because if I didn’t, I would always be weighed down by it.
That last night in Fiji, I’d been planning on telling him anyway. One of the greatest regrets I had was that he’d left before I had the chance to.
I refused to let the opportunity pass me by again. If I was ever going to be able to move past this nightmare of a month and all the turbulence and emotions it brought with it, I had to start somewhere. I had to purge myself of the words I’d left unsaid.
“Lindsay?” he asked, clearly waiting on me to say what I’d needed to when I interrupted him. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I replied truthfully, “but I will be. Look, Jaxon. The trip to Fiji was the best thing that ever happened to me and the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
Sensing that I had more to say, he remained silent. His gaze was steadfast on mine. As I looked into those melted-honey eyes I never thought I’d see again, I couldn’t stop the wave of emotion from swelling inside me, but I didn’t let that stop me either.
I’d made a decision, and just like he had, I was sticking to it. So what if he saw or heard how much I meant every word? So what if I gave away how much it’d all meant to me?
It didn’t matter anymore anyway. We were over. If he went to his friends bragging about the poor sap in the lobby who he’d pretended to be married to and who’d fallen for his act, I didn’t really care.
I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know me. For at least this one moment, though, I could know I was still the same woman deep down inside. The woman my brother loved and admired. The woman Ember insisted deserved the best in life.
Most of all, the woman I knew I was when all the noise and bullshit got stripped away.
“Fiji was the best time of my life,” I said again. “I went there expecting the worst. When I left here, I prayed that I wasn’t making a mistake, and when I arrived? God. It was like everything was screaming at me that I hadn’t just made a mistake, but that I’d screwed the pooch big time.”
Jaxon chuckled so softly that I almost didn’t hear it. I saw that one half-dimple pop and his chest rising and falling. “You and me both. I thought I’d flown all the way out there only to have a day trip and fly right back.”
I couldn’t bite back my smile this time, but I also didn’t regret him seeing it. At least I wasn’t the only one on the honesty train today. It made me feel marginally better, which only confirmed my belief that I was doing the right thing.
The truth will set you free and yada yada.
“Meeting someone like you was the last thing I expected,” I said, “but you opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities. I’ll always be thankful to you for that. I don’t know what you saw in me that first day, other than the possibility of a bed for the night, or why you came to join me in the dining area when I’d stormed off on you earlier.”
“We needed to look like newlyweds,” he answered as if it was the most obvious, simplest thing in the world. “We might not have known each other, but I wasn’t going to be that guy who left his wife alone on the first day of our honeymoon.”
I wanted to scowl, to cry, or to cuss him out. If he’d just left me alone and been the roommate he had promised to be, the one I didn’t even know was there, none of this would’ve been happening. Or, well, he’d still have been in my office to hear his fate, but none of these bad feelings would’ve existed between us.
“It might make me sound like a crazy person, but I’m glad you weren’t that guy,” I admitted eventually. My eyes were growing moist again, but fuck it. As Ethan had said, what I was doing and who I was weren’t a weakness. It was a strength, and I was embracing it with both arms open. As Jaxon had taught me to.
“Yeah, me too.” It was barely more than a whisper, but it rang out loud and clear in my office. He cleared his throat. “So where does this leave us?”
“The same place we were