Graham: I thought you should know . . . Grey just left for Seattle. She said she’s going to spend the summer with Janie. I’m sorry, man.
I read the message three times, before quickly going through my phone to call Grey. It rang until her voice mail picked up, and I hung up only to call her again—getting the same result. Without leaving a message, I called Graham.
“Hey—”
“When did she leave?” I asked quickly, cutting him off.
“Right before I texted you. I’m really sorry, Jagger, she told us about what happened this morning.”
My eyes widened and I let my head fall back until it hit the wall I was sitting against. I waited for Graham to start yelling, to tell me I wasn’t good enough for Grey, to hate me for being the reason she left . . . but it never came. “Why are you even telling me? Why are you sorry?”
There was a strange laugh on the other end of the phone, and he sighed. “Grey seemed to think I hated you too,” he mused. “I don’t hate you. There were times I wanted to. Times I wondered if you were going to try to mess up things for her and Ben because it wasn’t hard to see how you felt about her. After he died, I kept waiting for you to make your move on her—”
“You fucking asshole,” I growled, but he spoke louder before I could continue.
“She’s my baby sister, dude. I wasn’t around the three of you enough to know what you would do. Obviously I was wrong in thinking that. But I always kept my guard up with you, because I just never knew what to expect. I told Grey this morning, I respect you. I respect what you did for her as a friend, and what you did for Ben as his. You have no idea how much I appreciate what you’ve done for her in the last two years. You helped her more than any of us could, and you did it without caring that she had no fucking clue how you felt. You think I would have let her leave with just anyone after what happened the night of your graduation? Fuck no. I want to be able to help her; I want to be able to protect her from all the bad shit in the world. She should be my responsibility, but I’ve been here while she was finishing school. Letting her leave with you was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made, because I know you are who she needs.”
I sat there, not able to say anything. I would’ve never expected anything like this from Graham.
“When she was a kid, she needed me and our dad. When she got older, she needed Ben. Now she needs you. I know she’s in love with you too, we all do.”
I forced a laugh, but it sounded pained. “No. No, she’s not. You didn’t see her face this morning.”
“I saw her after. I don’t know what happened there, but I witnessed her freaking out over here. I’m not saying she’s not denying it, but I know she loves you. She’s scared, Jagger, that’s all.”
“I don’t—”
“She thinks she’s not allowed to love you. Because of Ben, because of what you were to him . . . but she does, just trust us on this. She’s always loved you, you’ve always been close, and that’s changed into something more over the last two years. I want to tell you to go after her, but I think she needs this. She needs time away from this place and from you so she can see what exactly you mean to her now. Give her a couple weeks, Jagger, she’ll be back.”
I let the phone slide from my hand after we ended the call, and sat there for another hour until it got to be too much. Stalking through the building, I went up to my room and shrugged into a shirt before jogging out to my car. I drove to the edge of town and parked my car so the headlights were lighting my path.
Squatting down in front of the headstone, I stared at it as I tried to calm my shaking, and broke instead. I stumbled back so I was sitting, and planted my elbows on my knees as a sob tore through my chest.
“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, man,” I cried. “I’m trying not to love her, but I can’t, and it’s killing me. She’s yours; I know she’s yours. You need to be here. You need to be starting a family with her. She needs you to be happy, Ben, you need to fucking be here!” Sobs tortured my body as I mourned my best friend, and hated myself for loving his girl. “You’re so selfish. You can’t just leave her like this, and leave me to be the one to pick up the pieces of her. Did you hear her last week? She’s still broken, Ben! She’s fucking broken! And she’s not mine to fix, you need to be the one to fix her!”
Everything in me ached as I yelled at him—at nothing.
Falling back so I was staring up at the night sky, I gripped at my chest as I pleaded, “Just come back.”
Chapter 4
Grey
May 30, 2014
“AS MUCH AS I love having you here with me, I need to know what happened,” Janie said, suddenly switching topics.
“Wait, what?”
She looked at me expectantly for a few seconds before offering me a sad smile and climbing onto her bed to lie on her stomach next to me. “I love you, Grey, and I want you to stay here as long as you want to, or need to. But I know something had to have happened, and you’ve been ignoring whatever it is since you got here.”
I looked up at the ceiling and took some calming breaths. When I’d called Janie, all I had said was that I needed to get away. I had packed a bag and was in my car within thirty minutes of getting off the phone with her, and that had been a week ago. I’d talked to my parents a couple times, and Graham once. But after the two times Jagger called me as I got on the freeway to head to Seattle, he hadn’t tried to contact me again, and I hadn’t called him. I didn’t know what to say to him. I felt like I didn’t know him, I didn’t know what in our friendship had been real, or a lie, and I hated that I was questioning him at all.
“Was going back to Thatch just too hard?” Janie asked a couple minutes later when I still hadn’t said anything.
“Yes and no. The first day was hard, but it got better. I was staying with my parents and looking into getting an apartment. Jagger . . .” I paused to clear my throat. “Jagger’s grandparents had this old warehouse-type studio that no one has used in years, and he turned it into an apartment and a studio. We hung out a lot that week . . .”
