It was probably my silly dream that Carter and Tanner and I could be a family that had allowed me to so easily be duped. But now I realized my initial assessment of Carter was true. What he had said to Noah had been the truth. He didn't want to get married and have a family, he just wanted somebody to spend time with while he was at home.
For a minute, I began to question everything he had told me on our trip to Mexico. Was that all just to get into my pants too? I was glad that I had set the boundaries of our relationship for that trip, because I was sure once that trip was over, if we had tried to have a relationship, eventually, when he was traveling or bored with me, he would've broken my heart.
Now feeling on solid ground and having complete clarity about who Carter was, I turned to leave.
21
Carter
As it turned out best laid plans did go awry in the most disastrous way. Just when I thought I was making headway with Jess, it all came crashing down. I needed a chance to explain to her, but she didn't seem to want to hear it. And now she was walking out my front door.
I hurried after her. "Jess, you have to let me explain. I didn't want to hurt you. I just didn't know what else to do."
She stopped on the front porch and glared up at me. "You didn't want to hurt me but hurting me was the only option you had?"
Dammit, why was she able to twist everything? "It was the act of a desperate man.”
"Desperate?" She looked down, shaking her head. “I can't believe that I had sex with you again. All of this is a lie."
"Only the knee injury is a lie, Jess. Having sex, everything I said about wanting to explore our connection, all that is the truth."
"You know I should've known when I looked at your knee that you weren’t really hurt. The knee wasn't swollen, and you didn't seem to have the level of discomfort someone would have with that injury."
Her expression all of a sudden appeared as if a light bulb had gone off in her head. "You actually found someone to fake medical reports and just so you could scam me?"
"You're looking at this all wrong, Jess. I did all that because I wanted to spend more time with you."
She pursed her lips and looked at me like I was nuts. "You couldn't just ask me to go out with you?"
Was she kidding me? I put my hands on my hips and it was my turn to glare at her. "I did ask you to go out with me and you said that you couldn't because you worked for my father. All you've done since we’ve been reunited is come up with excuses why I can't spend time with you."
With her hands on her hips glaring back at me, she said, "Maybe you should take that as a hint, Carter."
Her words hit me in the chest like a sledgehammer. But there was still one thing that she was forgetting. "I might have if you hadn’t fucked me in my car or in my bed today.”
She flinched as if I slapped her, and I realized my words were vulgar. She turned and started down the steps towards her car.
Desperation grew in me again. I followed her down the steps. "Jess, I'm sorry. I know I messed up, but I just wanted to be able to spend time with you. And I'm happy to tell you why. I want to take you out on date and to explore what we have. You are the one who keeps erecting walls between us and won't tell me why. I'm not a man who gives up easily, and so this was just one way I thought maybe I could spend time with you. It was an idiotic thing to do. I know that. But my intentions were good. All I want to do is spend time with you.” Why couldn't she hear that?
"And what if I had agreed to that? Eventually, I would've found out the truth, don’t you think? Then I’d know that all this started on a lie. What we had in Mexico was perfection, but this now, is far from it." She opened her car door. "You know, maybe it's a good thing that somebody is telling you no. You seem to think your money and charm can get you
whatever you want, and it worked in Mexico, but now we're in the real world and it doesn’t work here. At least, not with me.”
Once again, she had been taking my good intentions and twisting them into something that offended her. It was clear to me now that I had no chance. In fact, I probably never did. She’d been not just resistant to me from the beginning, but adamant about staying away. I'd been a fool to try to win her back, and I'd be even a bigger fool to continue my efforts.
"That's the first time anyone has suggested that my generosity makes me an asshole. I am a good and decent man, Jess, who only wanted to be able to spend time with you. Was I misguided by feigning an injury? Yes, but my intentions have been good and pure except for the knee injury. I have been completely open and honest with you, and I am damn sure that that is not the case with you. But you know what? You win. Clearly you are not the same woman that I met in Mexico, or maybe there's just some about me that you don't like even though this morning, you seem to like me just fine. Or maybe you were using me.”
She jerked back at my comment.
“But whatever the fuck that's going on with you, I'm done. I'm sure that's going to come as a big relief to you."
She got into her car and I had nothing else to say, and I certainly didn't want to hear anything further from her, so I shut her door and then walked around the back of her car and up in my house closing the door behind me.
I leaned against the door closing my eyes and taking a deep breath because my heart was beating a mile a minute. I didn't know it was possible to feel so angry and heartbroken at the same time. In that moment, I hated Cupid for shooting his damn arrow in my ass to put me on Jess in the first place. But what was done was done.
I pushed off from the door and headed to the kitchen grabbing a beer and then going out onto the back porch. I felt like such a fucking fool to have begun to think about having Jess living in this house with me. Filling it with kids, all of them redheaded like her.
I was pretty much an open book with my family, but I was going to keep this latest instalment of my soap opera life to myself. It was bad enough that they knew that I cared for Jess and was willing to go to these crazy likes to win her over. They'd all been right. My grandmother had known it would all go south. Even Noah knew it would go wrong although he seemed more concerned with Jess's feelings than mine.