The Christmas He Loved Her (Bad Boys of Crystal Lake 2)

“Don’t you tell me that I don’t know what I felt for Jesse.” She pointed to the satchel. “And don’t give me attitude about not opening a bag that belonged to your brother. What do you care? It doesn’t belong to you.”

Something ugly twisted inside him, there, where he’d been dead before. Like a sleeping giant, the darkness in him erupted.

He watched her closely. “You’re right. It doesn’t belong to me, and neither did you. And now Jesse is gone, and I’ve got his wife and everything else he ever wanted. How fucking fair is that?”

Raine pushed a wild curl from her eyes, wiping at them angrily as the sheen of tears threatened to fall. “Life isn’t fair, Jake. It throws shit at us all the time. It’s how we deal with that shit that decides whether we’re going to make it or not.”

He clenched his teeth together so tight that pain shot across his jaw. The rage inside him was intense, and his mind was filled of images of him and Jesse…and Raine.

For a few moments, they stared at each other in silence, their pain so heavy that Gibson began to whine and eventually slipped away to hide in the shadows.

“This isn’t about the bag, Jake.” Raine rubbed her hands over the thin robe she wore. “It’s so not about the bag.”

He shook his head and reached into his pocket, where he retrieved a black-and-white image that he handed over to Raine. “No,” he said carefully, because he didn’t trust his voice. “It’s not.”

She took the photo from him and stared down at it for the longest time, her shoulders hunched forward, her body trembling as if she were cold, when in fact the cottage felt like a furnace.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice broke and Jake took a step back, the image of a fetus burned into the back of his brain. “I promised Jesse I would be there for you, so why didn’t you call me? I know things weren’t great when I left. I know that, but Jesus, Raine, I would have come for you if you’d have told me.”

“I did,” she answered slowly.

“What?” He shook his angrily.

“I tried to tell you.”

“When?”

“When I lost the baby, about four months after you left.”

The world tilted a little then, and it was all Jake could do to stay on his feet.

“I called.”

He stared at Raine, his chest so tight he could barely breathe. He was defeated, and it seemed that he’d failed everyone.

“I’d just miscarried, and…” Raine cleared her throat and spoke quietly. “I called, but a woman answered your cell phone. I heard her tell you that it was someone with a”—she paused and wiped away a fresh batch of tears—“screwed-up weird, hippie name. I heard a noise then, like you’d grabbed the cell off her, so I knew that you knew it was me, and then the line went dead.”

Raine walked over to the fire and held her hands out. “You called me eventually and left a drunken message on my voice mail. I think you apologized for everything under the sun, and then I didn’t hear from you again.”

“Why didn’t you…” He was speechless for a few moments. “Why didn’t you keep trying? I would have. I’d have come. To be there for you and Jesse.”

“I was so hurt, and I felt like I didn’t matter to you anymore.”

For a long while neither one of them spoke, and when Jake finally managed to put together a few coherent thoughts, his voice was rough and he could barely keep it together.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. But Jesus, Raine, no one told me…my parents never said anything. Why would all of you keep this from me?”

Raine glanced away, her voice small. “They didn’t know.” She paused. “They still don’t know.”

“What?” he said sharply.

“They don’t know that I was pregnant.”

Jake ran his fingers through his hair, more confused than ever. “This doesn’t make sense. How the hell did they not know you went through with the procedure to have Jesse’s baby? I don’t… How could you keep that from them?”

Raine’s eyes opened slowly, the pain inside them so intense that it was all he could do not to grab hold of her and never let her go. When had things gotten so fucked-up?

“Oh, Jake, I didn’t want you to find out like this.”