Janie turned and raised one eyebrow. “And how is Jagger?”
My eyes narrowed at the way she’d asked about him. Like she knew. Were she and Graham still talking about me? Had he told her? “Why do you ask it like that?”
“Like what?” She gave me an innocent look. “I just want to know how he is. This is the longest you two have been apart . . . pretty much ever.”
She was right; other than the time my family took a trip to Europe, I’d never been away from him for this long, and it was killing me. “Have you talked to Graham lately?”
“No, not since before graduation, why?”
I studied her for a few seconds before releasing the breath I’d been holding and looking back at the ceiling. “Jagger told me he’s in love with me,” I whispered.
“And?”
My head whipped around to face her, shock covering my face. “And? What do you mean? This is a big fucking deal!”
Her head jerked back, and she barked out a quick laugh. “Wait, seriously? Did you—had he never told you that before?”
“No, Janie, he hadn’t!”
She blinked slowly a few times, an incredulous expression covering her face. “How did you not know?”
I sat up on the bed and turned to face her. “How did you know? And why didn’t you tell me?”
“Everyone knew. I mean, Be—” She abruptly stopped talking, her eyes wide.
“What? Tell me!”
“Grey . . . Ben even knew,” she admitted, her voice so soft I thought I heard her wrong until I took in the sad look in her eyes.
“No.” I shook my head and my throat tightened. “No, he couldn’t have. He would have told me, he—he wouldn’t have been okay with that. How did you know that Ben knew?” I yelled, and she jumped from the sudden rise in my voice.
“He told me, kind of—I mean, not exactly, but he hinted at it.”
“Janie, what did he say?”<
br />
She looked away for a second before shrugging and glancing back at me. “Ben was always all over you. Do you remember how we would go cosmic bowling after all the parties our freshman and sophomore years?” When I nodded, she continued. “Well, on one of those nights during freshman year when we were at the alley, it just hit me. I realized he pretty much never touched you when we were at a party or bowling, and it was weird because it was so unlike you and Ben. So I waited until we were alone—you and Jagger were trying to mess each other up on your turns or something—and I asked if he was okay.”
I didn’t realize I was leaning toward her and holding my breath until she stopped talking, her eyes misting. “What did he say?”
“He said what he always said. ‘I have my girl and my friends, why wouldn’t I be?’ So I told him that he was acting weird, and how it seemed like he was avoiding touching you—I also might have threatened bodily harm if he was hiding something from you. Anyway, when I said that, it was like he suddenly got what I was talking about. He looked over to where you and Jagger were, and said, ‘I have the rest of my life to hold her, but I can’t do that to him.’ ”
Her words had been choked as she fought back tears, and my chest ached when I realized that the rest of his life ended up only being another year or so.
“I had already seen how Jagger looked at you, and when Ben said that, I knew he saw it too. I don’t know if they ever talked about it, but he knew.”
Long minutes passed where the only sound was our hitched breathing as Janie pulled me into her arms and held me while we cried. When we pulled away from each other, she wiped at her eyes and shrugged.
“The way he looks at you, it’s so obvious. I’ve always thought you must have known. I just thought you ignored it because the two of you were such good friends, you had Ben, and because Jagger never did anything about it. This past year, though, when you started pulling away from us and clinging to him, we all thought for sure you knew at that point. I’ve just been waiting for the day you call me to tell me you two were together.”
“How can . . .” I shook my head and tried to swallow past the tightness in my throat. “I just don’t understand how everyone seems to be so okay with this. It’s like nobody cares that Ben is gone. Everyone is just expecting me to be with Jagger now that Ben died.”
“Grey, no! That’s not it. We just want you to be happy, and Jagger makes you happy. But no one is expecting anything. Ben was a huge part of your life; we all know that. But that doesn’t mean you can’t love someone else.”
“That sounds a lot like what my family was saying,” I mumbled, and she bit down on her bottom lip.
“Well, Graham and I talked about it a lot over the last year.”
My eyebrows rose, but I don’t know why I was even surprised anymore. “But you’re all okay with it so soon.”
“I think it would be different for everyone. Every situation is different. Some people, months are what they need, others, they need years. For you? It would be one thing if it had only been months. I probably would have thought you were just trying to make the pain go away. It might have even been weird around the year mark. But it’s been over two years now, and that’s different. And this is Jagger, he knows you, and knew Ben, better than anyone. He knows how you feel, he knows that you’re hurting, and he’s hurting too.”
My fingers easily found the ring hanging from the long chain, and I played with it absentmindedly. I couldn’t believe everyone had known, when I’d never had a clue that Jagger felt more for me than a friendly bond. I still didn’t know how I felt about everyone telling me they thought I was ready to move on with someone else, or how to feel about Jagger’s confession. But as I gripped that ring, a familiar twist of guilt hit me—thinking about Jagger . . . hell, thinking about anyone in that way felt like I was cheating on Ben.
If he hadn’t died, we would be married, and I would never have entertained the thought of someone else, just like I knew he wouldn’t. The words “till death do us part” had been floating around my mind for the past week, but as they came up again, I was quick to push them back. That felt like a cop-out right now.
