“I mean, you can’t control what she feels. But, dude, you did do her dirty before,” Benji said and Jordie’s jaw dropped.
Maybe he wasn’t right.
“But she’s wrong to freak out like this.”
“Sure, but you are wrong too. You knew from the beginning that she wanted to be there to help you. You didn’t go to her, for good reason, I agree with you there, but you went to someone else. Someone you never told her about.”
“I get you,” he said and he did, but Jordie still didn’t feel that he was in the wrong. “But she doesn’t matter the way Kacey does. I really never thought about that.”
“But Kacey doesn’t see that. She sees it as she wasn’t the one that fixed you, in a sense, and that bothers her.”
“That’s selfish! As long as I’m fixed, why does it matter?”
“Because as much as men are prideful, so are women, and Kacey is very prideful. I know that, and I don’t even know her that well. She takes pride in everything she does, and she loves you so much that she wanted to be the one to be there for you completely. Instead, Natasha was, and that bothers her.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding his head because Benji was right. “But is it enough to break up with me for?”
“No,” Benji said simply. “But to her it might seem to be.”
Looking down at the ground, he sucked in a deep breath. “I won’t let her.”
“That’s all you, dude. But I don’t think she is over the past. Or maybe she is, but this just opened the wound all over again and now you have to figure out how to close it back up.”
“But how?”
Benji shrugged. “You know her best, Jordie. She’s your chick and only you know how to fix this.”
He thought that over for a long time, tracing the rim of his can with his finger. His life was one big mess that he was continually cleaning up, but she had promised she would always stay by him to do that. Now, she was freaking out over something that really didn’t matter. It was his past, and she had to accept that or they wouldn’t work.
And not working wasn’t an option.
Glancing over at Benji, he shook his head. “Why are you single, dude? You are one of those listening kind of guys that girls eat up.”
Benji smiled. “I watch Game of Thrones, I’m an alcoholic, and I play hockey. Not really a winning combo.”
He eyed him. “It works for me when my woman isn’t acting insane.”
He shrugged. “One day. It’s a battle every day, but I’m a warrior and I’m gonna make it. Just like you. You’ll fix this, because that’s been the theme of your life since you left rehab. Fixing yourself. And you won’t stop, you won’t give up, until she forgives you.”
“You’re right,” he said softly.
“I remember one time with Ava. She was big and pregnant,” he said with a fond smile. “Like two weeks out. And I went out with the boys, got shit-faced, and came home, ready to get some. She lost her shit, threw all my stuff on the front lawn, kicked me in the gut, and told me I was dead to her. When I woke up in my own vomit, she was sitting on the porch, watching me, and I looked up into those sparkling blue eyes and I came undone,” he said sadly, shaking his head. “I promised I’d never do it again, and I didn’t. Except for that one time, the one time she was killed and I lived. So yeah, this fight sucks, and you feel like you’re losing. But really, at least you have the chance to walk in there and tell her that you’re sorry and that you’ll never do it again. I don’t.”
Jordie’s eyes were wide, his mouth gaping. “I mean, shit, dude. I think you almost made me cry.”
He sucked in a breath as Benji nodded. “Yeah, dude, my life sucks, but yours doesn’t. And if I were you, I’d give her some time to calm down before I approached her again. I remember one time I didn’t leave the toilet seat down and she fell in. She hit me with a frying pan.”
Jordie snorted. “Damn. She was a violent one.”
“Yup, the ones who love the most usually are.”
“True that, brother,” Jordie agreed, seeing Kacey hit Natasha all over again, the way she wanted to kill his mother, and the way she’d looked at