From Darkness (Hearts & Arrows Book 3)(11)
Josie dripped the excess water into the sink. “I…” She had no excuse. “A long time. It just doesn’t feel right anymore. Nothing does.” Not since Jon. Not since Rhodes. Not since Anne.
Gran’s face went soft, though she didn’t make eye contact, just nodded to the bubbles. “When we’re grieving, it feels that way, I know. But I promise, one day, you will wake up and things will be different.”
That was all it took to make the back of her throat burn. She swallowed her tears. “I keep thinking that will happen, but every day is the same.”
“You just have to give it time. You have been through so much over the last few years. You lost your best friend just months ago in a way few could imagine. You lost Jon—” Josie opened her mouth to speak, but Gran cut her off with a look. “And don’t you tell me that he doesn’t mean anything to you, Josephine Campbell, because I will call you a liar.”
Josie shut her mouth.
Gran looked back at her hands as she rinsed a glass. “That kind of pain changes you. I know that for a fact, just as well as I know that you will find happiness again. You don’t live as many years as I have in this world without learning to endure.”
Josie couldn’t find a way to get to that point. She could barely even imagine the possibility of being happy again. “How do you find happiness after so much hurt?”
When their eyes met again, Gran only smiled and said simply, “It’ll find you when the time is right.”
Day 2
DAWN CREPT INTO THE kitchen where Jon sat at his table, writing in his blue spiral notebook. He ripped a page out with a huff and crumpled it up, tossing it next to the other wadded papers strewed on the surface next to a plate of forgotten eggs.
He clicked the butt of his pen a few times before sticking the end in his mouth.
For a month, ever since he’d seen Josie again after moving back to New York, he’d been trying to write the letter, but he’d gotten nowhere. There was so much to say, too much. He could never get the words right, and he’d thrown a hundred letters away that were proof.
Leaving New York years before, leaving Josie, was the hardest thing he’d ever done. He’d spent three years in New Orleans, trying to move on, but he’d only discovered one thing—there was no getting over her.
They had only been dating for a few weeks when everything fell apart, but they’d been friends and colleagues for over a year before that. And when he’d left, he’d lost it all—her friendship, her love. He’d burned it to the ground the second he left town.
But he'd never stopped longing for the days long passed, moments and hours full of content sighs and smiles he’d felt in the depths of his heart. The time when he’d had her was the happiest of his life, as silly as it seemed. But he’d known from the first time he ever saw her that she was the end of the line, and no amount of time or distance could change that.
The day Tori, his ex, had told him she was pregnant, his life had been flung into an emotional washing machine and set to spin. Moving back to New Orleans had seemed like the only option. They’d needed help, needed to save money, and they couldn’t do that in New York.
Getting back together had never been on the table for either of them—they were better apart than together—and if they were ever going to make it on their own with a baby, Tori’d had to finish school and get a degree. She had to quit working, and Jon couldn’t support both of them on an unstable income, living in Manhattan. Her parents lived nearby in Hell’s Kitchen, but there wasn’t room for any of them there. Not to mention, her father flat-out hated Jon. So, they’d moved in with his parents where they could live rent-free and save, survive. Set themselves up for a real future.
Looking back, he knew he’d handled Josie all wrong, but at the time, he hadn’t known what else to do. Everything had been rocked and flipped upside down with the baby—he would be a father; he would have a child—and he’d panicked. He couldn’t have faced Josie to say goodbye, couldn’t have looked into those eyes of hers and told her he was leaving. That he was going to have a child with his ex-girlfriend.
But he had to take care of his family, and to do that, he’d had to leave New York. With two words—I’m pregnant—the future he’d sought had crumbled before his eyes, leaving him to navigate a future he couldn’t even imagine.
And the truth was, he had been afraid.
So, instead of sacking up and facing her, he’d poured his heart, soul, and guts into a letter to Josie. He’d told her everything. Given her the choice and left it in her hands. Told her he’d always be there if she could find a way to forgive him and if she still wanted him.
She’d never called.
For three years, he’d obsessed over her, plagued by imaginings of what she thought of him. He’d figured she despised him for leaving, for the baby, for being a coward. Deep down, he’d hoped that, somehow, he was wrong. Maybe she hadn’t called because she understood why he’d left and accepted it but didn’t want him and didn’t want to talk about it.
It hadn’t stopped him from wishing every day that his phone would ring, and she’d be on the other end, waiting for him.
Part of him had hoped they’d never come back to New York again. He’d hoped he could close the door on that chapter and find a way to start fresh. But New Orleans never grew on Tori, and really, he should have known she would always want to go back home.