Losing Him (Mitchell Family #8)(45)

When she realized that she was stuck in the house, I think it just took a toll on her. She became depressed and her mood swings were crazy.

To try and make things better, I decided to take her out for a special night. I hadn’t planned anything fancy. It was just a nice dinner and I’d arranged for my parents to keep Jacob overnight.

I had to admit, I was getting so used to her laying around the house in old sweats that I’d almost forgotten how simply captivating she could be. She came out of the bedroom in a red dress. Her hair was full of curls and her makeup was perfect in every way. The familiar smell of her perfume filled my lungs and I smiled realizing that there were so many little things that I loved about her.

I couldn’t even contain my excitement about how hot she looked, so I pulled her into my arms. “You look so sexy.”

She started to blush. “You don’t have to be nice to me, Jess.”

Why was it so hard for her to take a compliment from me? “Baby, I’m serious. If I wasn’t starving I’d suggest we spend the whole night in bed.” I brushed my lips against hers and she closed her eyes, but suddenly pulled away.

“I’m hungry too. It’s going to be great to get out of this house for a while. As much as I appreciate you letting me move in, it gets so boring every day. I can’t wait until I can go back to work.”

Since she’d pushed me away, I decided to get us on the road. Maybe once she was outside, she would change her mood. For some reason she just felt so cold and withdrawn from me. I hated getting the cold shoulder. It was driving me crazy.

The harder I tried to work things out, the farther away she pulled.

Even as we got in the car, I could feel her being tense. It made no sense. She was where she’d wanted to be for so long. I grabbed her hand and kissed it. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

She played with her hands in the passenger seat. “Hmm, I don’t know. Could it be that I don’t have a license, so I can’t go to work, or anywhere without asking someone to ride me. I have no friends, besides you, who I don’t really feel comfortable crying to you ever five seconds about how much I’ve messed up my life. I have no money, since I can’t drive or work. I’m living on someone that made it clear that he felt sorry for me. What else could be wrong?”

I was so flabbergasted that I didn’t even know how to react. It was clear that all of that was bothering her, but the last part wasn’t true. Of course I felt bad for her but I was with her because I wanted to be. “I’m helping you because I want to. Don’t you like being there with me and Jacob?”

She looked at me and had a dirty look on her face. “Seriously, you know the answer to that. Of course I want to be with Jacob. He’s my whole world.”

“What about me?” I was starting to think I was doing all of this for nothing.

“Jessie, does it really matter, at this point, how I feel about you? I mean, you should already know the answer to that.” Her answers had no depth to them. I hated it, so I reached over and grabbed her hand.

“I want us to have a good time tonight. Maybe you could pretend that I make you happy.” It was kind of a joke, but not really.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine! I’d do anything to have a nice night.”

Wow! She was acting like I was holding a gun to her head and forcing her to want to be with me for the night. For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine what I had done to make her mad at me. I’d helped her in every way possible.

We stopped at a red light and I leaned over to her side of the car. “Can you give me a kiss?”

She giggled. “Why do you want one?”

“Because you’re an awesome kisser and I want to feel those soft lips on mine. Is that good enough for you?”

Heather didn’t argue with me as she leaned the rest of the way and let our lips press together. When she started to pull away, I grabbed her and kissed her harder, letting my tongue slip inside of her mouth. She didn’t fight me. Instead she kissed me back, intensely. For a moment we were so caught up in each other that we forgot we were in a car. Before we knew it people behind us were honking for us to drive.

Heather pulled away and we started to laugh. Maybe our night was looking up.

Chapter 25


Heather


I couldn’t really explain what was going on with Jessie. Since we’d always been able to have a sexual relationship, I wasn’t going to get my hopes up that he wanted anything more than a good time. After everything I’d gone through, I was so over trying to win him or anyone over. If he didn’t want me for me, than I wasn’t going to push it.

It was time for me to start being independent, instead of co-dependent. I needed to take control of my life and stop waiting for happiness to fall into my plate. I needed to move forward.

As much as I appreciated what Jessie was doing, I couldn’t depend on him much longer. We needed to move on, so that the both of us could be happy, because our rocky relationship wasn’t doing anything but prolonging the inevitable. At some point Jessie would tell me to leave and we would go right back to square one.

I had to stop the continuous pattern and break away.

My mother always said that if you love something you should let it go. If it’s meant to be, it will come back to you on it’s own. It was unfortunate that I never believed that. Had I done so, I wouldn’t have had such bad luck with love and relationships.