Kavan frowned at me when we walked into the nursery. “Capable of hurting her how much?”
“So much that she literally winced when she realized I was standing in front of her.” A stab of pain hit me in my chest. “So much that she told me she wasn’t going to save my job and then tossed me out of her office.”
“To be fair, it would have come as a shock to her as well.” He pointed at an open box lying on the floor. “Let’s get started on that while we dissect the terrible state of your love life.”
“I don’t have a love life,” I retorted and dropped to my haunches in front of the box.
“Well, yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “Because you turned your back on it and walked out without saying goodbye. Doing shit like that will always throw the world’s biggest wrench into the works.”
My jaw clenched, but I couldn’t argue with his logic. “You’re not planning on trying to make me feel any better about this, are you?”
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve been waiting to give it back as good as I got it for years. Welcome to payback.”
“At least my ideas helped you get Shira and then keep her. All you’re doing is pointing out how stupid I was.”
“What better place to start?” Amusement lit his eyes as he shrugged. “The first time we talked about this, you still thought you’d done the right thing. Even now that you seem to be coming around to how colossally stupid you were, I’m not hearing how much you regret what you did or even that you’re planning on trying to fix it. If you’re not there yet, you don’t understand.”
“You were way less annoying before you knocked your wife up.”
He laughed. “You’ve always been as annoying as you are now, so I have some catching up to do.”
I pulled the side panels of the crib out of the box, and we worked in silence while checking the printed sheet of instructions every so often. It took longer than I would’ve thought, considering that I’d always thought of a crib as a pretty basic thing, but eventually, we had it standing.
Kavan dusted off his hands as he leaned in the doorway, a strange, almost serene look on his face as we he surveyed his handiwork of the last few days. “It’s kind of difficult to believe my baby is going to be sleeping in here soon.”
I nodded, flashing back to the first time we’d had a conversation about marriage and families. I remembered his arrogant smirk and the confident way in which he’d told a newlywed newbie that he’d willingly walked into a life of captivity.
A lot had changed over the years, but nothing more so than his stance on those particular issues. Although I’d never told anyone, I’d always thought I’d end up meeting my soulmate and having a bunch of babies with her.
I hadn’t thought about it much because I always thought it would happen to future-me, but I was starting to realize that none of that stuff could happen to future-me if present-me didn’t get his shit together. Running out on the first girl I’d ever really been able to imagine myself with probably wasn’t the best way to go about paving the way to having the same look on my face that Kavan did now.
“What’re you going to do?” he asked, all the joking and banter gone from his voice. “There has to be a way to fix it if that’s what you want to do.”
“I don’t know if there is.” I’d never been looked at by anyone with so much vehemence in their eyes. “I don’t know if there’s a way back.”
“Did you try explaining why you did it?”
“Maybe I could’ve tried harder.”
He slapped a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it as he gave me his version of an encouraging smile. “We flew fighter planes, Jax. We’ve been in tougher situations and you’ve always figured it out.”
The dark hole inside pulsed and clenched painfully. I shut my eyes against it, shaking my head before letting out a shuddering breath. “I’m not so sure about that. I sure as fuck don’t feel like I’ve been in any tougher situations, and I don’t know how to figure it out. This is one clusterfuck I have no idea how to get out of.”
Chapter 33
LINDSAY
Lunch with Ember had done wonders for my mood, but the feeling of empowerment that had flowed through my veins