“You all think if I were to move on, Jagger would be the guy I’d moved on to . . . but what if I don’t want Jagger?”
Janie looked at me closely, and the same sad smile my mom had given me was now playing on her lips. “Now that I don’t believe.”
Jagger
June 27, 2014
“OH MY GOD, Jagger?”
My hand froze on the energy drink and my entire body tightened. Shit.
“Is that you?”
I swallowed thickly, and slowly pulled the can out of the refrigerated section before turning around to face her. She’d been calling me three times a week since graduation, and I hadn’t once answered. In a town the size of Thatch, I knew it would be impossible to avoid her forever, but I’d hoped.
“Ah!” she squealed, and launched herself at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. I stumbled back against the glass door and automatically put my arms around her.
“Hey, LeAnn,” I murmured as I disentangled myself from her.
“How are you? God, you look great, Jagger!”
I took a step to the side, trying to put more distance between us; she followed me. “Uh, thanks. So do you. How’ve you been?”
“Oh, I’m doin’ just fine. I’ve been working at the salon in town for about a year now.”
“Yeah, Charlie said she’s been going to you.”
She laughed and grabbed at my forearm. “Right. God, I love that girl. Hey, have you been getting my messages? I’ve been calling you for a while now, hoping to get in touch with you ever since Charlie said you were about to move back from Pullman.” Her hand slowly glided up my arm, her nails lightly leading the trail. It was a touch that was so familiar, and one I didn’t want to feel.
“Yeah, sorry about that. I’ve just been busy getting settled in and everything.” I moved my arm to cover my mouth as I cleared my throat and took another step back. The second my arm was down, she was touching me again.
“Charlie was telling me all about how you turned the warehouse into a place to live in, and it sounded amazing—”
“It—”
“—and it turned out great, Jagger.”
I went still and my face pinched together. “I’m sorry, what?”
LeAnn shook her head in confusion, like she didn’t understand why I was pissed off suddenly. “The warehouse, it looks great.”
“You’ve seen it?” I asked darkly, each word coming out slowly.
“Yeah, I helped Charlie stock the place up on food for you!” she said on a laugh, like I should’ve known. And maybe if I’d actually listened to her messages, I might have.
I bit back a curse and forced a tight-lipped smile. “Ah. Well, thanks for that. It was, uh, nice to not have to go to the store first thing.”
“Of course, Jag, anything for you.”
Oh God. Just as I was about to make an excuse to leave, she spoke again.
“I always want to be able to take care of you.”
Fucking hell. “Uh.” I rubbed the back of my neck with my free hand and laughed awkwardly. “LeAnn, uh, I appreciate it. But it’s . . . it’s been four years.”
Her determined look didn’t falter as she closed the space between us. “Well, two if you count . . .” She trailed off.
If you counted the week Ben and Grey got engaged, and the week I was trying to forget that the girl I wanted more than anything was days away from getting married. That had been the last time I’d been with anyone, and I literally would have been with any girl just as long as I could try to forget for a few hours every day what was coming in a short time.
I looked away from her and tried to sound uninterested as I prayed to God there was someone in her life. “Still, that’s a long time, LeAnn, you can’t tell me you haven’t found someone else in that time.”
The confident look I’d
always seen on this beautiful girl finally cracked, and she blinked rapidly as her head jerked back. “Wait . . . are you telling—have you found someone?”
“I’m sorry.” It was all I could say in that time. I’d always belonged to Grey, whether she wanted me or not, I belonged to her still, and LeAnn was definitely someone I could never go back to.
She released my arm and took a step back. “Are you kidding me, Jagger? You promised me! You promised once you came back to Thatch we would be together!”
I’d said that because it was the only way she had let me break up with her after high school graduation. I looked around to see the other man in the convenience store glancing at us, and bent my head lower, dropping my voice so it wouldn’t carry. “I was eighteen, LeAnn. I didn’t even really know what that kind of a promise meant, and there’s so much that has happened in that time. I’m sorry you thought we would still be together, but we haven’t even talked in over two years.”
“Who is she?” she demanded, and I blew out a heavy breath as I shook my head.
“That doesn’t matter. Look, like I said, I’m sorry. But it’s time you find someone—” My words were cut off when her palm connected with my cheek, and I stood there for a second, not moving or saying anything, waiting to see what she would do next.
“You will regret this. You will come crawling back to me, Jagger Easton, I have no doubt of that. You always have, you always will.” She stepped so close, her chest was pressed to mine, and she looked up at me. “Because don’t forget, I know exactly what you like and how you like it, and you will always compare every other girl to me. But by the time you realize you’ve made a mistake, I will have moved on and you will have lost your chance.”
My nostrils flared as she raked her nails down my stomach, stopping just at the top of my jeans. “LeAnn,” I warned.
“If you want to remember what we were like together, you know how to get ahold of me, but I’m not waiting around for you forever. I’ve already wasted four years.”
With the hand not holding the energy drink, I grabbed both her wrists and pushed her arms away. “Don’t wait for that call.”