The Reluctant Romantics Box Set (The Fall, The Mind, The Heart)

“He just didn’t want to disappoint you,” I said as our dance came to an end.

“Jack’s good people, Rose. I have nothing but love for him.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” I said, giving him a hard hug before whispering in his ear. “You’re my hero.”

“And you are mine,” he whispered back. After a few more minutes in my father’s arms, he gave me a knowing and hopeful smile. “I think I may have seen him walk through the doors a few minutes ago,” he whispered to me in encouragement.

I nodded as he hugged me tightly to him and then reluctantly let me go.

I wandered through the bottom floor, noting all of the subtle changes in the last month, and I knew they had something to do with Jack, though he was nowhere to be found. He’d added so much charm to the lobby and adjacent rooms that there was no mistaking he was responsible. I walked into my office and stood at my desk as months full of memories with him clouded me. With a sigh, I traced the wood with my fingertips, my lips trembling, when I saw it. I picked up the book and felt my heart shatter as I flipped through the worn pages and whispered his name.

Jack

Some men do insane things for love.

Some never acknowledge it and deny themselves a life full of God’s best gift in lieu of a career or a selfish bigger picture. They run from the notion of completion without a second thought to what they may miss.

Some men embrace love to the point of no return, let it fill their lives, their only motive, their reason for being.

Others, fueled by love’s strength, pick up their sword to fight selflessly and without pride lay it down for the ones they can’t live without.

Some write songs or paint pictures to better express their appreciation or loss of life’s most powerful drug. They hide away in a world of their own creation with a muse of love’s past as their inspiration, never believing anything better than the world they’ve created could exist outside of it.

And some men can’t handle the lethal dose of intensity that comes with loving another. These men are the most tragic, disillusioned, and helpless while staring it in the face.

I know these men, because without intention, somehow, at one point, I’d become all of them.

It took me years of soul searching, traveling the world, and collecting experiences to know I could outlast being all of them. I could, in fact, push away my selfish ambition, fight, lose, and escape the cloud of my past love. I was fighting, and I was fighting hard because she was worth it. She was both my fuel and downfall, a double-edged sword that helped to decide which of these men I would become next.

Because, let’s face it, when you gave your heart away, you give the person you love the power to destroy you at will. Who you are at that moment defines who you will become next.

Those men capable of love, and even the most confident, can crumble to its cruel fate.

But I’d trusted her, and that was the reason I was destroyed at that moment. I couldn’t take a step in either direction. I was paralyzed with my need for her. I didn’t want to be anything else than the man I was when I was with her. No matter how much strength I found, she weakened me in a way only she could validate. I belonged to her.

And her heart belonged to another.

I closed my eyes and took a deep, painful breath.

Beneath the pain, the waiting anger brewed as I studied her beautiful frame. Was I disillusioned? Or did I fight? Or had she asked me to put my sword down? Frustration rolled off me in waves as I tried to calm myself.

I hadn’t been honest with her about my past, either. But I’d made peace with my past long before I met her.

Or maybe that was a lie I’d told myself and it made me just as guilty.

My life had shifted just as drastically as hers. Was this the reason we crashed together in heat only to be frozen by our fears?

With Rose, my curiously had turned into a dire need for her, her smile, her company, her body. Had we crashed together or had I forced my way in?

There was no way I could escape her words, her truth. Even with what she didn’t say when she’d confessed all, I knew I was defeated and had told her as much.

I had to remind myself again as my veins began to lace with anger that I’d asked to be cut. I’d asked for it. Now I had no idea how to stop the bleeding.

My first instinct was to flee, to let the pain run its course and move on. I’d done it before. But my heart had other plans. It was rooted to her. Subtly and without me being truly aware, it had planted itself here next to her. But I was unwanted, a weed growing wild in someone else’s future.

And she wasn’t alone.

Even as I watched her, knowing her thoughts were of me, I couldn’t trust it. And I had a damn good reason not to.