“I don’t fucking care. Let him try.” I take her hands in mine. “You know what I came by to tell you this morning? I found us a house in Boston. I’ve already signed the lease. You, me, and J-Squared.”
Her jaw drops, but I plow forward.
“I even looked into schools. We’d be in the district of a great public school, or there’s a Montessori school right down the block, and it’s only a twenty-minute commute to the hospital, where you can work as an RN.”
The twin worry lines between her eyes are deep as she stares at my chest, and I squeeze her hands.
“Classic. Are you listening to me?”
“You want me to come with you to Boston,” she states, voice flat.
“Yes.” I force a smile, willing her to smile back. This isn’t going how I pictured it would. “It will be great. The kids will love it there. You’ll love it there. You—”
“I can’t follow you to Harvard,” she spits out, and it’s like a punch to the gut. “I can’t uproot my life, my kids’ lives, to follow you to Boston. That’s your life, Jesse. It’s not mine.”
I swallow back the pain of her rejection. She didn’t even consider it. Not even for a second.
“I want it to be our life, Jocelyn.” She shakes her head rapidly. “Why not? Because of him?”
“He’s going to take my kids,” she rasps, pain lancing with each word. “Do you get that? Those pictures. My relationship with you. If I keep seeing you, he’s going to use it against me, and he’s going to take my kids.”
“No,” I deny. That’s not possible. “No way.”
“Yes. Yes, Jesse.” She clamps her eyes shut. “He’s not just threatening to send those pictures to Harvard; he’s threatening to take me back to court. To use my relationship with you, and those pictures, and Sandra Huntington, to prove I’m unstable and unfit. He’ll say I’m putting my kids at risk by dating you, and he will use all of this to make you seem terrible. And he will win, Jesse.”
“We’ll fight him,” I say, and she makes a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a sob. I don’t know how to fix it. I want to fix it and I can’t.
“There’s no ‘we,’ Jesse. I am going to fight him, but you can’t be involved.”
“Why the fuck not? I told you, I don’t ca—”
“But I do,” she cries. “I care. I will not be the reason you don’t get to go to Harvard Medical School. I cannot be that reason.”
“That’s my decision to make.”
“It’s not. I don’t want your help.”
“I’m in love with you, Jocelyn,” I confess, but she refuses to look at me. Refuses to acknowledge my words.
“You’re going to go to Harvard, you’re going to become a brilliant surgeon, and in a few years, you won’t even remember us.”
“Are you fucking hearing me, Joss? I said I’m in love with you.” Why isn’t she listening to me? Why is she making me fight like this? She loves me too. I know she does.
“No, you’re not.” Her tone is sharp. A slap to the face.
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, I’m not in love with you.”
“Bullshit.” She’s lying. I can tell.
“Sometimes love isn’t enough,” she argues quietly, and I shake my head in protest. “You’re naïve,” she insists. “You just don’t—”
“No,” I cut her off. “You’re not turning this into an age thing. You’re five years older, but that doesn’t mean you know better. You don’t have the market cornered on heartache, on pain. I’ve been just as broken, as beaten down, as you feel now. And I’m telling you— love is enough. Our love, this, you and me, is enough.”
I reach out and take her hands, pressing them to my chest, hoping she can feel my heartbeat. She squeezes her eyes shut, and I watch her face crumple with despair. My chest hollows.
“I can’t lose my kids, Jesse,” she whispers. “I can’t. And you can’t lose your future. We’re liabilities for each other. We won’t succeed if we’re together.”
“You can’t let that fucking drunk ass bully win, Joss.”
“He already has!” she shouts, stepping away from me. “He always does. You know what he did last night when he dropped them off? He was so drunk he couldn’t walk a straight line. He drove the kids here and he was black-out drunk. He could have killed them. Ten more minutes and he would have passed out while driving, and they’d all be dead. And then he pushed his way into my house, threatened me and pushed me around and scared the shit out of my kids. And you know what happened when I called his partner, another cop, and asked for help? He told me to get him some coffee and let him sleep it off. In my house.”
“Did he hurt you?” I ask, fear gripping me, and she shakes her head, exhaustion evident in her every movement.
“No. He yelled and threatened, tried to knock me around a bit, then vomited all over himself and passed out on my kitchen floor.” She looks up at the sky and lets the tears fall freely down her cheeks. “How the fuck did I end up here?”
“We’ll get through this,” I say softly, but when I take a step toward her, she takes a step back. The sounds of her feet on the pavement snap through my head like a bullwhip. She’s retreating from me. I’m losing her.
“There’s no we anymore, Jesse. There can’t be.”
“Let me help you.”
“You can’t. You cannot help. You’ll only make things worse. I don’t need a savior, Jesse. I need to handle this myself.”
“Don’t do this,” I plead. I try to make my voice strong, try to hide the cracking, but I’m failing. This can’t be happening. An hour ago, I was picturing our life together and now...
“You don’t know him, Jesse. I do. I’ve been under his thumb since I was sixteen. He doesn’t make idle threats. He will ruin your future, and he will take my kids from me, and he will use our relationship to do it. He has money and influence, and I have nothing to fight him with.”
“Then let me fight him.”
“This isn’t your fight,” she says through gritted teeth. “You don’t understand the risk or what’s at stake. This is my responsibility. My mess. My kids. My life. Not yours.”
I let her words hit me, one after the other, until I feel raw. I don’t have a say in any of this. They are her kids. It’s her life. There’s no room for me in it. She doesn’t trust me, and I’m not worth the risk.
“We just...we’re in two very different places in our lives,” she says quietly. “You’ve got your whole future in front of you with endless possibilities. I have to fix the things I fucked up in the past before I can move forward.”
She sniffs, wipes the tears from her cheeks. I drag in a shaky breath and move closer.
“You’re going to go to med school, you’re going to achieve your dreams, and it’s going to feel so good, Jesse. It will feel so good, and this summer will barely register as more than a blip in your memory.”
“You’re wrong,” I say, my throat and eyes burning. She’s so wrong. I push a strand of her hair behind her ear. Then I take her hand and press it to my chest once more. “Nothing will ever feel better than you, Classic. Not for me.”
She forces a sad smile. “Maybe if we’d met at a different time. A different place.”
I close my eyes and breathe past the hurt.
“It wouldn’t matter the time or place. I’d love you the same in every single one of them.”
* * *