now. She’s not nervous. Now she’s shell-shocked, full of relived joys and hurts, full of questions that have no answers. I know exactly how she feels. But I don’t tell her that. I don’t ask her again if she’s okay, because she’s clearly not. I let the silence carry us home. I let her have the space she needs.
I pull once again next to her Jeep and turn off the engine. She’s looking straight ahead. She’s barely breathing.
“You want me to come up with you?” I say quietly.
She shakes her head. “Judd?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how to say this...”
“You don’t need to,” I tell her. “I get it. Just call me when you’re ready to talk.”
She nods, looks down. “Thank you for this,” she says. “It was really hard, but I needed it.”
“It’s fine.”
“I want you to know something.”
“Okay.”
“I know we’re friends, and I think that’s all we’ll be now. I get that. But, you need to know that I love you. I always have, and I always will. I guess it’s taken what we’ve been through for me to realise that. I think it’s important to say.” She turns to me, her eyes red and liquid, pleading. It was simple and honest and I saw the truth in it.
I nod. “I love you too, Quinn.”
If I was going to tell her I love her, then I would have chosen a better place to do it. I wouldn’t have chosen that space after she’s just opened up the centre of her soul and let everything spill out. But then I guess this is the perfect time. We’re not caught up in the whole romance of it all. This is the dirty, nitty-gritty of life. This is the beautiful ugliness of love and marriage. We are walking though the valley of darkness and somehow a little light remains, flickering in spite of the cold and the wind and the rain.
And sometimes the smallest of lights is enough.
In the next episode to Twenty Four Weeks…
Wade tells Judd about his new love… Quinn asks Judd for a decision…
“Look,” Wade says. “I’m sorry. I can’t say it enough. It was wrong. Even I know that. And it’s over, okay.”
“Fine.”
“But, if you must know, I’ve been seeing someone on and off for a few months, but we’ve been serious for a couple of weeks.”
“You actually used the word ‘serious’?”
“Yeah. I believe it is the word to use when you get ‘serious’.”
“You left Quinn two weeks ago.”
“Yeah,” he says.
“So straight from Quinn to...”
“Chloe.”
---
“What are we doing here, Judd?” she asks me.
“We’re having coffee,” I tell her.
“Don’t be smart,” she says, but there is nothing of her usual chiding for my stupid answers. “I mean with us. What are we doing?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Please, Judd. I don’t need you to be evasive. Not now.”
“I don’t know,” I say again. And I don’t. We’ve been in a kind of limbo for almost a month, where we skirt around our feelings, deny them because we’re afraid, but simultaneously becoming addicted to the furtive hope that simmers under the surface.
I love her. I want her. I forgive her. I’ve just been hurt so much that I don’t know if I can trust her. And, if I were to trust her again, that was certainly going to be a long time from now.
“Judd...”
I sigh. “It’s come to this then. We’re both afraid to be the first one to say it.”
---
“And that’s the ugly truth about what I did,” she tells me sadly. “I risked our life, our marriage, for something that was only going to hurt the people I love. Not just you, but everyone and everything. You said that you lost everything – well, I did too. I lost everything that was ever good in my life – for what?”
---
“I want to talk about bitterness,” Grant says. “When we don’t forgive then we foster bitterness in our heart.”
“I’ve forgiven her.”
“I know, but I’m sure you know that forgiveness is something that we do on an ongoing basis, especially when we’ve been hurt.”
“I get that.”
“Good. And forgiveness is an intentional act. Sometimes it’s hard to forgive, real hard, but the forgiving heart will forgive regardless. When we don’t we allow bitterness into our hearts and it slowly poisons us.”
Download regularly the Episode Guide for updates on this series. Additionally there is an Adult version (contains adult themes, coarse language, sexual references, high-level sex scenes and some violence) and downloadable audio books of these episodes (adult version).
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends