”

He took a step toward her, his face dark and cloudy with emotion, and she didn’t care. She had enough anger for a thousand lovesick and heartbroken women. His self-righteousness didn’t stand a chance. “How much money do you have?”

Why did everything in her life come to money? “None of your business.”

“You’re getting paid minimum wage out there, right?”

“I might get promoted.” She sounded indignant, like Amanda, even to her own ears.

“To what, eight bucks an hour?”

“I’m not going to talk—” She turned, ready to walk back to her napping son and the sweet relief of tears, but Jesse slid his hand down her arm, almost like a caress.

“Let me give you some money.”

She jerked her elbow out of his grasp. “Not on your life.”

“You can stay in this house.”

She laughed until she hurt. Was he really that blind to her pride?

“What do you want?” he asked, his face twisted with a pain she recognized.

They’d been ignoring the pink elephant in the room since she’d first stepped onto his porch weeks ago. She’d walked around it, pretending it didn’t matter, hoping it might just go away the more time they had together. But their time was up. The accident, Mitch’s death and Jesse’s survival combined to be the wedge between them. Even if the town had accepted him with open arms tonight, he’d still want to leave. Tonight, two weeks, two months from now, it didn’t matter. He would run forever unless he unloaded his burden. This was her last chance to talk about his tangled past and push it out of the way.

“I want you to tell me what happened.” She swallowed. “In the desert with Mitch.”

He looked at her, incredulous. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because that’s why you’re really leaving me. Whatever happened in the war is what you’re really running from and if you don’t deal with it, Jesse, it’s going to eat you alive.”

“What a load of crap.”

“Then why haven’t you called Caleb? Your sister said he’s been trying to get in touch with you. You said you’d call.”

“Jesus, why does it matter?”

“You can’t,” she whispered, “because you’re scared.”

His eyes flashed to hers but he was silent.

“You’re scared because he’s going to want to talk about that day. Like I want to talk about it.”

“It has nothing to do with us.”

“I love you.” She finally said the words that had been beating at her lips forever, it seemed. “I’ve loved you since Germany and the accident is taking you away from me.”

“Julia.” He sighed. “I can’t.”

“Tell me, Jesse,” she snapped. “I deserve to know what happened. At the very least, I deserve that.”

The moment stretched impossibly, to the finest, thinnest wires. She held her breath until she thought her lungs would explode and just when she was ready to give up, Jesse opened his mouth.

“It won’t make a difference,” he told her. “I’m still leaving.”

“It will make a difference to me, because I’m still staying.”

It took a few more moments before he spoke again and in that time she gave up the fight against tears. They trickled down her cheeks and over her lips. They tasted salty, like Jesse.

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